+Chris hung up her last phone call of the day and started packing up.
+She was on her final stop of an important business trip to the capital
+city of Elysionia that lasted a week. She’s having a vacation once this
+trip concludes, and now she’s dying for getting back her cozy little
+home.
+In Elysionia, people get around mostly by trains. There is an
+extremely elaborate railway system that connects every single place of
+importance in Elysionia. Its foundations laid out hundreds years ago,
+the Elysionia Railways has been serving the country loyally and
+contentedly over the years. Being inside continental Europe, it also
+links to other surrounding countries.
+Chris works for upper management of a private company. As part of her
+job she travels around the country frequently and take the trains more
+than a few dozens of times each year. Being a frequent rider of
+Elysionia Railways, she’s familiar with the system enough that she can
+recite the time table of various larger stations. With still well more
+than an hour from her planned departure time, she is not in a hurry.
+Chris is anxious for this very special train ride too, as the new
+train station in the capital began to operate yesterday. She booked
+specifically for a train that would depart the city from the new
+station. She has heard that this new station was designed and built like
+no other train stations in Elysionia, and she was ready to find out
+what’s so special about this new station that supposedly will
+revolutionize railway transportation in Elysionia.
+A taxi is called and Chris tells the driver her destination. “Huh,
+the new station?” Says the driver, “I heard a multitude was there
+yesterday just to check it out. Are you going there just for a visit
+too?” “A multitude of people… it must be really well designed,” thought
+Chris. She’s busy being distracted by her own thoughts and didn’t pay
+attention to answering the driver’s unsolicited question at all except
+letting out an unclear murmur of “yes”.
+Before long she is dropped off at the station. When she laid her eyes
+on the station for the first time Chris was utterly stunned – the
+exterior of the station looks exactly like a gigantic Gothic castle. She
+is standing at least a few hundred meters away from the main entrance
+yet the entire building barely fits in her field of view. A triplet of
+sharp spires with beautifully engraved patterns point straight into the
+sky. Towers surrounding them must still be as tall as the tallest radio
+tower she has ever seen. Flamboyant traceries made up most of the
+exterior openings. Born into a rural farming family, Chris could not
+fathom the sheer amount of work that was put into the construction of
+this station (nor could she understand why the city decided to erect a
+huge Gothic castle in pretty much the dead center of Elyssima). There is
+not a single railway track in sight – they are all cleverly well hidden.
+The square in front of the station is still flooded with a large crowd
+of people, all admiring this gorgeous building.
+But Chris is here to take a train ride and she really does not have
+the time to give this building a good look that it deserves, so she
+proceeds into the station. However again her eyes are instantly hooked –
+the pointed arches, the vault ribs which forms an endless mesmerizing
+geometric pattern, oh and the intricately decorated crystal chandeliers
+hanging around the center of the ticketing hall, which are even more
+opulent than the ones that appeared in her childhood dreams. Chris could
+not take a single step without getting amazed by something new that goes
+into her sight.
+A clock with hands long as a bus in the hallway brought Chris back to
+real life – it’s 20 minutes before the train she is planning to take
+will depart. The railway system of Elysionia works like a massive subway
+– as long as one has paid the appropriate fare, they will be permitted
+to travel between any places below a distance corresponding to the fare
+on that day. Still, trains are run at different frequencies for each
+destination. And in Chris’ case, if she missed this one she would have
+to wait 3 more hours, which would mean she won’t be in her house until
+midnight. Willing as she is to stick around, she still wants to be home
+more, just by a little bit. She says to herself, “I shall give this
+place a good visit someday,” and immediately got back into business –
+looking up the gate on the information display and following the signs.
+Everything is still so familiar.
+Chris followed the signage to a three-way junction. It appears that
+each path leads to a different set of gates. She took a sharp turn
+following where the arrow points and heads to a lower floor, not even
+noticing her dress almost being caught in the escalator.
+She finds herself in a delightfully decorated corridor with gates on
+one side and fine art exhibits on the other. She has some walking to do
+though – the corridor is for gates 80 to 1, and her gate is 15 – so she
+really doesn’t have time to appreciate the art, or to think about how
+they managed to squeeze so many gates into a single corridor,
+or why are there so many gates in this station in the first
+place.
