Train Assimilation

Moral and survival are tested to prove if you are what a human being should be...

The two scientists leaned back in their chairs. The arduous work on the simulation chamber was beginning to wear on them for the day. “How many does that make so far?” the small, frail man removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The other examiner, young but tall and built, began unwrapping a tofu and mayonnaise sandwich, “That would have been our forty-third test-run.”

“*Sigh* Not even a dent in the populous. We still have another thousand lined up today to get through the simulation.”
“It's mandatory, you know that. Government demands we have these psychological check-ups on it's citizens yearly.”

“I'm well aware! Don't go reading off what my job description has been for the past 15 years, Marcos,” the old man glared, “Let's just play the next one.”
“Aye-aye, Captain Winsor,” the other man leaned forward and pressed a button on the console board. A giant screen lit up the wall, viewing a woman walking down a cobblestone sidewalk. In the background there were construction crews fixing an old bridge over a railyard. The machinery was deafening, but she ignored it as she glanced at her watch twice. She was going to be late for the board meeting. She rolled her eyes and picked up her pace, running through her mind what made the nasty candy cereal so marketable that she had to sell for the conference.
A piercing whistle was heard searing through the air. She was ripped from her thoughts as she glance down the railway to see a heavy set locomotive rolling down the tracks. It was heading in the direction of the bridge, and she snapped to attention as she realized the construction workers were all still bustling about. She shouted to them, “Hey! HEY! There's a train coming!!” But her voice could not be heard over the loud machinery. She looked around desperately and, almost as if it appeared before her, she saw a lever sticking out of the ground. She traced it's connection to the railroad, where the switch was placed to change tracks. The two sets of tracks traced underneath the bridge, however there was only two workers laying down brickwork near one set, while the main workforce was attending the opposite track.
Her eyes grew wide as she realized what the outcome would be. Her heart hammered in her chest, and her breathing became raspy. Her hand rose towards the lever, shakily and hesitantly. The train plunged forward, no signs of stopping. With one strong inhale, she gripped the lever and yanked it to the side. The track switch shifted just as the train passed over, careening towards the two innocent workers.
Her vision faded and the screen went black. Marcos swallowed a mouthful of tofu as he punched a sequence of buttons along the control board, “And that clears a Miss Juniper Marshall. Next we have a...Freddy Olivitz.”
“Still gets me everytime,” Winsor cleared his throat as he pulled off the table a pile of examination papers. He began making notations across the pages, “It's a damn good thing no one remembers these tests. I'd say it would make the world a rather depressing place.”
“That's why we call it a Mental compared to our usual Physicals that people have to go through. They don't know going in, and they don't know going out. It'd be a shame to find out what really happens through physicals...” the last button was punched and the screen brightened up again, “Initiating.”

The image zooms out to a man with a feathered fadora, strolling along the same exact cobbled street, whistling to himself, “'I'm walking on sunshine...woah-oh! And don't it feel goo-!' Ack! I can't get that song out of my head!” he chuckles as he walks up onto the bridge. Suddenly the engine whistle blares loudly, and he looks down to the railroad tracks to see the train running its course to the underside of the bridge he stands on. He admires the cloudy trail the smokestack is leaving before he looks down to see the construction workers laboring under the bridge.
“Woah! Hey, fellas! What're doing?!” He hollers down to them, but no one acknowledges he is there. The man looks around frantically for something to maybe throw down at them, and nearly collides with another person atop the bridge. He stares at the enormous figure of a man, his waist nearly bursting to the same size as his height. The guy looked like a giant marshmallow the size of giant tractor tire.
“We have to warn them about the train!” the fedora wearer stammered to the fat man as he pointed down to the workers below.
“Not my problem,” the lumbering giant groaned. The other man was appalled by the statement, and for a single instant, imagined pushing the fat man over the edge to stop the train. But immidiately regretted the idea, and returned to looking on in horror as the train barreled its way toward the bridge. The lights flickered and the screen dimmed.
The office room went dark once more, as Marcos finished his last bits of his sandwich and stretched, “...I'm walkin' on sunshine...woah-oh...”
“That is in poor taste,” Winsor scoffed, “Besides, I prefer not having that song stuck in MY head.”
“Freddy Olivitz, a winning pass as all the rest,” the younger man gave a brief glare to the older gentleman before returning to button pushing.
A few silent moments passed in the room as the two scientists continued their scribbling and configurations. Marcos began bringing up the next procedure, “Johnathan Elders, bringing up in five,” and then broke off to look over at Winsor, “So do you remember your Mentals?”
“Never. It is not told to me as I am sure it is not to you,” Winsor peered over his glasses.
Marcos shrugged, “True. Though I do find it strange we aren't classified enough to know our own scorings.”
“I'm quite sure we'd hear about it if they had issues with ours.”
“Initiating...”
The screen brightened to a young boy, sitting alone on the sidewalk, curled up with his arms wrapped around his legs. Tears began streaming from his eyes.

