Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates.
Moby-Dick, Chapter 107: The Carpenter
Thigh to thigh and knee to knee, we sit in rattled silence through the litany of station names. Epsom. Stoneleigh. Parks Worcester, Motspur, and Raynes. Vauxhall. Even as we meet our Waterloo, no word is exchanged. From unknown origins to our shared terminal moment, we co-mute.
De-training is a single fluid motion. We move in step down the platform and through the barriers to scatter in all directions, following the mathematical lay-lines of concourse and timetable. The Benugo Cafe looms over us from its rusted iron canopy, promising a breakfast of cappuccino and croissant.
Above the fray, I am deified. A half-caff Hermes looking down from Olympus on the murmuration of mortals below. Through some quirk of the crowd I am momentarily alone with my coffee. Perhaps I am in fact Prometheus and can proclaim the dread secret of this mezzanine apotheosis to mankind. I take a breath as if to speak it aloud, when someone sits down next to me. I shut my mouth and brush croissant crumbs from my trousers.
'Co-mute'. Love that.