+As the station was put into use only a day ago, it’s still early in
+the transitional period: there are not a whole lot of trains here, nor
+are there too many people who are actually taking a train. It soon
+becomes apparent to her that the gates are fairly far apart from each
+other, and even at her fastest walking pace, she will probably not make
+it on time. So she started running. Chris is not good runner. She never
+has been. And the fact that she is wearing an ankle-length dress
+definitely isn’t helping. She looks at the wall of arts and sees her own
+reflection on the fresh glazed wall tiles – her long, unblemished white
+dress flying high from all the velocity that she usually never gets to
+have. Similarly set in motion is her long, black hair, which is
+spreading in midair. The reflection is so clear that she can even make
+out the frills and cutwork on the hemline – even threads on the needle
+lace, which are not unlike the ribs of the traceries she saw moments
+ago, just vastly different in scale. She got a strong sensation of déjà
+vu from what she just saw, as it reminded her of a series of daydreams
+she often had when she was a little girl. But this isn’t a great time to
+fantasize about her prior dreams, is it?
+50, 49, 48 … Chris is steadily passing by the gates. It still puzzles
+her why are there so many gates in this station. She must have seen
+number as large as 200 when she was at the junction. Is there ever going
+to be enough rolling stock in Elysionia to warrant so many gates? Also
+why are they using gates at all? Train stations usually have
+just platforms don’t they? Is this why they said the new station would
+revolutionize railway transportation in Elysionia?
+30, 29, 28 … Chris is running out of her breath. She takes a look at
+her watch and realizes that she still has 10 minutes left. “Surely I can
+make it to gate 15 in ten minutes,” she says to herself. There are few
+people in this section of the station, and all the benches are vacant.
+She stops to take a quick breather. Mindlessly she glances at the floor
+brilliantly lit up from atop and saw her own image. “Holy heck,” mutters
+Chris, “it must take a lot of work to keep this station under such
+condition in the future.”
+When Chris passes by gate 25 she notices something is off. She halts
+her steps and looks back.
+
+Gate
27
+
+
+Gate
26
+
+
+Porte
25
+
+The language of the sign changed for some reason. This baffles Chris
+and makes her freeze in place for a good second. She has learned a
+little bit of French in her youth and can indeed understand the word.
+She just couldn’t understand why – Elysionia is an English speaking
+country and as long as English remains the lingua franca of the world,
+there really isn’t a good reason to change the language midway here.
+Maybe this gate is reserved for trains to and from France? Who
+knows…
+It didn’t take long until she notes another change in language. This
+time it’s German.
+
+Porte
22
+
+
+Bahnsteig
21
+
+Only that Chris doesn’t know any German and wouldn’t be able to tell
+if the sign stands for “Slaughterhouse 21” with their scary long
+compound words. But she also feels a little bit reassured as her
+suspicion that these gates may be reserved for trains that connect to a
+different country could be right, or so she thought.
+As she assumes the bizarreness would end here, she finds out she was
+wrong, VERY wrong. Because this is what she sees next:
+
+Imbarchi
19
+
+
+INTROIRE·IN·CVRRVM
19⅓
+
+
+INTROIRE·IN·CVRRVM
18
+
+“What on earth is happening,” says Chris, “is this station going to
+pull a Platform 9¾ on me? Where would trains using this gate go anyway,
+Vatican City?”
+Just as she couldn’t stop admiring the exterior of the station when
+she just arrived, these signs don’t stop surprising her, and in an
+increasingly disturbing manner.
