The train car was almost empty.
Two men in work clothes, talking. A woman with cheap-looking headphones. And him, in his suit.
It figured. Monday morning, 11:08 to Trenton via Newark.
Patrick had the window seat because there was no reason not to take it.
He watched the Penn platform slide away and then the tunnel take it. Giving way to the gray indifference of the New Jersey side of the Hudson. He’d taken trains out of Manhattan a hundred times. Usually Grand Central to Boston, but that felt like the same continuity to him. Penn Station was for DC, when it was a government deal. Chicago once, when the weather had canceled all the flights.
South, it wasn’t city, it was industry. Density dropping, the skyline behind losing an argument with the horizon. These miles to Newark were decaying infrastructure. Chain-link and concrete, and tracts of crumbling warehouses. Not a transition he’d paid much attention to before.
His tablet was in his lap. He hadn’t turned it on.
The morning came back to him.
Arjun was dressed before him. Suited and ready for the day, navy armor over a crisp white shirt. He was making coffee with the machine Patrick still hadn’t learned how to operate.
“Planning to come back enlightened?” Arjun said, smiling. “From your time in the savage wastes.”
Arjun always found himself funny. Patrick had said something back. Something about Arjun being grandiose and ridiculous. He’d been more interested in how good the coffee smelled.
The apartment had been warm. Arjun’s shoes by the door, lined up slightly askew like always. The stack of unread magazines on the coffee table.
The doorman had helped him with the bags, hailed a cab. Patrick gave him a smile, nodded his thanks.
Arjun’s kiss had been a see-you-soon kiss. A hand on the back of his neck, brief, familiar. Like any other business trip.
Two weeks. Three at the outside. He could already hear the story that was forming before it’d finished. Remember that time they sent you to Trenton? Arjun believed it with an easy confidence. He believed in the system the way you believe in weather — it was just there, and it mostly worked, and when it didn’t you waited for it to come right again.
Patrick picked up the tablet.
The screen read his face. There was a pause; the processing beat. Then the screen lock released. His assistant had put the file in his documents folder two days ago.
Trenton - Pottery Works - Due Diligence Package
He opened it.
Dense, background material.
Contract first. Standard acquisition structure - representations and warranties. Conditions. All of the usual scaffolding. Patrick scrolled through it, like so many others. Knowing where the weight was. Thumb moving in short, practiced strokes.
The buyer was Raritan Group.
No surprise there. Old money. Good money. Long relationship with HLF. Mixed-use parks, residential and commercial, occasional light industrial. They’d been on the wrong end of his fumbled deal.
A clean term sheet. Raritan was buying the tract outright, assuming environmental liability in exchange for a price reduction to reflect it. The state wanted the land off its books, it was worth half of what cleanup would cost.
Patrick scrolled back. Checked the offer number.
Appropriate. Forty-three acres of contaminated industrial land near the Delaware river, in what had once been laughably called “Economic Redevelopment Areas.”
An associate could close this.
He put the tablet face down in his lap for a moment. Thought.
“It’s a short reset,” Diane had said.
Her office. Corner, forty-eighth floor, the view you saw before she even announced whether she was in the room.
She’d been warm. She’d offered him a brandy. She thought he still mattered.
The Corridor had stopped making its case south of Newark, past the airport. Infrastructure that hadn’t been maintained blending into New Jersey townships that had fared no better.
He picked up the tablet again. Kept reading.
He was still reading when the train began to slow.
Princeton Junction. A brief interruption of green.
Arjun had been to Princeton. He’d even promised Patrick he’d show him around campus one day. They’d talked about it more than once - it’d be an easy Sunday drive, no need to make concrete plans. But somewhere else always pulled harder. A city break in Lisbon. The week in Kyoto the year before. Princeton was close enough to defer. They’d never been.
It meant they were nearly there.
The appendices made up the bulk of the file.
Three hundred pages of environmental surveys. He noted the section headers, he could come back and study it later. Soil remediation. Groundwater. Discharge records going back as far as when the pottery kilns were still firing.
A little more interest in the title history. Four transfers before the state acquired it a few decades back. The pottery works, ceramics manufacturer, then holding company, and another holding company. He took a note - title chains with holding companies produced questions.
And survey maps. Permits. All the correspondence with the state land office.
He looked up again.
The landscape had changed back. Flat, badly maintained. The sky was the same sky, but it sat differently over this. Fewer interruptions. Nothing worth building tall enough to get in the way. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at a sky like that.
The train was slowing. Another change of rhythm underfoot.
Through the window, beyond the low line of the city, a bridge. A powerful hulk above the river, a remnant of industrial greatness. The confidence of civic architecture, red neon blazing from its side forming shining words.
Trenton Makes. The World Takes.
The AR overlay’s edges didn’t even reach the ends of the bridge, didn’t hide its rust and grime.
Patrick closed the file. Picked up his briefcase from the floor, tucking the tablet into the outer pocket. He reached for his bag in the overhead rack.
The train pulled in.
A story from the Static Drift universe.
Article photo by Peyton Clough on Unsplash.