D****t. He thought he had gotten over this. It had only been a few weeks, but the pain still washed over him in waves, unpredictable and crashing. He was angry. There was no reason his grandfather went through all of that. They hooked him to all of those machine to desperately keep life flowing through him, and Johnathan couldn't do anything through the whole ordeal. He was helpless, watching his mentor pass away in front of him over the course of months, years. It had haunted Johnathan to the point of desperation, quitting his day job to force his studies into medicine and health. But with all of the world's new technology, and all of the doctors pleading with him to keep his father are more advanced levels of healing, there was less and less of Johnathan's knowledge that could help in his grandfather's time of need.

How could he sit there, holding the hand of a loved one, and not be able to make a difference?! He picked up a rock and hurled it across the railyard. The mechanized demolition that was being done to the bridge near him was not loud enough to drown out his thoughts. He just wanted to silence everything in his head.
But one sound, a single train whistle, brought him into focus. He glanced up to see the train chugging down the railroad, it's steam spewing and coughing into the air. He looked confused as he looked to the other side where the workers were all moving barrels of mortar towards the bridge edges. He rose to his feet in a flurry and shouted to them, “Hey!...HEY!! Get out of there!” He gripped a handful of stones and began chucking them toward the construction site, even though they never reached, or they may have disappeared somehow because no one ended up noticing. He gasped as the whistle blew once more from a closer distance. There wasn't any time.

It was happening all over again. All of it. Helplessness. He couldn't do anything about the situation.
What could he do?
He looked up, tears sill welled up in his clear green eyes, his hands formed into fists and he rushed down to the train tracks.

“H-...Hey, hey! What is this?” Winsor, dropped the paperwork as he stood up from his chair.
Marcos stared in the same confusion, “He hasn't looked around for the lever. He didn't even move toward the bridge where the second relay would be!”

Johnathan slowed his pace as he stepped across the first metal rail. Every inch of him was shaking in fear, but he was no longer caring. He was going to stop this constant death from following him. There was no more people falling from his reach. He was going to protect them all....
The train approached at full speed, and he closed his eyes as he held out his hands...

The screen popped and sizzled. There was a rumble beyond the walls of the office room. Both scientists rushed out of the room as the alarms began ringing.
“What the hell was that?!”
“I don't know! But we need to get to the examination room immediately!” Winsor skipped around a corner as he pushed through a steel door, entering into a darkened room filled with cots placed along the floor. People lay in each bed with full metal encasings around their heads, except for at the end of the row, where a large machine burned with sparks flying from it's engine. They rushed down the line of cots to the machine, Marcos stopping in his tracks to notice one bed layed empty.
Winsor quickly pulled a fire extinguisher from the wall and blasted the machine down until it was a simple lump of burned waste. He heaved heavily from exhaustion, tossing the extinguisher to the floor pathetically. Then he turned as Marcos shouted to him to get over there, and as he approached he saw the other scientist holding the body of a boy on the floor.

“He killed the machine,” Winsor grumbled in between breathes but Marcos just looked to the boy, eyes fixed with terror. Winsor followed his gaze and saw the blood seeping through the dome helmet the body wore.
“...The machine killed him...”

• Days Later

Winsor walked along the park walkway, breathing in the sunshine and fresh air. Marcos was sitting down at the picnic table under the old aspen. He waved to him politely, reaching the table and taking a seat across from Marcos who began setting up the chess board they had been playing for the past week during their work leave. The younger man looked ghostly, like he still hadn't been sleeping well.
“Feeling any better?” Winsor asked as he moved his first white piece forward.
Marcos snickered, “Doubt I ever will. Still can't believe they're going to bring us back in tomorrow to finish the Mentals. You'd think they'd call this whole thing off.”

“'A simple fluke in the system', as they say. The way it has been worded, it doesn't seem to have been the first time.”
“Is this the way they weed people out? Through these examinations?”
Winsor placed the knight before Marcos' Queen, initiating the war early, “We can't be worrying ourselves with these speculations. The most important thing is that we don't think about these topics, it's just how things are and how they will be.”
The game continued in silence for a small period more before Marcos exhaled with a sigh, “Do you think God has us each in a Simulation Chamber?”
“Where is this coming from?! Check.”
“I'm just trying to wrap my head around why someone would make such a stupid decision in that situation. He couldn't expect to stop that train by himself. It all doesn't add up,” Marcos ran one hand through his hair in anxiety.
The frail scientist readjusted his glasses, grimacing, “It won't. It was a stupid decision and that is that. A human instinct is to choose survival, and when it comes to morals we would not taint our own to save another. It is all calculated. The..the boy, was nothing more than a fool.”
“Yeah.........maybe..........checkmate.”