transit watch

“This vehicle is equipped with surveillance cameras for your security”

I assume these cameras are actually in place for my surveillance. It’s one thing to video me while I am riding the light rail home to Boulder after another day at my boring job. It is quite another to do so and discreetly call me a moron. Although, maybe if I continue to go to my boring job, I am, in fact, just such a moron.
The great youthful hope is that we will all find work that inspires our creativity, utilizes our talents, pays us well, and grants us ample time off to live our lives. Such a reality is essentially a mathematical impossibility. But that’s another story. Or just part of the story.
On my commute, I see the world on the way to its job. I ride the bus, and then the spy train that monitors every breath, but both of these boxes have windows. That was really the least they could do. Out these windows, I see a strange migration. Every morning, a line of people forms, extending fifty feet across and three miles long. The census bureau is still calculating, but preliminary numbers show that everyone is there. The line only lasts for a few hours max, and switches directions, 180*, every 6-10 hours.
There is another line that forms every day, but this one is much less predictable. I only see it on special occasions. Migrants pack themselves between ropes to form a snake. When they come to the front, they are told to strip off their shoes and, if they are wealthy enough to own keys to cars or homes, made to display their key ring. All seems well, though the lighter migrants scan for darker ones, especially those camouflaged in head wrappings. Occasionally, an old lady is assumed to be one of the head wrapped darker ones in disguise, and given a battery of tests. Mostly, she passes.