+
+
INTROIRE·IN·CVRRVM
\(\begin{vmatrix} 3
+& 5 & 7 & 4 \\ 1 & \pi & 6 & 3 \\ 0 & 7
+& 5 & 9 \\ 5 & 4 & 6 &1 \end{vmatrix}\)
+
+
+
INTROIRE·IN·CVRRVM
\(|\mathrm{e}^{(\ln(61)+\mathrm{e}i)(-4-\frac{7274}{1024}i)}|\)
+
+
+
ᚷᛠᛏ
\(\displaystyle\int_{3}^{\frac{45}{7}} \sinh^{-1}(x)
+\cosh^{-1}(x)\,\mathrm{d}x\)
+
+Chris isn’t good at math when she was in high school. She doesn’t
+even know what half of these symbols could ever mean. She doesn’t think
+she has seen the symbols on the last sign in any of the languages alive
+in the world nowadays either. What is this now, a time machine? As her
+confusion reaches the peak, Chris hears from the PA system:
+“Dear passenger Chris Xephyr, the train you are taking is departing
+in 3 minutes. Please board the train from Gate 15. Thank you.
+Cara Chris Xephyr viatrix, currus qui veheris abibit in tribus
+minutae. Amabo te, introi vehiculum ab porta XV. Gratias tibi.”
+“Who designed this godforsaken place…” exclaims Chris, “how does it
+know my name? This isn’t an airport is it?” She checks the gate closest
+to her, and there is no jet bridge to be seen, only rail tracks. Chris
+has never heard a single word from the PA system ever at any station she
+has been to in Elysionia. She scrambles to find her booking information,
+only to find out that it does say “New Elyssima” there. There is no time
+of departure or name of the passenger, as the booking system never asked
+for them. The station should never have known her name or which
+train she is taking. Her confusion grown into fear, Chris starts running
+again, even faster than before, almost like she’s being chased by a
+deadly monster that would instantly consume her if she gets caught.
+As Chris runs on, she feels the passing of time is slowing down, her
+limbs increasingly heavier, and gates seemingly becoming farther
+separated from each other. She could not hear a thing, not even the
+sough of wind passing by her ears. Her vision becoming darker, Chris
+starts to wonder how long she could keep running. She hasn’t seen a
+single person since the signs started speaking nonsense. She starts to
+contemplate her life choices, as one would inevitably start doing under
+such situation: why she couldn’t end the last call a bit earlier; why
+she had to book a ticket from the new station; is it really worth the
+agony she is experiencing right now; what if she went down the wrong way
+at the junction; why she wouldn’t choose to inherit her family land and
+be a farm girl staying at her hometown – after all if that were the case
+she wouldn’t have to endure any of what she has gone through in the last
+20 minutes. She no longer has the desire to revisit this place
+afterwards – if this is the future of railway transportation in
+Elysionia she might also avoid travelling by train altogether in the
+future – still she’s kind of curious what could be inside those tall
+towers she saw when she was outside the station. But obviously this is
+not the time to find out. The only thought in her head right now is to
+get out of this cursed place somehow.
+Chris runs into a person when she’s deep in her thoughts. She
+apologizes for her carelessness and is about to move on, only to realize
+that she would likely be able to find nobody that could help her if she
+missed this chance. Desperately she asks the person whether they know
+where gate 15 is. The person, not to Chris’ surprise at this point,
+started to speak complete gibberish in response.
+Chris doesn’t want to give up this easily. She continued, with the
+heavy breathing she got from all this running and almost in a pleading
+voice:
+“Did you hear the PA? I am that Chris Xephyr. Does hearing
+the PA calling out your name in a train station seem perfectly normal to
+you?!”
+Again, the person started to speak gibberish. Their demeanor seems
+confident, so they probably understood Chris just fine. But she isn’t to
+able to make out anything whatsoever from their speech, not even their
+body language. Frustrated, she thanks the person and resumes her
+seemingly impossible quest for gate 15.
+Before she is able to run more than a couple of steps, Chris
+collapses to the floor. The hem of her dress, still moving under
+inertia, flies ahead and covers her torso. A gentle breeze from the deep
+side of the corridor, presumably for the purpose of ventilation, blows
+it back to where it belongs, with the cutwork flapping around in the
+breeze. The person from whom she just sought help is now nowhere to be
+found, almost like they has never been there.
+
+Chris wakes up finding herself in the warm afternoon sun lying
+against her broom. She was again daydreaming during her housemaid duty.
+Fortunately there isn’t anyone home to catch her in the act. She rushes
+to the living room to find today’s newspaper, its headline reading “New
+Elyssima Train Station Project Dismissed”. She lets out a sigh of relief
+and continued her work.
+