He ended the task. The process vanished.
Jason’s cursor hovered over the pause button. He didn’t press it.
From the speakers, so faint he thought he imagined it: the distorted voice again. This time, just one word.
He checked Task Manager. Nothing unusual. He ended the task
But the brakes were already red. The gauge said Emergency , but the train kept accelerating. The Pacific Surfliner, now a phantom projectile, tore past the signal at Miramar. The crossing gates—flat, cardboard-thin polygons—didn’t lower. They just vanished.
Jason sat in the dark of his room. The monitor glowed: Microsoft Train Simulator has encountered an error and needs to close. He tried to delete the PSurfliner_CPY folder. Windows said the file was in use by another program.
He loaded the 6:15 PM scenario, “Coast Starlight Connector,” but swapped in the cracked F59PHI. He throttled up past Fullerton, through the orange groves, past the fake 3D cows that never moved. At Laguna Niguel, the radio crackled—a sound that didn't exist in MSTS’s audio engine. He didn’t press it
A train on the parallel track. Not an Amtrak Surfliner. Not a Coaster commuter car. It was a steam locomotive—a massive, black 4-8-4 Northern, the kind never seen in Southern California. It was running backwards , its tender leading, its headlamp dark. And on the side of its cab, instead of a railroad logo, was a single word: .
Jason’s locomotive lurched. The throttle lever in the 3D cab moved on its own—notched from 3 to 5, then to 8. The train surged. Speedometer: 90 mph. The track limit for this section was 79.
He’d downloaded a “CPY” – a cracked, copied version of the Pacific Surfliner Expansion Pack from an abandoned forum, a relic of the mid-2000s internet. The file was called PSurfliner_CPY.rar . The readme was just a string of angry uppercase letters: "NO CD REQUIRED. NO ACTIVATION. I HATE DRM." He checked Task Manager
At MP 207.4, the flash came again. This time, it lasted two frames. The steam engine was closer. Its wheels were turning, but it made no sound. The lettering on its cab flickered: then CRACK then COPY then back to CPY .
At first, it seemed glorious. The F40PH locomotive loaded in under three seconds. The cabbage car’s textures—faded Amtrak red, white, and blue—rendered with a weird, oily sharpness. He could drive the Surfliner from San Luis Obispo to San Diego without ever inserting a disc.
But Jason wasn’t playing the original CD version anymore. Not since his disc got scratched.
Jason thought it was a corrupted shape file. He checked the forums. No one else reported it. He checked the original route documentation. No Easter egg. No ghost train.
Inside was a face made of low-resolution noise—jagged polygons, missing a mouth, but somehow still grinning. Its eyes were two tiny circles: and P and Y , repeating like a stuck key.