It's a beautiful, wonderful, drunken feeling.

Feeling the thrum of her soul through the world, seeing the same old pathways split off in new, fun, fascinating directions. Charlie cackled with childlike glee as she rolled along the tracks of the nameless subway system beneath the Neo-Genis hub. Lines A, B, C, and D turned to lines A, Z, Y, C, D, W, J, C without any reason or rhyme, following the swirling thoughts rushing through her soul.

Driving down line H, then G, then back through Y to H again, then... then...

"What... is that?" Charlie noticed a new line, one she hadn't carved herself. One that was simply designated as 'The Delta Line.' She heard something from within, the sound of some type of creature she had never heard before.

Curious as ever, she switched the tracks and spurred the Dead Line forward.

The path took her downwards into a dark and oppressive atmosphere. She could feel pressure on her soul, cold and harsh. It didn't take her terribly long to hear something grow louder and louder... the sound of rattling chains. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the glint of a pistol.

The threat threw her into a panic as she reached out to her Dead Line and pulled, warping space to flip it around on the tracks before pushing it as fast as she can back the way she came. The Dead Line rattled down the tracks at lethal speeds as Charlie trembled behind the controls. "That's... that's not fair! These are my rails!" She whined.

...

Her panicked thoughts snapped back into reality as a train platform appeared on her track. Charlie slowed herself to arrive at this destination on instinct, protocol cutting through the panic she'd been spiraling into.

As she disembarked, she felt another presence on her soul. This one, however, was... a far kinder one. It was warm and inviting. Gentle and loving.

Printed on a sign on the platform was it's name. Platform 11. And even though her sanctuary had been invaded for a second time, she couldn't bring herself to fear this new presence. It felt like... home. Charlie didn't know what 'home' meant, but Platform 11 felt like it.

Charlie made her way onto one of the hard plastic seats and melted into it like she was made to sit there... and promptly fell asleep.

[Maikendo spoilers. Do not read if you’ve not played.]

I found a real journal in a storage room today, so I’m gonna write in it about my very cool day.

I made a bunch of friends after a chipmunk fell from the ceiling!

I woke up on platform 11 like always. I felt the platform moving, and I pieced together what happened when I heard the sound of chains. Platform 11 moves wherever people are in need, it moved to the Delta Line, that meant someone in need was inside the Delta Line. I snuck down as quietly as I could and saw him. He was a little short and had great big ears. I made my way up to him and grabbed his hand, and I brought him back to the platform, which shifted locations (which was very nice of it).

His name is Maze. He was very nice, and he talked to me all about my train! Apparently he’s a sort of explorer for one of his friends and he fell through the ceiling into the Underway. He listened to me while I talked about my dream, then asked me if I ever expanded the Underway out from under the Neo-Genis hub, so I did and I found something really, really, really special: Underway Central. It's aura felt like a very warm handshake from a long-lost friend… I’ll talk more about it later after I’ve done some cleaning up, but the station did surface at an epicenter of the world’s biomes.

Maze then invited me to come see where he came from, and he took me through a warp thing. We showed up in a really bright place with a bunch of trees, and he told me he could do this whenever, but only back to there since it’s home. Apparently there were a bunch of his friends there, so we went together to meet them! There was a really nice bunny lady who taught me how to eat food and gave me a ‘birthday’! She also loved my train, and we went to go ask the other people there about if they’d be okay if I put a train station there!

There was a really nice otter, and his wife (Mary) gave me more things to eat as long as I described what they tasted like. I did! Some of them tasted like fluorescent lights but good, and others tasted like the distant presence of a close friend. Oscar also liked my train a whole lot!

And then we went to this little city and there was a really nice mouse girl there! Her name was Mimi, as she told me, and she also was interested in my train! It was really cool, because nobody’s ever been excited about my train before. The most I ever got was a ‘Huh, that’s neat’ or something like that, but the people here actually cared! If all I cared about was just driving my train and making friends, I might have just stayed since nobody else ever cared about my train. But that’s not the kind of person I am!

