Season 1, Episode 5 - The Boxtops XVI - "Autumn Voyage"

All was quiet on the train ride to the border crossing. Far too quiet. Nobody on Team Red and company was in a particularly good mood after Babs’ verbal assault.

Isaac himself looked at his friends with concern, sitting silently in their seats.

Coleridge recovered, Alfie’s fine. They're not team members, but Piper and Oksana seem okay as well.

Isaac saw Audrey look through the train window, out into the distance. Babs made fun of her, too. I’ve never seen Audrey concerned about her academic abilities, at least. And if not, I think some fresh air and a candy bar or two will help her get over it.

That just left Reed. She sat next to Isaac, completely hunched over, her head against her lap, which covered her face.

I wonder if fresh air and candy bars would help her, too.

Isaac simmered in his seat, feeling the same way as Reed did when Babs called Audrey out. I don’t care if they make fun of me, but when it’s my friends...

But he caught himself. My brother says I can’t get too attached to the students here. But I wonder if he’d say the same if it was his friends looking so down.

Ms. Mogami sat along with them in their train car as well, having met up with them that morning at the train station when it was time to leave. Team Blue met in Calvin's Corner, and were all smiles compared to Team. The conversation on that platform was short; Isaac felt a little bad, since Team Blue most likely didn't know what Babs did. And it's not like they were going to tattle to Mackenzie on her like schoolchildren. They would have to settle things on the battlefield.

“It’s alright, you guys,” Ms. Mogami said gently. She reached into her pockets and held out candy bars for everyone. “Will this help?”

“Chocolate!” Audrey exclaimed. She grabbed a candy bar and with every bite, the smile returned to her face. “C’mon, Reed, chocolate’s good in situations like these!”

Reed mumbled something unpleasant, her voice muffled. Audrey grabbed another candy bar and maneuvered it in between Reed’s legs in order to reach her face. Audrey giggled when she heard the crunching sound of Reed taking a bite out of it.

As everyone ate candy, Ms. Mogami spoke. “Well, at least the smiles are returning. Did something happen?”

The members of Team Red looked at each other, unsure whether they should talk about it or not.

Mogami placed her hand over her heart. "As a licensed medical professor, I'm bound by the Hippocratic Oath to never indulge what's wrong with my patients to others."

Team Red and company looked at her blankly.

"It means anything you tell me won't leave this train car."

Seeing the warm smile on Mogami's face, the teammates ultimately relented.

“It was that jerk, Babs,” Coleridge complained. “She came by and made fun of everyone.”

“That’s no good,” Mogami said, keeping her voice sweet and gentle. “But it's not the end of the world. Did you guys at least stick up for each other?”

The members of Team Red looked at each other – even Reed tilted her head so she could see everyone – and they all nodded.

“Ah, that’s great, then!” Mogami exclaimed. “Nobody enjoys being made fun of. But as long as you guys stuck up for each other, then there’s a positive to take away from it!”

“Rely on others in a pinch,” Reed mumbled.

“Exactly!” Audrey agreed. “Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative! We all came closer as a team!”

That got an excited conversation going among Audrey and Coleridge, with a still-recovering Piper joining in, and even Alfie made a couple of comments as well. Isaac went to join, but he took one last look at Reed.

What did she say on the walkway that night? ‘I hate the Domino Sword, but I need it all the same.’

Reed noticed him looking at him. “It’s alright, Isaac,” she said softly. “Don’t worry about me. Go talk about positivity and negativity with the rest of the team. I just need a minute. I’m just tired.”

A brain sickness.

“...well, alright.”

Isaac turned his attention to the conversation, finding a good spot to join in, and the rest of the train ride ended before they knew it.

The elevated rail had taken them out of Tsukishima Station, past Kenji (Audrey pointing proudly at her own apartment through the window as the train rumbled near it), through another station or two until reaching the border crossing. Since they were Academy students, the mercenaries of the Pond Free Corps that now manned the border in place of the Army (Isaac heard that Dog Company, including Lieutenant Colombo and Privates Axelman Loper, would soon be relocated somewhere else in the country) waved them through without any trouble.

And once they were past the border guards, that meant they were in the wider world!

“Smell that air!” Audrey exclaimed as Team Red stood on the platform on the Russet-side of the border. Most of the city’s train stations were elevated, and Russet was no different; over the side of the chain-link walls of the platform, the students could see the rows and rows of residential houses that made up most of the district.

By the time they reached the crossing, a little bit of life had returned to Reed. She gave the air a sniff, then frowned. “Smells like piss. It always smells like piss.”

