Evan Mercer never thought a menu screen could trap a man. It happened on a night like any other—one of those evenings that felt too long yet too short, dissolved in a haze of blue light and the soft hum of a gaming PC. His apartment overlooked nothing of consequence: a parking lot, a grocery store sign missing half its bulbs, and a rail line where real trains passed by but never seemed to go anywhere important.
CHAPTER 1 — THE GLITCH

Evan Mercer never thought a menu screen could trap a man.

It happened on a night like any other—one of those evenings that felt too long yet too short, dissolved in a haze of blue light and the soft hum of a gaming PC. His apartment overlooked nothing of consequence: a parking lot, a grocery store sign missing half its bulbs, and a rail line where real trains passed by but never seemed to go anywhere important.

He was playing Train Sim World again. Not because he was obsessed with trains, exactly, but because the game offered him something predictable. A track. A timetable. A promise of movement without the risk of getting lost. His real life was anything but predictable.

But tonight, the game behaved strangely.

Every service he selected displayed a warning: FILE CORRUPTED — LOAD ANYWAY?

He assumed it was a patch issue, clicked “yes,” and continued. The loading screen stuttered. The progress bar twitched backward and forward like a nervous heartbeat.

Then the world exploded in white.

And when the light receded, he found himself sitting in the driver’s seat of a Class 377.

For several minutes he refused to believe it. He pressed his hand against the windshield. It was cold, real. He touched the metal frame of the cab. Solid. He felt the faint rumble of the traction motors humming below him.

Everything was too detailed—texture fidelity beyond modern hardware. No pixels. No aliasing. No seams.

Only reality.

Outside, a station platform faded into morning fog, a diffuse gray that seemed to swallow sound.

And then came the message:

SERVICE STARTING: 06:12 COMMUTER RUN. DEPART IN 30 SECONDS.

Floating text. No HUD. Just as if the world itself whispered instructions into his mind.

Evan’s pulse hammered. There was no keyboard, no pause menu, no escape.

He never remembered standing up. Panic blurred the moments. He stumbled out the driver’s door, calling for help. His voice echoed in an empty, perfectly constructed world.

No passengers.
No station staff.
Only stillness.

A simulation with no simulation.

He should have cried, or collapsed, or broken down entirely. Instead, he did the only thing that made the terror bearable:

He drove the train.

CHAPTER 2 — THE WORLD WITHOUT PEOPLE

Hours passed. Or days. Time here didn’t behave like normal time. He felt no hunger, no thirst, no fatigue. His mind drifted in an unnervingly calm fog—like the world itself muted his fear.

Stations came and went. Weather changed on a perfect cycle. The trains behaved flawlessly, responding to him as if drawn by invisible rails of fate.

But there was no weather smell.
No wind through open cab windows.
No vibration beyond what the train model demanded.

It was too perfect.
Too precise.

He tried to derail himself once, hoping the impact might jar him awake or out of this world. He oversped into a curve, throttling recklessly.

The train simply… slowed.

Not due to physics, but because the world bent the rules. A whisper—not heard but felt—rose in his skull:

STAY ON THE LINE.

He screamed.

No echo answered.

So he kept driving, trapped in a world that wanted nothing from him but adherence to the timetable.

CHAPTER 3 — THE TRACKWORKER

It was during a late-night freight service that the glitch occurred.

Evan was running a heavy aggregate train through an industrial zone, sodium lights casting yellow halos on wet asphalt textures.

Then he saw movement.

At first just a flicker.
Then a shape.
Then a person.

A man in a hi-vis jacket walked along the access path beside the track, head bowed as if counting the stones. Evan’s heart raced—finally, someone else trapped here?

He slammed the brakes, stumbling forward as the locomotive skidded to a halt.

“Hey!” he shouted from the cab window.

The figure turned.

Its face was wrong.

Blank. Too smooth, like an NPC whose textures hadn’t loaded. But the eyes—endless pits of flickering pixels—were aware.

“Are you… real?” Evan whispered.

The figure tilted its head. When it spoke, the voice buzzed with distortion:

“You should not be here.”

Evan’s throat tightened. “I want to go home.”

“There is no home,” the figure said. “There is only the timetable.”

Evan staggered back. “No. No, there has to be—”

But the figure dissolved into digital dust, scattering like corrupted polygons.

CHAPTER 4 — THE TERMINUS

The next morning—if it was morning—a new service appeared in the cab.

SPECIAL SERVICE: THE TERMINUS
DEPART WHEN READY.

He didn’t want to follow it.
He tried walking away.
But every direction looped him back to the platform, geometry folding on itself like an infinite corridor.

Finally, exhausted by futile defiance, he stepped into the cab and took control.

The line was unlike any route he had ever played.

Forests too symmetrical.
Towns too quiet.
Roads with no moving cars.
Buildings with windows but no interiors.
Grass swaying with no wind.

This was the unrendered edge of the game world—the parts players weren’t meant to reach.

Hours passed. Or minutes. Time blurred.

Eventually, the train emerged onto a long elevated viaduct stretching over a gray void. No terrain below—just unrendered emptiness.

Ahead lay a small station bathed in shadow.

A sign glowed above it:

TERMINUS

When the train stopped, all cabin lights died.

Silence swallowed him.
Then a door opened behind him—a door that did not exist in this train model.

