This Friday I was coming back from Tehran on a train. This train was one I haven’t traveled by before (see, it only runs around 6 AM, and I honestly didn’t know that particular time existed before!)
Anyway, since this was a fast train, the cars didn’t have compartments and there were seats instead of beds.
The most amusing feature of this train, aside having no power outlet to keep Rincewind and Fenchurch (my portable music player, which I had forgotten to fully charge) running, were the inter-car doors. These doors were sliding doors with a button to open and close then. You wouldn’t believe how cool these were. After one pressed the button, the door would open rapidly and with a hiss. The movement speed, the acceleration at first and eventual slow-down, the hisss sound it made upon opening and closure… it was perfect. Made you feel you were in a sci-fi universe. Not like those stupid photo-sensor doors that have none of these features.
I had not slept for about 24 hours before I boarded this train, and I couldn’t sleep on-board for an unknown reason. Here I was sitting less than two meters away from this cool door, and I just watch it open and close, open and close, in an almost complete trance. I think the people sitting around me all thought I was high or something, with my staring at the door and my stupid grin and my not noticing anything that went on about.
Oh, in case you were wondering, the title refers to the doors that Sirius Cybernetics Corporation made for the starship Heart of Gold. If you don’t know what that is off the bat, get your mind in a gutter and go read the most important work of literature of all times: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
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