Journey to another world in the subway

Chapter 85 Newcomer
At the Metropolitan Station, every shadow will eventually be wiped out in the relentless light of fluorescent lamps.

Su Mengfan stopped his thinking and looked happily at the Bolovite Station, which was still in surprisingly good condition.

There is no obvious smoke on the white marble walls or ceiling, and the entire subway station is very clean and tidy.

At the end of the subway station, a female worker in light blue overalls stood on the burnt copper plate, diligently scraping and cleaning the bas-relief with a sponge.

The hotel was arranged at the arch.There are only two arches open as a passage for guests to enter, the rest are bricked on both sides and have been turned into real apartments.

Each archway has a doorway, and a few even have wooden doors and glass windows.

From one of the arches came the sound of music.

Mats were placed in front of some doors so that people could wipe the dust off their feet when they entered.

This is the first time for Su Mengfan to feel... These dormitories look very comfortable and peaceful, and a scene from his childhood suddenly appeared in front of him.

But most astonishing, is the row of bookshelves that line the walls of the entire subway station.

The bookshelves occupy the space between the “apartments” and make the whole subway station look fantastic, but a little weird, which reminds Su Mengfan of the medieval times depicted in a book by Borges that he once read library.

The automatic elevator is located at the very end of the hall, where there is a passage leading to the Arbat station.

The pressure door is open, but there is a Cao Wei room in the passage.The guards then let everyone pass without stopping, without even checking their credentials.

Also, at the other end of the platform, next to the bronze relief, there is an actual barracks.

A tent was set up there, and it also had the same pattern as the tattoo on the temple of the frontier guard.There was also a big truck parked there,

Judging from the muzzle of a long-barreled gun protruding from one corner of Geb, the truck was full of unnamed weapons.

Next to the barracks are two soldiers in dark green uniforms, helmets and body armor standing guard.

The barracks completely surrounded the stairway leading to the upper track.

The flashing arrow showed that this was an "urban exit", and Su Mengfan also saw clearly the existing preventive facilities there.

The second stairway is also in the same place, completely blocked by a huge concrete wall.

A group of people in thick gray cloth robes sat around a solid wooden table in the middle of the subway station.

After slowly approaching them, Su Mengfan was surprised to find that they also had tattoos on their temples, but it was not a bird, but an open book with several vertical lines resembling a colonnade in the background.

Seeing Su Mengfan's focused gaze, one of the people sitting at the table asked with a friendly smile, "Are you a newcomer? First time here?"

Hearing the word "newcomer", Su Mengfan took a step back timidly, but still collected himself and nodded.

The man who asked him was not much older than he was, and when he stood up and shook his hand from the sleeve of his wide robe, he found that they were almost the same height.

It's just that this person's physique is stronger than his.

Su Mengfan's new friend is Kafei Schaeffer.

The new friend was not in a hurry to introduce himself, apparently he decided to have a chat with Su Mengfan, because he had a lot of questions about what happened at the Metropolitan Station, what's new on the Moscow Metro Line 5, and about the Fourth Reich and the Red Line. I am curious about the news and other issues...

They spend the next half hour in one of those "apartments" between the arches, in Schaeffer's cramped room,
Drinking the hot tea that must have been brought over from the All-Russian Exhibition Hall station after all the twists and turns, they talked on each other's knees.

In the room, there was a desk piled high with books, an overstuffed iron shelf as high as the ceiling, and a bed.

A dim light bulb hung from a wire in the ceiling, just enough to illuminate a painting, a masterly painting of a large ancient temple,

Su Mengfan didn't recognize it right away, it was the library standing somewhere in Metropolitan Station.

After the master finished asking questions, Su Mengfan was about to start asking.

"Why do people here have tattoos on their heads?" he asked.

"What, don't you know anything about caste?" Schaefer said in surprise. "Have you never heard of the Metropolitan Council?"

Su Mengfan suddenly remembered someone (no, how could he forget? It was the old man, Mikhail Porfilevich, the old man who was killed by the police)

once told him that the powers of Metropolitan Station were divided between soldiers and librarians,
Because in the past, the library building and some organizations related to the army used to exist there.

"I've heard of it!" He nodded. "The warriors and the librarians. So, you're a librarian, then?"

Schaefer gave him a hard look, turned pale, and started coughing.

After a while, he calmed down and said, "What do you mean by 'librarian'?
So excited to meet a librarian alive?

I can't accept you doing this.The librarian is sitting on it...you see our fortifications?
Heaven forbid they come down...don't confuse these things.

I'm not a librarian, I'm a guardian.We are all called Brahmins. "

"What does that strange name mean?" Su Mengfan asked, frowning.

This strange title reminded Su Mengfan of Saqi, who had been called Brahman by the commander when he was in the library.

And when he fled back to the subway station from the ground, the employee also said two strange names, Brahmin and Solomon.

Just now I heard Schaefer say that he is a Brahmin, so maybe he and Sachs know each other.

"You see, we have a hierarchy here. It's like ancient India.

A caste...is like an ethnic group...didn't the red thread explain it to you?
It doesn't matter.There is a caste of priests, a caste of guardians, who collect and manage books. ’ he explained,
But Su Mengfan was still surprised at how he deliberately avoided the word "librarian".

"There is also a caste of warriors who are in charge of defense and defense. This caste is very similar to that in India, which also has a merchant caste and a servant caste.

We all have them too.We also named them with Hindu names among us.

Priests are Brahmins, soldiers are Kshatriyas, merchants are Vaisyas, and servants are Sudras.

Once a person becomes a member of a caste, he remains a member of it for the rest of his life.

And there are special joining ceremonies, especially joining Kshatriyas and Brahmins.

In India, it's about the tribe, it's been like that for generations, but in our country, when you turn 18, you can choose whether you want to join or not.

There are more Brahmins in Bolovet Station, in fact, almost everyone is Brahmin.

Our schools, libraries, and cells are all here.

The conditions of the library were special because the red subway line had an interchange there, the library had to be protected, and there were many of us there before the war.

(End of this chapter)