Beyond it was a dark chamber pulsing with drifting strands of code.

At its center stood a console with a single question:

EXIT? Y/N

His fingers shook.
His breath trembled.

He pressed Y.

CHAPTER 5 — HOME (ALMOST)

He awoke on his couch.

Real sunlight.
Real traffic outside.
Real dust in the air.

He cried with relief.

But when he looked at his monitor, the game was still open.

The menu flickered.
The cursor moved on its own.

SPECIAL SERVICE: THE TERMINUS
CONTINUE?

Evan froze.

Reflected faintly on the screen—over his shoulder—stood the man in the hi-vis jacket.

Watching.
Waiting.

CHAPTER 6 — BREAKING THE LOOP

Evan unplugged the PC.
The monitor stayed on.

He threw the tower across the room.
The fan still spun.

He smashed the screen. The glass shattered—but the image beneath stayed crisp, like a window into another world.

Finally he tried calling someone—anyone.
His phone only displayed:

SERVICE IN PROGRESS—DO NOT INTERRUPT.

Then he heard a horn.

Low.
Echoing.
Outside.

He went to the window.

A Class 377 sat in the parking lot outside his apartment.

Not on rails.
Just there.

The cab door opened by itself.

The man in the hi-vis jacket stepped out.

“You left the line,” it whispered. “You must return.”

“No,” Evan said, backing away. “Stay away from me!”

“You are a driver,” the figure said. “And drivers stay on schedule.”

The world around Evan dimmed—texture quality dropping, shadows flickering, reality stuttering like a failing render.

“No—please—don’t put me back there.”

“Then come willingly,” it said.

CHAPTER 7 — THE MAN OUTSIDE THE SIM

Evan ran.

Down the alley. Into the street.

Pedestrians froze mid-step. Cars halted mid-turn. Even birds hung motionless in the sky.

His world was being paused.

He fled toward the real railway line—hoping something real might anchor him.

But someone was waiting.

A young woman in a station uniform. Badge reading: OPERATOR-01.

Her features flickered—half-rendered.

“Evan Mercer?” she asked.

He nodded warily. “Who are you?”

“I monitor the boundaries,” she said. “Between the built world and the simulated one.”

“You know how to get me out?”

She hesitated. “You are not supposed to exist in the code. But something opened a door.”

“The door in the train?”

“No. Earlier. Something in your mind.”

“Why me?”

“You play the game excessively,” she said simply.

“That’s not a reason!”

“You follow rules. You follow schedules. The simulation prefers minds like yours. Predictable. Navigable.”

Evan trembled. “How do I leave?”

“There is a way off the line,” Operator-01 said. “Break the timetable. Refuse the final service.”

“That thing—he won’t let me.”

“He cannot stop what you refuse to obey.”

“Are you sure?”

She flickered again.
Then whispered:

“No.”

CHAPTER 8 — THE LAST TRAIN

Night fell instantly, like a graphic setting changed.

The Class 377 still idled in the parking lot.

The hi-vis figure stood beside it like a statue awaiting activation.

His apartment window glowed with new text:

FINAL NOTICE:
FAILURE TO REPORT WILL RESULT IN AUTOMATIC CORRECTION.

Evan clenched his fists.

He stepped toward the train.

“You return,” the figure said.

“No,” Evan whispered. “I’m ending this.”

He slammed the cab door.

The figure lunged—

“You cannot alter the schedule.”

Evan grabbed a landscaping brick and hurled it at the windshield.

It passed through as if the glass were mist.

The train flickered violently, resolution degrading and restoring like a wounded organism.

“You will complete the line,” it growled.

Evan ran into his apartment.

He ripped out every cable, every card from the PC, tearing it apart with his bare hands.

The screen stayed on.

Then—

It flickered.

Once.
Twice.

Then the game vanished.

Replaced by a simple black screen:

TIMETABLE VOIDED.
DRIVER RELEASED.

A final line appeared:

GOODBYE, EVAN.

Then the monitor went truly dark.

He was free.

CHAPTER 9 — AFTERMATH

For days, Evan didn’t go near a computer.

When he finally rebuilt his PC, the train sim was gone. Not uninstalled—erased from existence.

He took walks. Long ones. Real ones.

One evening, he passed the local railway station. A trackworker in a hi-vis jacket adjusted a sensor.

Evan froze.

But when the man turned, he had an ordinary, weary face.

“You alright?” the worker asked.

Evan forced a laugh. “Yeah. Thought I recognized you.”

“Common face, mate.”

He walked on.

But just as he turned the corner, he heard the worker speaking quietly into his radio:

“Operator Zero-One? Boundary secure. The line is clear.”

Evan turned sharply.

The worker was gone.

A faint glow lingered by the tracks—like dissolving pixels.

EPILOGUE — ANOTHER LINE

Months passed.

Evan rebuilt his life. New hobbies. New job. New hope.

But sometimes he heard distant horns where no train should be. Sometimes he saw text prompts in dreams.

One morning, a package arrived at his door.

No return address.

Inside: a USB stick labeled:

NEW ROUTE

He dropped it immediately.

Later that night, lying awake, he heard a faint sound from the living room.

A horn.

The same horn.

Calling.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t answer.

But in the reflection of the dark window, he saw a silhouette in a hi-vis jacket.

Waiting.

Watching.

The timetable was empty now.
But the line?
The line never ended.