That didn’t deter Audrey. “That’s because you’re smelling with your nose, when you need to smell with your heart! Whenever I smell this smell, it means I’m in a city train! It means I’m going somewhere, whether it be to downtown, or back to Salem Slot, or even Palmer Beach!”

“It means your smelling piss,” Reed complained, resisting Audrey’s cheerfulness.

“You just don’t like me mentioning Palmer Beach, right?” Audrey joked. “What a shame, getting banned from the Chinese restaurants of an entire district!”

Isaac recalled an incident in late summer that involved Reed making vulgar hand motions at a waitress at the Highmoon Tavern of the Eight-Heaven Archway down in Palmer Beach who had wronged her, escalating a spat that ultimately concluded with an alleged ban from every Chinese restaurant in the district.

Reed crossed her arms. “Reports of me being banned are greatly exaggerated. I have no doubt they’re all just talk.”

The sharp sound of an incoming whistle interrupted their conversation. A train pulled into the station, its car models older than the ones found in Elizabeth Pond. Fortunately, in contrast with their experience the other morning, this car was empty, so nobody had any problems finding seats.

Reed sniffed the air inside the train car and frowned once again. Before she could complain, Isaac and Audrey had pressed their faces against the window of the train, taking in the sights of the city below them as the train whistle blew once again and the chugging noises picked up in intensity and the wheels got the train in motion again, chugging along over the city.

Russet was the nicest non-Rddhi district in Narragansett, located in a central location in the capital that gave it a border with Cambridge's Kendall Bridge, the Institute's Palmer Beach, and the Academy's Elizabeth Pond. Isaac and Audrey saw Brazilian model cars pass by on the streets below them, construction men hard at work, colorful apartments and even high schoolers practicing soccer on a football field.

The train kept rumbling along, going north into Russet before following the track westward, and the pleasant modernities of Russet gave way to the industrial realities of the district of Waban.

If Neponset and Fore River were tied for poorest districts of Narragansett, Waban was a close second. In contrast with Russet’s apartments, rows and rows of tenement houses stretched into the horizon, only broken up by large factories with unending streams of smoke pouring out of large chimneys into the sky above them. Thousands of workers headed to these factories every day, working on the mass production of products ranging from textiles to munitions (which is basically all New England made, for the most part).

From his economics class, Isaac sort of understood that while other countries managed to penetrate most sectors of New England’s economy, textiles was the one industry New England made sure stayed alive through government support and increasingly large tariffs. High-end luxury clothing did have a share of the New England market, but for the average person, their clothing came from New England. Isaac did feel proud about the “Made in New England” tag on his school uniform.

As for the munitions, they were part of New England’s Arsenal of Liberty for struggling militant groups in Central Africa and friendly regimes in the Americas. Isaac hoped they put them to good use.

And as for Waban itself, Isaac and Audrey spotted old Argentinian cars occasionally driving down the street, but the most common mode of transportation down there was horse-drawn carriages. The lone exceptions to these were the trucks driven by the Military Police units that governed the district, as they did in Neponset and Fore River (New England politics could get messy).

Before they exited the district, the two saw the burned-out remains of a munitions factory, one of the many recently firebombed by discontented workers. A nearby billboard advertising the factory escaped unscathed; it read REED FAMILY in big red letters with a long list of products the conglomerate offered listed below it: HEAVY INDUSTRIES, LIGHT INDUSTRIES, RAILROADS, TEXTILES, MINING, TELECOMMUNICATIONS, SHIPPING, AGRICULTURE – ALL FOR YOU, NEW ENGLAND!

Isaac glanced over at the short girl with the same name sitting half-asleep a few seats down and scratched his head.

I really gotta ask her again if she’s connected with the Reeds somehow. With all these recent signs, it seems so much more obvious now, but she denied it so strongly when I asked her for the first time.

And it’s not like I told her much about myself anyway. All she knows is I have a brother and came from Patuxet in the south. And all I know is that she has a brother and sister and came from Acushnet in the south. Acushnet is run by the Reeds, of course...not gonna overstep my boundaries or anything, but I really want to get to the bottom of this.

While Isaac reflected on his friend, the elevated rail departed the city, slowly coming back to ground level as it entered the countryside. The view of rows and rows of houses from above were replaced by a ground level view of columns and columns of trees, red and brown leaves stretching across the forest floor. Isaac didn’t know a whole lot about trees, but he did know some were oak trees and some were pines, pine needles joining the pile of autumn leaves on the ground.

Signs of civilization grew sparser. Well, the railroad itself and the telegram/telephone lines hoisted in the air alongside it provided an ever-present reminder of civilization, but the stations grew farther apart, the towns attached to them increasingly smaller. And as the towns grew smaller, the prominence of the factories within them increased as well.

