It is another day at the subway job. The good news is that the job is almost as easy as just sitting there riding a train and getting paid to do so. The bad news is that it can get monotonous. But counterbalancing that is the fact a train driver tends to have a copilot. Up to you two who is which.

The train is currently in transit from one station to another.

  Well, at least he gets paid real benefits for this, and it's on rails... He wasted way too much time slow trading in Elite.

  He's the one driving, as much because he is the person more likely to be willing to turn their phone off on the job compared to whoever the camera has not panned over to in order to reveal the exact identity of his co-worker.

How did Mittens get this job?  Well she knew a kid who absolutely loooves trains.  And so did his dad.  And well, she's not exactly scholarship material, nor is her family wealthy, and her college classes aren't going to pay for themselves.  So it was this or scrub toilets...

"Booooring," she complains.

"Beats work study, but still."

*Updates facebook status*  "Losing my mind."

Raichel replies to the post on facebook rather quickly: "You have to have one in the first place to lose it."
Timothius is just as quick to reply: "Pretend you are infiltrating a secret base with a train full of the last survivors of Earth."

While Mittens distracts herself with facebook, Joe can see up ahead the next stop is coming a lot sooner than expected.

  "Well, I get less customers nearly breaking my hands with frozen turkeys in the holiday season here.  AND I get to talk back to you without anyone literally looking over my shoulder."

  Joe is aware of a few games based on that premise, though wasn't quite interested enough to get them (It's amazing how 1/5 of the worlds remaining population is specifically afraid of spiders, in that).

  He goes through the motions of announcing upcoming stops, while going through the more important motions of safely stopping many tons of speeding metal full of people.

Mits giggles from her sibs' replies.

"Thanks," is what she types back.

"Frozen turkeys what?  Ohdang.  Time warp!  Did I zone out?  Seems we just left and here we are..."

She double-checks the time against the schedule while doing her part of the job.

The time and schedule do not match. But the train does stop as controlled. The stop is not the stop the train was supposed to arrive at and nobody is there. When the train doors open, nobody exits the train.

  "If this ends with a Twilight Zone plot twist, I am blaming you in advance."  Such a good friend you are.

  Joe double checks the Train won't roll off without input, and asks Mittens "Could you call about this, while I take a peek to see if all our passengers are not just being politely quiet for once."  Said as he gets up to check.

"Is today April first?  I'm guessing no one got off 'cause this is the wrong stop..."

Mits does as asked and calls the control staff.

"Hey, we're having a time discrepancy here...  And I think we're way off course too."

Mittens gets only static from control and also finds her phone no longer has a connection.

Joe finds the train is completely empty, devoid of any passengers.

  Well, that's unfortunate.  Or is it fortunate, because Joe's own location is much less of a question mark, wrong stop this may be.

  "Well, not seeing anyone on here with us. I shall try optimism and assume you totally called in successfully, and got yelled at for being off schedule"  He said he'd TRY optimism.

"Nope.  Static.  And no cell reception either.  So no sense standing around headscratching on board.  Let's go take a looksee if we can figure out where we are and what happened."

She exits the train and looks for a "you are here" type map.

There is map that indicates Mittens and Joe are at a stop that... by all rights doesn't exist yet. At least arriving at it sooner makes sense in that it lies between where they started and where they were going. But nobody being at the subway station is downright weird. People are here at every hour of a given day or night.

  Joe checks his watch in case that's decided to call it quits too, and says "So. See if we can make it to what is supposed to be the next stop.  Or grab some snacks from a vacant but stocked location first?"

  He checks in passing for if this station is suspiciously absent of EXIT -> signs.

Mits is taking selfies.  In front of the map, the stop, the empty train, and so forth.

"Lights are working.  So I guess it goes to follow that the vending machines are.  Normally, I'd say, 'Let's keep moving.'  But if we just stumbled into a zombie flick, this may be our only chance to get supplies of any kind."

She's looking for obvious exits as well.

There are obvious exits and obvious vending machines. While they are getting snacks, someone can be seen hiding back behind a trashcan after having peeked at Joe and Mittens.

  Well then, best get the essentials out of the way "Hello, unless you try to steal the train I really don't have much of a reason to care if you decide to run from public transportation employees."

Mits reaches into her pocket with one hand, and takes a selfie with the hiding person with the other.

"I'm Mittens, and this is Joe.  We drove that train here.  Never been here before.  Maybe you can enlighten us as to where here is, and why the three of us are the only ones here."

A little boy peeks from behind the trashcan. His hair is disheveled and his face a little dirty. He has goggles on and other such post-apocalyptic gear on him. "I'm Eli... You're in Metterville." Which is what the stop is labeled. "People don't usually come to the old train stations... how come your train works?"

  "We're still hazy on the actual reason we ended up here, though ten minutes ago it was because we were driving a train full of people in a functioning society.  And now they're gone, and we're in a station that wasn't even on our map yet.  I'm expect things range from unpleasant to lethal outside, if we checked the exits"

Now that it's sinking in, Mits is getting super excited!

"Hello, Eli!  Nice to meet you!  I'm guessing the reason is Time Travel!  We must have stumbled upon one of those unexplained space-time rifts in science fiction!  What year is it?"

Eli says, "2030." And yeah, we're going by "the RP started in 2016". "Time travel? Please tell me you're from the future..."

  "Sorry, we're random civilians from the past.  Now, is the primary threat to life mobile? Infectious?  Immune to physical harm or only having specific vulnerabilities?  Or just a bunch of people in an out for themselves survival brawl?"

