No one else in the room seemed to notice when the clock stopped ticking. But the departure board did. Every time flickered to the same word: DELAYED I looked around the station. People paced, checked their phones, sighed. Normal. Too normal. “Excuse me,” I asked a conductor. “What time is it?” He smiled politely. “Almost.” “Almost what?” “Exactly.” I stepped back. The clock above us showed no hands now—just a blank face. A train pulled in without a sound. No one boarded. No one noticed. Except me. The doors slid open. Inside, there were no seats. Just a long corridor stretching farther than the train should allow. At the far end, something glowed faintly—a screen, maybe. A map. Of course it was. I stepped inside. The doors closed behind me. The station vanished. The corridor shifted, folding in on itself. The glowing screen flickered, then shattered into static. “No, no—” I ran forward, but the distance stretched. The train lurched—not forward, not back, but elsewhere. And then everything went dark. A voice echoed, calm and distant: “Route unavailable.” I laughed, because what else was left? All things considered, losing the map was the least permanent consequence.