It is the conductor’s duty to ferry her passengers wherever they need to go, not just wherever is convenient for her! The underway must follow the myriad paths that people walk in order to bring them to their destinations. That is my duty.

I did, however, add Maikendo onto my regular route. It’s… really really really really nice to be appreciated for once. No one has ever really… cared about what I did. Not until I met Maze and everyone else.

Huh, you know. Since Rebecca taught me how to eat, maybe she can also teach me how to cry sometime! I don’t know how to do that and I’ve been told that it tends to be good at releasing bad emotions. I don’t like talking about those kinda of emotions, since people say I’m creepy enough without me even being sad, but sometimes I do have a lot of them.

Anyways, I can just wait to have bad emotions another day. This last day has been the very nicest day I have ever had in my whole, um, three-something months of life. I’m excited to see what tomorrow brings!

[On the next page, in a shaky scrawl.]

its been a day. i was looking at the map displays with maze yesterday and they matched my map. the one on my train in it’s pamphlet form.

today i found another one. the lines on the new map i saw had their full names. Instead of the ‘a line’ there was the ‘alpha line.’

the 'delta line’ was on there. the delta line was on my map.

maybe i should go ask about crying now. 

i’m really scared.

Charlie was riding her train through the Underway with a sense of trepidation. The Delta Line was showing up more and more often, almost as if it were some kraken trying to reach out to her and pull her in. Her growing worries were cut off by the sound of her phone’s reedy ringtone. “This is Charlie.” She spoke into the receiver, answered by the sound of Vignelli’s robotic voice. 

“He- He- Hey, Boss Lady. A Metal- Metal Man Broke Your Lock. You’re Going To Want To Get Over He- He- Here.”

...

“He- He- Hello?” Vignelli’s voice was answered by the beeping sound of a disconnected call. “I Think- Think- Think She’ll Be Here Shortly”

“Oh, you think so?” Execute, a man made of some red-black metal responded. Behind him lay the fruits of his labor, a defaced door with a lock transformed into nanite material and sloughed off onto the ground. “Well, good! Sorry for the lock again, I didn’t know anyone was down here.”

“That- That- That Sounds Like A ‘You’ Problem.” The robot, (Or just a ‘Ro’, given that the vast majority of his body was missing), replied caustically as a rumbling could be felt from the ground. Stepping out of the staff room, Execute heard the automated system of the abandoned building announce an arrival. “Now arriving, The Dead Line.”

…

Charlie, after the train came to a complete stop, disembarked and allowed the Dead Line to return to wherever it is stored when she does not need it. She rushed towards the staff room, and, as soon as she was able to, put herself between the metal man and the door. He cut her off before she could speak, saying “I’m sorry, I was just curious and I didn’t know anyone was down here. I’ll- I’ll replace the lock.” Glancing at the door, a large chunk was fully melted off, leaving a pile of goop on the floor and a sizable hole in it.

She made to yell at the vandal, but it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t malice, but ignorance. “Hmph. You didn’t touch anything inside, did you?” 

“No, just the lock. Also wait, you’re the owner of this place?”

‘Owner? That doesn’t feel quite right.’ “My name is Charlie. Conductor of the Dead Line and current caretaker of the Underway. I would ask that you do not do that ever again.” He nodded sheepishly at that. 

“Regardless, why have you come to Underway Central? I’m afraid the building isn’t exactly in full operation yet.”

“I was just curious about the building that popped up out of nowhere. You built it?” He gestured at her with a hand she noticed had a silvery sheen, but not one she could put a name to. 

“I did not. I resurfaced it and have been in the process of renovation since. And now… I will need to replace that door.”

“Again, real sorry about that. I was just curious about the tunnels, you know? Like, the distance between here and the Neo-Genis hub, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh that’s easy. ‘As many paths as our passengers walk down, as many rails we lie down in turn’” Charlie recited, “The Underway follows the paths that people walk. That’s how it works.”

“I… really? That doesn’t make any… could I see a map, maybe?”

Charlie didn’t like thinking ill of people, but a question sparked to her lips at the thought of the destroyed lock and her precious maps. “Do you intend on enforcing your curiosity on everyone you meet?”

