Mosse, 25 year old graphics designer,
Mosse was always drawn to aesthetics, art and beauty but grew up in a home where eccentric behavior and standing out was frowned upon. He once came home from Art class where he’d caked color on his nails and was promptly corrected by his mother that boys don’t do that.
Instead he looked at women with both envy and desire. He was particularly intimidated by those who embody visual expression and are able to act and play out the role in whatever they are wearing.
The body he grew into upset him, feeling it’s something that should be hidden and kept away. So he hid himself online where he can wear faces that’s not his own. It was so unfair that he wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t a male ‘job’ to be pretty, to make himself pretty would be to stand out and break a social contract he didn’t dare to break.
The break to his terminally online life is his dog ‘Luffsa’ who keeps Mosse to a routine. She barks when it’s time for a walk, and lets him know when it’s time for them both to sleep. Mosse would never deny her.
When he wakes up on The Station his form is elegant. He is first shocked by his new body when he wakes up, but unlike the others that are disturbed by their new shapes, he’s captivated by this new body.
“I’m so pretty, I’ve never been pretty”
Gabrielle, 55, cosmologist and professor.
Confident, capable and a bit of a rascal (if she feels like it) she’s actually made some pretty significant breakthroughs in her research. Once a dreamer, her breakthrough happened when she took an extreme position of the cosmos as utterly indifferent.
When she wakes up on the station a memory is soon brought back to her. This isn’t her first time here; she’s seen this train and the impossible night sky before. It’s what drove her to be a cosmologist in the first place. A “false memory” that humiliated her for many years early in her career, and made her the force she is today.
Maybe because of previous experience, being older and more grounded, she’s able to handle the awakening the best out of all the passengers.
Deeply, she wants to be witnessed. Not famous, not celebrated. She wants the cosmos to mean something specifically for her. Seen by something vast. She has spent her entire life pressing her face against the universe, sorting its data, filtering its signals, and the universe has never once looked back. She’s been the observer, never the observed.
Later, her social smoothness drops away and she forgets to perform. She starts saying things out loud she’d normally keep internal. She doesn’t notice. Then the group stops mattering. Not cruelly, she just can’t weigh Matt’s daughter against what’s in front of her. The tunnel closes in, and she’s the only one inside it.
Matt, 43, Public Radio Producer
Matt has always been quite charming with a bit of dry humor. His adult life was a long struggle to find purpose and, he worked himself to the bone trying to do or be something “important”.
A shift in mindset happened when he became a father and he began to define himself, not by validation, but by the relationships around him. He exists because his daughter, (Tilda, 2) can depend on him, he is there to love her, to bed her and to kiss her goodnight.
Matt’s midlife tranformation has given him confidence that being the cheerleader, a helper that lift people is the best way to be. He does this well in his home and career, for most part, but stress and anxiety can trigger sudden anger-outburst that he’s yet learn to control .
When waking up on the Station his objective is clear, He needs to get back. There is no choice here, just escapism. More than than disappearing from his loved ones and the grief it would inflict, he could never reckon with the state confusion his disappearance would cause. How could his loved ones ever trust again?
Matt will try to rally the group, while struggling the most with the unfamiliarity of the platforms. His stress and fear caught trouble for himself and others.
Ashvini “Ash” (Protagonist)
Being a wife was something she fell into as it fell in line with how she expected things to go. She’s followed the path of expectation, and fulfilled her duties of her role. But despite just turning 32, for the past year, she’s been feeling, so, very, old.
Her husband Andrew 45 is kind, spontaneous and makes her feel safe. They talked about leaving the city for a while. To be able to put proper nails into the walls or even tear one down. Andrew, who’s getting older, has been dreaming about finally becoming a father.
Is she being honest to herself planning a future getting a house? Is she telling the truth to her loved ones and herself? Or has she been lying for a while? Why does it feel like she’s only able to breathe when Andrew has fallen asleep?
If she decides to stay at The Station she has to admit that she has been lying to Andrew for a while. She will abandon him and cause tremendous harm to someone who’s done nothing wrong, and rob him of the life he’s been dreaming of.