more ideas than time

The train runs through, always through, always, always through. The station platform out here on the edge are mostly empty. People stay in their habitats, if they can. Grains and vegetables, flash-freezed in large capsules, hook to the bottom of the monorail line where the train, always running into the city, will deposit them at their scheduled destination. The capsules form lines, waiting for their turn to get a ride on the train. Too many capsules, too much wind resistance, and it's hard to get the train to run real good.

People, too, on board the trains, reading newspapers and hand-painted scrolls. Jackboot had gotten on from the family farm. He had a brother in the big city, a graduate student in feudal Japanese cartography. He was going to visit. Past the bubble farms, glistening in the light, and up to the first station in city limits: suburbs. glass-eyed children with rainbow-colored hair as soft as kitten fur, all ringed by maternal shielding to keep them from touching anything that is not approved.

None of them could sit next to Jackboot. He was a farm worker, with electric shoes and a hand that integrates with tillers. He smelled like overturned sod. He didn't even try to wash it out of his clothes. The maternal shields pushed the children back. The train wasn't crowded, yet. Plenty of other places to sit.

[fragment ends here, abandoned until I have more time. Always, I have more ideas than time.]