He was taken aback at that, and Charlie breathed in and out in a sigh. “Regardless, if you are insistent on exploring the Underway, I feel obligated to at least warn you to be wary if you hear the sound of… chains…” She looked up and over the man, beginning to tremble at the sight before her. It was translucent and spectral, but the Conductor was right before her, pointing one of their guns right at the back of Execute’s head.

“FLEE!” She squeaked as she shoved her way into the staff room and slammed the door shut. Vignelli didn’t make a witty response, seeing the gravity of the situation as Charlie curled up behind the door to block it from opening.

There was the sound of a one-sided conversation, then the piercing CRACK of a gunshot which Charlie stifled a yelp at before a voice resonated through her very being, piercing the barrier of the weathered door. “Intruders are not welcome in my underground.” 

There was the sound of running and complaining, then a cacophonous chorus of gunshots and a snuffed-out yell. Charlie very carefully stood up, and… mustering all the courage she could possibly hold, gently pushed open the door to peek out.

There they were. Two long-barrelled revolvers in place of hands, a long flowing coat in absolute ruin, and a single piercing green eye. They retrieved one of its revolvers from a portal- no, a gap in space. Six bullets appeared over the chamber, dropping into the firearm as it clicked back into place. Her intent to run away was locked in place as she stared back into their eye.

‘That gap. They’re… like me?’

She stared back at it, shaking in fear as they slowly raised the newly-reloaded revolver towards her… but they didn’t fire it. They seemed almost confused by her. Before they came to their conclusion on whether to kill her or not, their head jerked to the side, staring down the tunnel to the player hub tunnels, and it floated back to the station. The automated station called out as an immeasurably loud rumbling occurred. “Now arriving…”

The nameless train screamed into view. Easier compared to a hunk of iron than a vehicle of passenger transit as it spewed acid-green flames from its grill. The conductor floated on board, and the nameless train sped away.

Charlie stood there frozen with terror, confusion, and realization for however many minutes, she couldn’t count.

When the spell broke, she ran, making for the stairs to the surface, past a slowly dissolving metal body and an uncountable number of gunshots on the walls around it. As soon as she reached the surface she continued running before falling to her knees in the open plain away from Underway Central. Curling up on herself, Charlie clumsily dug out her phone from her pockets and dialed the only number she had in it that wasn’t Vignelli.

As soon as she heard the click of the call being answered, she asked her question. “How do you cry?”

There was a moment of silence, before Maze’s kind voice came through the phone. "You have to feel something that makes that pressure you give off deep inside of you, it's something that can be sad, like losing something you care about, or it can be happy, like seeing something you always wanted come true. Crying is just something that happens to some people when those events happen, not everyone cries, but you'll feel that sensation inside of you even if you can't make tears, Charlie."

She listened, closing her eyes and grounding herself to the chipmunk’s voice. She remained in silence for a minute, before responding “...thank you.”

“I… I learned about something scary today.”

“I’ll be there soon.”

Charlie waited quietly when he hung up, and curled her head into her legs again. Maze would know where to find her.

I've been feeling fuzzy for the last few days. Sometimes it's hard to move my fingers, but today has been a good day, so I'm a little better.

I've stayed in the clinic that Maze brought me to for the first few days after the thing happened, and I come back whenever things make it hard to move. It's a good thing I don't need to use my hands to pilot my train anymore, so I can just sit at the conductor's compartment and make the controls move whenever it starts getting hard to move. I can still be punctual. Punctual…

“You must maintain your routes, be sure to stay on time and punctual to ensure customer satisfaction.”

That is one of the rules of the Underground Conductor's Manual. The book that Mr. Serge gave me, the one that burned me, and the one that called the conductor…

I felt their presence reaching out to me, and I tried to reach out back. I wanted to talk to them, but thanks to Elora I now understand that the conductor wasn't ready to talk themselves. Maze’s friends were able to contain the problem after I passed out, I think. I don't really know what happened after that, all I knew is that I was trying to offer the conductor a Rest Stop, and the manual started burning. Mr. Serge took it away from me while I was trying to offer my healing ability to the conductor through the strange rift, to convince them that I wasn't trying to fight them, but the book burning somehow burned them too.