When the train came to a stop in a mid-sized town, Isaac saw a billboard advertising it as the Footwear Capital of New England. Down the road, Isaac could see a huge factory belching smoke into the sky, the logo of Squanto Bank – Manufacturing Division giving its owner away. The factory probably employed everyone in the town.

But, in exchange, Squanto built the town a streetcar system and telephone lines, so maybe the trade-off wasn’t that bad.

Right?

The train chugged along through several similar towns until the students finally reached their destination – Cushing Station, which had the small town of Cushing attached to it as well. And, as he stepped off the train and saw the paper mills at the end of the town’s main road, he guessed that everybody here in this town of Cushing was employed by the Academy as well.

An unusual sound greeted Team Red as they reorganized themselves on the platform. Well, two sounds – first was the lack of sound. Compared to the hustle-and-bustle of the capital, the noises of cars and trains and people, you could hear a pin drop in Cushing. The remaning leaves on the trees of the nearby forests lightly rustled with the breeze; Isaac expected car noises, but all he heard were bird calls.

Isaac looked at his friends; Audrey closed her eyes to better take in the rare sound of silence. Reed fidgeted next to her.

“Don’t like the town?” Isaac asked her, an amused grin on his face.

“Too quiet,” Reed complained. “I’ve gotten used to background noise. I can’t concentrate with all the background noise, but I think this is even worse.”

“It’s not all that bad,” Isaac supposed, enjoying the quiet himself. “It reminds me of home in Patuxet. Maybe you just gotta get used to it again.”

“I hate the big city, but I guess coming here makes me miss it,” Reed admitted. Cushing consisted of one main street leading out of the station towards the paper mills on the other side of town; other than that, there were a few smaller roads heading outwards. The entire town was surrounded by a carefully cultivated forest that provided the wood for the paper mills.

Unfortunately, another noise soon greeted them – someone trying to convert them to something.

“My name’s Stennis,” a youth greeted Team Red just before they could leave the station platform. He was about their age with curly black hair, dressed in the clothes of laborer, a stack of pamphlets in his hands. “Did you notice the billboards as you travelled here on the train, detailing the consolidation of the New England economy into huge megacorporations?”

Isaac looked at his friends for help with the proselytizer. Those bastards!

Coleridge and even Alfie managed to slink away from Stennis, their hands in the pockets, whistling a merry tune as they helped Ms. Mogami with her medical equipment. Team Blue had departed their train car, but was still a ways away from Team Red. Audrey was interested in making new friends, so at least she was still there. Isaac subtly blocked Reed’s way before she could beat a hasty retreat, giving her a wry grin until she sighed in defeat and agreed to suffer together.

Reed held her hands up. “Ah, no, we don’t really care-”

“I did notice those billboards!” Audrey exclaimed.

Isaac and Reed wiped their faces.

Stennis smiled. “That’s great. Then you understand what’s wrong with our great nation. The country itself is the greatest in the world – it's just that we need to replace the people running it.”

Isaac immediately wanted to hightail it out of there. I was thought he was just a new wave religious guy, but I can’t be seen with someone wanting to overthrow the government!

Unfortunately, Reed blocked his way this time, subtly stepping in his path. Isaac’s worries increased when she saw the half-interested look in Reed’s eyes.

“Replace them?” she repeated.

Stennis handed her a pamphlet. Reed looked down at its title. “The Wonders of the Coming Age: The Glory of Centripetalism,” she read aloud. At that last word, the trio quickly glanced around the platform – that's not a word you should say out loud.

However, a spirited argument between Clayton and Ms. Mogami over which of their favorite superheroes would win in a fight (Minute Man versus Squirrelman, respectively) drew in the rest of Team Red and Team Blue, leaving the three to explore political ideology.

“Cen-tri-pet-al-ism,” Reed said again, sounding out each syllable. “Isn’t this illegal?”

“Of course it is,” Stennis admitted. He tapped the side of his head. “But think. Is it illegal because ‘it’ll lead the state to ruin’ or because it’s an ideology that could threaten our ruling government?”

Reed’s half-interested eyes changed to fully-interested eyes. Isaac sighed and looked to Audrey for help, but her attention was now fully devoted to a weird crack in the ground shaped like the letter R.

“Reed, this guy’s dangerous,” Isaac whispered.

Reed rolled her eyes. “I’m just fully exploring my horizons,” she muttered back.

Knowing there was no way to take her off this path, Isaac decided to keep watch while Reed read the pamphlet.