Joe's got the pertinent questions covered.  Mits takes her hand out of her pocket and shows off her pepper spray.

"This the only weapon I've got.  Pepper spray.  It makes you temporarily blind...  If you're a living thing."

Probably doesn't work on zombies.

Eli looks disappointed and says, "Oh... um... I guess you'll wanna stay with me then." He then looks up at Joe. "The primary threat is other people, I guess? Hard to say. I usually try to keep away from most people, but you two didn't immediately attack me... and you look genuinely lost."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:00, Thu 01 Sept 2016.

  Well, that was fortunate so far as disaster hazards went.  Despite how often it is a tagline, people are not the worst monsters.  Even when it's people who eat other people, because they lack teeth that can chew through reinforced steel.

  "Well, hopefully you're not just leading us to our deaths at the hands of your more heavily armed associates.  But not like we have anything better to do today."

"Mittens wonders if the boredom of her job really did drive her insane," Mits muses, "Nevertheless, Adventure calls!  And I have caller I.D."

She follows after Eli.  "So what happened that caused humanity to turn against itself?"

"Many of the foods people relied on started to just die off. Large quantities of crops and animals. I've never known that world, but that is what I heard happened. Now it's just everyone for themselves." Eli looks around to make sure they are not being watched and then taps some buttons on a panel and then has his hand scanned, causing a door to open to a flight of stairs and Eli descends.

  Yeah, mystery famine would be one of the more drastic yet mundane of such problems.

  Joe follows along, "Take a while to set up, or just keeping old locks working?"

"Mittens is also surprised to see high tech working in a post apocalyptic world.  She suspects that maybe the boy is a little techie wiz like you find in such movies.  And looks forward to the part where she'll be in a pod race and power needs re-routed to keep things exciting..."

Eli has concluded these poor folk are obviously from the present and they are just the kind of crazy that think they are from better times. And narrate from third person. "I.. set it up myself." He flicks a switch, the door closes behind the trio and lights turn on to show a small living area with a bed, a fridge, what looks like some kind of high-tech tub, and a big mess of parts everywhere.

  "Can't have been easy, then.  Particularly with having to go out and find all the parts yourself."  The Batcave would have probably taken a lot longer if it required personal looting sprees for anything but the trophy displays.

Mits gives a low whistle.

"Wow.  Niice!"

She heads over to the tub.  "It looks like a high-tech tub.  But what is it really?"

Eli can't help but smile when Mittens appears impressed.

In answer to Mitts' question, though, Eli says, "A high-tech tub."

He then nods to Joe. "It took me a while to set all of this up. The tub is the latest major addition. Before that was the fridge. The fridge, I was lucky enough to find and just repair it. But the tub I had to build from scratch... it takes water molecules from the air, stores them, filters the water, making it doubling as both a tub and drinkable water... Extra nice is that because it can do that, I can recycle the same bath water over and over while the filter gets rid of all the dirt."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:41, Thu 01 Sept 2016.

  "Even just the molecular scale water filter alone is kind of a big deal in this situation."  Sure beat purifying the end result of a more mundane dehumidifier, likely less heat being blasted out in the process as well.

  "I'm assuming most people running around would rather run one of these into the ground, than go to the effort making more to basically remove water scarcity."

Mits tail-wags, smiling brightly.

"I knew it!  Super genius tech wiz!  And tub is more than just a tub!  Sweet!"

She starts zipping about, poking her nose in every curious thing she can.  It's a cat thing.  But she's adult enough to not touch anything.

"So in exchange for sharing your awesome place with us, I would like to do something useful for you.  Like maybe do the dangerous things you've been putting off but will need to get around to eventually anyway."

To Joe she's all, "I know, right?"

To Joe he looks a little saddened. "I... can only hope you are wrong. The world can't stay bad forever, can it?"

To Mittens' offer, Eli is flabbergasted, even a little scared, and says, "D-dangerous? Why would I ask you to do dangerous things?"

One of the things Mittens examines is a robot eyeball that examines her right back.

  "Because if you have to hide, that means so much as walking outside can be dangerous.  You offering the hospitality is very appreciated, but just sitting around leeching off you isn't very appealing."

  Because Eli isn't an asshole.  If it were highly sarcastic wizards or something, it would be another matter.

"Yeah!  What he said.  Thanks for welcoming us in!"

Mits smiles at the robot eye and wiggles her fingers at it in a hello.

"Robot eye.  So cool!"

The eye "blinks" in response to Mittens, along with some beeps sounding from it.

Eli says, "Well..."

He puts a hand on the wall and the wall changes from wall-colored to having a map on it. "I really appreciate your offer. But until you know this place, I wouldn't want you leaving for any reason." He is staring at the map, as if trying to figure out where to begin. He then looks at Joe and Mittens. "What are you good at?"

  "I know enough to fix things like cars and trains, not molecular physics or advanced robots.  Unless they shoot me first or don't show a reaction to physical injury, I can defend myself well enough."

Mits squees from the star wars droid eye reaction.

"Best robot eye ever!  What useful stuff do I know how to do?  Well...  Imagine a girl who grew up with excessive energy and who's easily bored with scholastic stuff.  So I know lotsa survival skills like hunting, sneaking, trap making, self-defense, camo, swimming, tight-rope walking, and so on.  Algebra will kick my tail every time, though.  And I'm probably nowhere near as handy with a wrench as Joe here."