I've made a decision. The Conductor isn't ready to speak to me, but we will need to learn to coexist. They're so embittered at their creators who abandoned them, but guess what? My creators abandoned me too! They abandoned us both.

The Conductor despises those who abandoned us and considers the passengers as such, but according to Elora our passengers were never given the chance to meet us and our creators do not speak to us at all.

The Underground may have been their creation, but the Underway will be min~\_/~\

…

Sorry. My hand stopped working halfway through that. It took me an hour to get it working again. As I was saying, the Underground may have been their creation, but the Underway will be mine.

And, unlike the Conductor, I won't need our creators’ permission to run the Underway. It is my intention to open up every last one of the tunnels from Underway Central. The conductor is correct in regards to a few unfortunate truths. Our creators buried the Underground after it was made, they never gave us a proper route, and they never gave us passengers. I intend to fix these.

I will give the Underway real passengers one day, I will connect the world together, I will make this place one that anyone can marvel at, and I will open it up to everyone in the world willing to respect the trains and respect each other.

For now, though, I'm going to stay in the clinic bed for the rest of today. I think I forgot how to use my legs, which kinda sucks.

Rules of Being a Conductor:

5 - There must always be at least one conductor on duty to ensure operations run smoothly.

My name is Charlie, and I am a conductor. My duty is to bring my passengers to their destination over the tracks. The railways can be confusing to those unused to them, so I am here to escort them properly.

4 - Your train is like your soul, take care of it and it will take care of you.

I also know that I am not human. The body I have is one that was left behind by someone else. I don't know why I'm in it now, and I don't remember ever not being in it. My train is a part of me, and sometimes it feels like most of me.

3 - The railway is your home, maintain it as such and defend it.

I made my maiden voyage from the inside of the Underground, hidden underneath all of the people. It's dark in the tunnels, and I know that I like the feeling of sunlight. But I also know that I was made for those tunnels.

2 - You must maintain your routes, be sure to stay on time and punctual to ensure passenger satisfaction.

I used to walk aimlessly back and forth through the Underground or pilot the Dead Line as I went, but the only people who came to visit would flee from me. There were no routes for me to follow. It's lonely down there, but I can't leave the tunnels behind. I was made for them.

…

No. That's wrong.

1 - You will ensure the safety of your passengers, making sure they reach their destination unharmed.

I was not made for the tunnels because the tunnels don't need anyone. I can't say that with confidence because I don't know the ones who made me, but I can say that the tunnels themselves are not my purpose.

The Underway, the Underground, and even the Dead Line… They, alone, don't matter. On their own they are lifeless. Timeless. They don’t need protection because they cannot die because they have never lived.

The duty of a conductor is to her passengers. No less.

New Rules of Being a Conductor:

1 - You will ensure the safety of your passengers, making sure they reach their destination unharmed.

2 - You must maintain your routes, be sure to stay on time and punctual to ensure passenger satisfaction. You will shape the routes to fit the needs of the passengers. There is always a path that will smoothly carry all of your passengers to their destinations, regardless of how disparate those destinations are, if you just think outside the box.

3 - The railway is your home, maintain it as such and defend it. The railway is a beloved and wonderful institution. Perform proper maintenance on it so that its purpose may be properly served.

4 - Your train is like your soul, take care of it and it will take care of you. Your train is your soul, and nobody wants to experience a corrupted train. Proper maintenance must be performed on both your train and yourself to ensure that your passengers can trust you enough to transport them.

5 - There must always be at least one conductor on duty to ensure operations run smoothly. There will always be at least one conductor on duty to ensure operations run smoothly, as the duty of a conductor isn't simply to drive a train.

The duty of a conductor is to guide your passengers safely to their destinations. Guide others whenever you can, and let yourself be guided in turn when you cannot.

Signed,

The Last Conductor of the Underground,
The First Conductor of the Underway,
The Conductor of the Dead Line,

Charlie