Orphans

40

40 I wait outside the pod among the remaining cluster of people looking to exit Arthur Chin. While everyone looks rushed and harried, there is a sense of calm washing over the group as well. We are about to be free of Arthur Chin and whatever went down here. Plus, the train is still running and that means there is normalcy. No one is looking up or around though. They are staring at their feet or the news scroll constantly flashing before us on the Xinhua News Agency news panels evenly aligned along the platform. There is nothing substantial being said about Arthur Chin, it has been closed and evacuated, it will be brief, and everything is fine. We all begin to enter the pod as the train approaches the station, and we find our spots as the pod latches onto the train. There is a moment as the pod settles into place and the train begins to move where we all shuffle about, angling ourselves this way and that, trying to locate the position that will allow for the least amount of contact with those around us. Soon enough we are heading out of the station and emerging into a world where the sky is still grey, but less bleak, and drabs of sunshine burst through the lingering clouds of smoke that are slowly dissipating as morning fully takes hold and Arthur Chin fades into the background. No one in the pod is talking, which is not unusual; the norms on the train call for silence and a focus on oneself and one’s own business. Still, isn’t this a time for conversation , or shared rumination? Are we so jaded about uncertainty and fear that something like this, whatever it is, B E N TA N Z E R 143 doesn’t faze us? Or is it because we recognize that there is no point, unable as we are to question the Corporation, cowed into silence and apathy, and now unwilling to ask what’s going on? It’s some of this I suppose, but as I sit there I realize it’s something else as well. This is what shock looks like. You become so focused on moving forward and trying to retain your bearings that you lose yourself in the mundane, concentrating on what you know, and getting home— with that, everything else is blocked out, at least for now and at least until you’re ready to truly process it. So, yes, everyone around me looks relaxed and focused , but they have to be; if they weren’t, they would have to face the fact that something happened, something scary, something that may be unknowable, or worse, may be quite knowable, and in the face of that, isn’t it so much easier to be like this? I feel empathy for the people around me, for all of us. This is what it looks like to live today when you are not part of the Corporation or a 1-Percenter. A mix of fear and shock, and the sense that it probably isn’t going to get any better. How can it? I look at the faces in the pod, and I wonder what their stories are. Do they have families as well, and what do they do to support them? Or maybe more accurately, what are they being allowed to do to survive? They are me, we are all in this together, and though we may not think about it that way, ultimately we are onein -the-same, the same concerns and the same level of oppression. We are one, we are indistinguishable, and as long as the Corporation prevents any of us from realizing this, or that there may be power in organizing ourselves around this simple idea, they will remain in power and O R P H A N S 144 we will remain as we are, pitted against one another and fighting for scraps and dwindling opportunities. I wonder if this is the shock talking, or if the trauma of the incident has freed me in some way, erasing some of the mental barriers we all must enact to get through the day. I begin to wonder if Morg or someone of his ilk is listening to my thoughts, if they are taking notes, and preparing to talk to me about this when next we meet. I shake my...