At the Emmeryville train station security footage of terrorist bombings and human trafficking played on a loop.

The cars had been almost empty from Salt Lake City to Emmerryville.

From shithole Emmerville to Seattle the cars were 40% full.

In years past, most train passengers were vacationers. Now they are almost all displaced people who have never taken the train before.

A lone traveler used to be a person of interest on the trains among vacationers in 2018 and 2019. These days he is a leper to the pairs of passengers and families, relocating due to crime, economics, and as it turns out, even war. He is only consulted by the lonely and unemployed young men looking for handouts and a hand up. On this train, these fellows were busy chatting up three lone ladies, one a savage Semite from “Jersey” who flirted with the conductor rather than pull up her mask.

The Amtrak people were extremely friendly and helpful and he found never a word necessary other than “Thanks” along the entire 18 hours of the trip. While in the viewing car most conversation was about vaϲϲination, people's social credit score on display as they talked of booster schedules and such. Two Amtrak employees spoke during their break with great interest about the vaϲϲination deadline being moved back from November 1 to December 8.

The cast of near characters were:

-A big fat beard boy, daft of mind and weak of beard, in a white and denim striped poncho and flip-flops, hungry for conversation.

-A wealthy Chinese man of 50 and his shapely blonde darling of 40—ever with her book—who it seemed, could not keep their eyes off of the little old bald runt with the eye patch and Amish beard. Every time he moved they were both staring at him like a picture in a gallery. Once they stopped, stood and starred at him until he left his seat, and then took it. She had pleasing thighs and hips poured into flowery yoga pants and her master's rudeness was repaid with a stalled and head-tilting appraisal of the charms arrayed below her lowest chakra.

-The Amish men who waved to him, as if a long lost cousin.

-A Latino Ghetto pop psychologist from Fresno in canvas sneakers, fleeing gang life and advising a still involved gangster by phone.

-An elderly ghost couple on vacation, married 57 years.

-A bitch from Fairbanks Alaska embarrassed that her home town had a high Covid rate.

-The aforementioned savage Semite wench boarded with a cute, wan blond, all bound for Portland and insisted that the large man in orange hair, a brown sun dress, swede boots without socks and massive bitch-tits move so that she could sit down with her new darling. The man in drag, then said in a very gay voice, “Sorry, we're married by now.”

It turned out that the savage Semite was imposing a crooked friendship upon the blond elf-babe, having just met her an hour ago at the station, and now sought refuge at the once hairy breast of her assigned seat-mate. The freak and the elf babe were both Air Force brats it turned out, the elf babe “very liberal, politically, even for Portland,” and the freak “anarcho-communist” in sympathy.

It was the perfect little friendship, as the freak proclaimed that it was a “professional wrestler” and worked mostly “lesbian biker” events as far east as Chicago. They played chess, the elf-babe for the first time, and she crushed him, not even sure how the pieces worked. He noted that that was suspicious and she asked, “What did your parents do in the Airforce?” it answered, “Aircraft mechanics.”

It asked, “Your parents?” and she answered, “Computer programers,” and it groaned in forlorn submission to Cruel Fate.

-A light-skinned quadroon in yoga pants and a fantastic set of legs topped by the expected amplitude...

-A cute Latina with ling thick hair and big ass, who kicked her luggage along...

His two ears and one eye busy, he was surprised that it was not the conversation behind him that grabbed his ear, but an admonishment to his right.

A neck-tattooed gangster now running landscaping crews and moving with his daughter from San Diego to Portland, because he could not tolerate his “baby-mamma” bringing in a parade of Cholo boyfriends in front of his 4-year-old daughter, who was very sweet and said, “Pappa” a lot was wrangling also a small Asian child of two, and having got sick of it raised his voice, “Dad, your baby must stay with you. Don't let him run around the train!”

His daughter had been playing mamma to this baby who was in love with her and her father and could not get far enough away from its parents—who did not look Asian but seemed to be Peruvian or Pakistani.

Dad was 5,10” 185 and soft, with the side of his head shaved and the top foppish but short. He held the baby when it was not playing with or being fed by little Cholalita.

Mom was pretty, a 7, but with dark hate-filled eyes that brought her down to a 5 on the wake-up-next-to metric, would not allow the touch of Dad and shunned the baby as if it were a large, buzzing insect. Mom glared at the bald traveler with the eye patch with hate [as if he were the only American on he train] and Dad avoided his gaze at all costs and came rudely close, sitting next to him to speak with the gang refugee single father and not excusing himself. Mom and Dad a had a lot of passive aggression going on.

Dad apologized in a soft voice and a strange Latino accent—that sounded almost NewYorican—the conversation burglar could not place. The retired gangster, “Going to Oregon to start a new life,” gave food for the baby, said he didn't mind watching the baby because his daughter liked him, and offered baby milk as well, all of which Dad, very suave in mien, took advantage of. Cholo had just been worried that the baby would “fall down the stairs.” Dad should no such concern and never mentioned the baby other than to deflect questions about him. Cholo was proud of his daughter and his son, who was still with his mother and hoped they would grow to be as tall as their grandfather, who was 6' 7.”

When asked where he was from, Dad said, “San Diego.

When asked where he was headed he said, “Portland, maybe Canada.”

Straight gang man was also from San Diego and soon found out that Dad was hoping to see family residing in Canada. Dad did not include Mom and Baby in his list of family. It was a curious family indeed.

Dad asked straight gang guy, “What country are you from?”

“Oh, I', American, Californian. My father was Mexican-American and my mother was African-American—we're all mixed now, everybody is mixed. You don't see pure this and pure that no more...”

It then dawned on Cholo that this Dad was not American, and he asked, “Your country?”

Dad said, in a whisper, “Afghanistan,” and the Cholo said, “Oh, I'm sorry—how you all holdin' up?”

The man lowered his voice and the Cholo said, “Well, least you are no single father. You have your wife and you can be there for each other and the baby.”

The baby had no name. He was just “the baby,” to Cholo and his daughter and was addressed as “him” by Dad. Dad did venture that he had been in Texas for six weeks before being bussed to San Diego.

Advice on settling in Oregon was given along with prices of studio rentals. The Afghan now began to relax his phony Latino accent and sounded just like a Pakistani liquor store owner in Baltimore as he pumped the Cholo for information on the region. The Cholo was all positive and being the best man he could be and wished Dad “A good life,” as he and his daughter began to pack and Dad held the baby up on his left shoulder and the baby kept reaching for the one-eyed bald man seated behind him and pleading, “Poppa, poppa, poppa!”

The only person to pay direct attention to this baby other than the four-year old Cholaita was the elf-babe Air Force brat behind the hobo, who tried to console him, but all the indistinct Asian baby wanted was, “Poppa” and kept reaching for the old man that the Cholo and Dad both shunned like a world-drinking cosmic predator.

As soon as Cholo and Cholalita de-trained at Salem, Mom moved to an empty pair of seats one forward and across the aisle from the baby gear, Dad moved three seats up to where Cholo and Cholalita had been, and the baby was left suddenly asleep by itself in the aisle seat of the pair of seats the three had been traveling in.

He then pulled down his rucksack from the rack, replaced the canteen, noticed that Mom was glaring at him like he had personally slain her family, and that Dad was regarding his knife strung from his belt to his pocket and his industrial T-cane with a clinical eye and then began shifting those beady eyes of prey this way and that.

There he left them, the America engineered by his masters, as he de-trained at Union Station PDX, in a train station bustling with people for the first time since October 2019.