Harmony Chapter 15: Riding east

Filed: Harmony @ 6:31am on May 10, 2011 2 responses :)   Word Count: 711
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This entry is part 15 of 27 in the series Harmony

Harmony

After our Shower, Cassiopeia and I returned to the cabin and it didn’t take long before the three of us were asleep, cuddling with each other, each of the two girls on either sides of Mark.

I was gently awakened the next morning by Cassiopeia and saw that during the night, Tiffany had crawled into bed on my side and Penelope a little further away on Cassiopeia’s side.

Both of them were hard asleep but Mark had his eyes open looking at me. Without moving a muscle, he winked at me and I returned the favour as I gently left the bed in silence to accompany Cassiopeia outside.

The Sun wasn’t even above the horizon yet but the stars were no longer showing up in the sky.

“Sorry Harmony, the orchard is rather far so I like to take the first train so I can be in it while it’s still early”.

“That’s ok, but just a question, are you timed? I mean, there doesn’t seem to be a punch card or even a lot of clocks around”

“No, but it’s common courtesy to other people. There are days when there are almost no apples out so I plant new trees or clean up. If I don’t show up I will be seen as lazy. But the orchard is a lot further away than say, the wheat fields or the barns so I already have less hours to work than most since I spend so much travelling.”

It made sense. Having never really worked I have no idea if the commute was included in the paid hours or not on home, but since the transportation was included it was only fair that the time you waited on the train was counted.

We quickly went to the toilet and hurried to grab a quick breakfast and a lunch bag before stopping in a room next to the buffet with things I hadn’t seen since I arrived: paper books!

All of them were printed on earth, there were no Sigma 8 original. The selection was severely limited and books mostly in bad shape. All of them were reference non-fiction books like how to plant a garden.

But it was books nonetheless. I didn’t even know there were some on the planet.

Cassiopeia explained that after school, most people stopped reading but that some girls, the only ones to go to high school, continued.

She personally loved working in her orchard because the long train ride gave her plenty of reading time.

I picked a book on apples and orchard, I figured I should know the subject a little, and we quickly went to the monorail platform to board the first train east.

Unlike yesterday’s train, this one was almost empty and rode at full speed away from the rising sun making me realise one thing that had bothered me but had not figured out yet: the planet turns backwards.

The sun rises west an sets in the east, opposite of planet Earth.

After perhaps 30 minutes of ride, the sun was once again under the horizon and 30 minutes later, we were back at night though the sky in the west was still bright enough to block out the stars.

I could barely see the trees as we sped away from the city at a ridiculously fast speed.

Cassiopeia read all of the way her book on raising sheep while I read part of the time my book on apples. We didn’t speak at all but I walked in the wagon a few times to look at the scenery.

At one point, we crossed straight through a mountain tunnel and it made me wonder how such apparently primitive people managed to build and maintain such a wonderful monorail train.

We slowed down to drop the only other passengers in what looked like a miniature city with a few small buildings also composed of containers and they told me they were in charge of a chicken farm I couldn’t really see from the train itself.

Unlike the wheat field, they were lucky enough to get an actual train station like the one back in the city.

Cassiopeia and I continued alone for another 15 minutes and we were dropped via a ladder in a weird forest in complete darkness.

As soon as we were off, the train turned around and returned at full speed toward the city.

Series Navigation«Harmony Chapter 14: Another ShowerHarmony Chapter 16: Apples»

2 Responses to “Harmony Chapter 15: Riding east”

  1. Krey Says:
    May 11th, 2011 at 06:53

    Sorry to disappoint, but the sun on Earth goes east to west also.

    P.S. comment left via Kindle

  2. The Author Says:
    May 11th, 2011 at 07:24

    Damnit, you are right. My mind auto-corrected the run of the sun in despite wanting to make the sun run in the opposite direction.

    I had the train run east so that they would run away from the sun and go back in the night and that sentence broke the story.

    Thanks for spotting it!

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