Kyle hated coming into the city. People everywhere, as far as the eye could see. The effect was supremely overwhelming.
The 3 train was chugging along slowly between Times Square and 72nd street, coming to a full stop every few seconds because of "train traffic ahead of us."
It was an important analysis today, some corporate espionage case he'd been hired to interview the staff about. Officially he was a solo practioner specializing in the psychology of lying. In reality, although accurate, his methods of analysis were a bit unconventional.
Sitting on the packed train Kyle busied himself with the statuses of his fellow commuters.
There was a woman across from him reading a tightly folded NY Times. She wore an expensive pencil skirt and silk blouse. Her hair was tightly cinched in a bun and she had a tight lipped look of professional consternation.
A talented examiner of human psychology could derive an entire psycho social profile based on the external features of this woman. Kyle's analysis went deeper.
With a thought Kyle maximized the the large status box hovering over the woman's head and began scrolling through its contents. Janet Keller, born 1989, ex-stock broker come banking executive. Her heart rate was elevated, and even at her young age she already had hypertension and IBS. Two siblings, one deceased from an overdose, parents divorced. Each name of each family member was hyperlinked. There was more information available in the advanced section, but Kyle tried not to pry there.
All around him, every strap hanger on the train sat or stood beneath a similar information box, visible only to Kyle. He had seen the boxes his entire life, slowly learned to use them to his advantage, and then to hide their existence from the rest of the world.
Of course, early on, he tried to tell his parents, and then his friends, but they just looked at him like he was crazy and became angry or frightened at what they perceived as Kyle's herculean effort to pry deeply into personal lives.
Now the secret remained his alone to bear. There were tricks to keep the information from overwhelming him. Minimizing the boxes saved some space and restricted the information shared to name and date of birth. But in the city, even that was a lot of visual information to deal with.
"We have a train ahead of us. We apologize for the inconvenience and will be moving shortly."
Kyle scanned across the sardine can of the train car, snooping just a little into the lives of some passengers. As his view swept left to right he caught sight of his own reflection in the darkened subway window. He looked, instinctually, for his own information box. As ever, nothing.
His gaze continued from person to person - young delivery boy, two teenagers making out, an old man eating a bagel, a middle aged security guard coming off the night shift. Each had a comprehensive box of information Kyle perused at his leisure.
As his sight reached the far end of the car, Kyle blinked, and then stood up quickly. With urgency he pushed his way through annoyed passengers toward the end of the car, until he arrived in a little clearing of people.
Against the wall of the train, on the floor, lay a heap of stinking rags loosely outlining a filthy human form. The other passengers were giving the homeless figure a wide berth, but Kyle stepped up right next to him and gawked.
There was nothing hanging over the prostrate figure. Even dead bodies had information boxes. In graduate school Kyle had interned at the city morgue in the hopes of finding a profession where the boxes didn't show up. The result was a bunch of macabre information hovering over corpses in varying stages of decomposition.
But this man had no box whatsoever. Kyle wasn't even sure it was a man. For the first time in over thirty five years, Kyle was simply guessing.
The train kicked into motion with a firm jerk. It caught Kyle completely off guard and he fell forward onto the object of his amazement. It would have been like a romantic hollywood introduction, if the romantic interest wore fetid rags and had the breath of a sentient sewage pipe.
"GetthefuckoffmetakewhateverthefuckyouwanttoIdon'tgiveafuck." The homeless man spoke in a liquid drawl, struggling pathetically under Kyle's weight. The man turned to face his assailant, and his eyes were puffy and red, his face haggard, his cheekbones sharp and covered with a sad mottling of dirty facial hair and grime.
"Leavemethefuckalon..." the homeless man stopped short, his stuporous eyes fixed on Kyle, filled with, what? Confusion, fascination? Kyle had no idea. "You. You don't." The homeless man sat up and blinked ferociously, trying to get his bearings. After a moment, he seemed to confirm something for himself, and leaned in to whisper in Kyle's ear.
Kyle felt the hot breath on his cheek, smelled the reek of alcohol and bile, but curiosity outweighed disgust.
"You have admin privileges too?" The homeless man asked.
Kyle had no idea what that meant. "Who are you?" He asked.
The homeless man fell into a reverie and seemed to be considering an answer when the train came to a stop at 72nd and a flood of commuters exited and then entered from the packed platform. One of them cursed at Kyle for being in the way and in the moment of distraction the homeless man shoved Kyle away from him and burst up and out of the car with unexpected speed.
Kyle recovered and jumped to his feet, himself racing out onto the station. When he was off the train he looked in both directions for the homeless man. Nothing at first, and then, at the far end of the station, Kyle saw him.
He was standing, a bundle of darkened rags and two piercing green eyes, looking back at Kyle frightfully. There was no box over the man's head. As Kyle started toward him, the homeless man jumped down into the train track on the opposite side of the platform and ran without hesitation headlong into the subway tunnel, disappearing into the darkness.
Kyle ran right up to the edge of the platform and peered into the dank, black cave. He was about to step down to make chase when a 3 train turned a blind curve in the tunnel, filling it with sound, and silhouetting the figure of the homeless man in it's blinding headlights. The train continued forward into the platform and the figure of the man disappeared beneath it.
Kyle stepped back from the edge of the platform, reeling from the sudden violence, as the train tore past him and screeched to a stop. The homeless man's comment repeated in Kyle's head over and over.
"You have admin privileges too?"
Kyle's legs went weak beneath him and he fell against a steel beam. His mind raced at a mile a minute.
Admin privileges?
Kyle needed to find out who that homeless man was. He took out his phone and dialed 911.
"911, what's your emergency."
Kyle struggled to find his voice in the mental chaos. Eventually he spoke. "I just witnessed a man get hit by a train at the 72nd street station. He jumped into the tracks and was hit by the train."
If the police took the body they would bring it to the morgue. Once it was there, Kyle had a couple of favors he could call in. He resolved to do whatever he needed to get some answers.
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