Mom studies the train schedule like someone perusing the menu at a fine restaurant. Up here, where the private rail network trains are, the security is even tighter than down in the public station. The public trains are free, but the private regional trains cost real money, and there’s no way for a welfare rat to sneak a ride on one. There are guards checking boarding slips and ID cards, and the private security goons look even more cantankerous than the public transit cops and HD troopers in the station below.
The Regional Express station is the only part of South Station that gets to see any sunlight. It’s perched on top of the many subterranean layers of the public-transportation system. Above ground, everything is a little cleaner, brighter, and less noisy than below. Technically speaking, the regional maglev network is public as well, since it’s subsidized by the Commonwealth, but the trains bear private corporate logos. Riding the maglev out of the city costs money—real currency, not public-assistance credits on government cash cards. Back when I was a civilian, I never really thought about the reason for that, but now I know it’s a way to keep the welfare rats from spilling out of their habitat.
“Where should we go?” Mom asks. The options before her seem to have stunned her into paralysis. The regional maglevs go all the way up to Halifax and down to the old capital, DC, and there are dozens of ways for paying customers to get out of Boston.
“What do you want to see, Mom? Mountains, ocean, big metroplex, or what? Sky’s the limit.”
“No big city,” Mom says. “Somewhere where they have some trees left, maybe.”
She studies the pictogram for the different regional routes again for a few moments, and jabs the screen with her finger.
“There. Let’s go there.”
She points at one of the northern stops of the Green Mountain transit line—a place called Liberty Falls, Vermont, right between Montpelier and Burlington.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’d like to go see some mountains and trees.”
“Okay, then. I’ll get us some tickets.”
The departure hall is palatial compared to the cramped and perennially crowded underground platforms of the public system. The ceiling up here is thirty feet high, and there are tall picture windows lining the walls that are obvious projections, because they show a lightly clouded blue sky above Boston, instead of the shroud of smog and dirt that has been covering the city for as long as I’ve been alive. The back wall of the departure hall is taken up by a huge display listing destinations, departure times, and platform numbers. Underneath the display, there are rows of automatic ticket dispensers and a pair of information booths. We walk over to the info booths, and I speak our destination.
“Liberty Falls, Vermont.”
A moment later, the screen in front of me displays an itinerary and a direction diagram. A pleasant female voice speaks out the text on the screen.
“I suggest the Green Mountain Line to Burlington, with stops in Nashua, the Concord-Manchester metroplex, Hartland-Lebanon, and Montpelier.”
I select the “ACCEPT/PAY” button on the screen. The display flips to show me a variety of payment options: “CREDIT CARD,” “GOVERNMENT ID,” “FOREIGN CREDIT (EUROS, ANZAC DOLLARS, AND NEW YEN ONLY),” “OTHER.” I choose the second option, scan my military ID, and enter “2” in the field labeled “NUMBER OF PASSENGERS.” The terminal spits out our plastic boarding slips, and I snatch them out of the dispenser and hand them to Mom.
“Courtesy of the Commonwealth. Tomorrow morning, you’ll be breathing some clean mountain air.”
The maglev system was built long before I was born, back when the Commonwealth didn’t yet spend every available dollar on colonization. That makes the newest trains in the system forty or fifty years old, but they’re in much better shape than the ones used in the public system. The maglev train cars have compartments, each with seating for six or eight people, and there’s a small restroom at the head of each car. The public trains smell of burnt rubber and piss, the seats are nearly indestructible polymer shells, and their ride is bumpy enough to shake loose ceramic tooth fillings. The maglev train cars merely smell like aging fabric, the seats are comfortably upholstered with antiseptic nanofiber, and the ride is so smooth that I can barely tell we’re in motion. We claim one of the empty compartments, and have it entirely to ourselves.
The Boston metroplex stretches all the way to the New Hampshire border. For the first thirty minutes of our ride, all we see outside is a dark landscape of concrete, row after row of tenement high-rises, broken up in regular intervals by the dimly lit intersections of the planned street grids, like clearings in an urban forest. The maglev rides on titanium arches that rise thirty feet above the forest of concrete. As we get closer to the outer suburbs and away from the tenements, the buildings get smaller, and the streets wider and better lit. It’s not until we’ve crossed the state line into New Hampshire that we see the first large patches of green between all the urban sprawl.
“So many people,” Mom muses. She has been studying the world outside of the double-layer polycarb windows since we left South Station. “Think about all the people living on this patch of ground.”