Everette flipped the shining coin into the air, and caught it once it came down. He tossed it up, and then he caught it. Toss, and then a catch. Toss. and then a catch. For the moments the silver object was suspended above his hand, he would make a bet to himself on which side it would land, and once it landed he would not look to find the victor but instead would just immediately toss it up again, repeating the bet. Immersed in thought, he considered the importance of these lost chances that he would never get back, moments that he could choose to haunt him forever that he would never actually know the truth to, and he wondered that if every lost opportunity was equal. If every true lost moment had the same worth, or if a passed happening has the same worth of others since they in a sense would be the same thing. Finally, he decided that him never being able to know the face of the coin was equal to, hypothetically, him never opening a lover’s letter or him never talking to a certain person. All of them had an equal number of infinite possibilities, the worth of pure possibility, and suddenly he could not help but look at the face, having flipped it over a hundred times no doubt. In his palm, a middle-aged man wearing a powder-wig suspended in time by a mirror prison gave him a sideways look, and Everette felt a release of tension as he solved the mystery.
Heads.
An abrupt sounding of a train whistle broke his concentration, and he looked around to see people by the hundreds have at some point swarmed around him, Everette being alone when he first arrived at the station. Fine he thought to himself, preferring to finish his thoughts, and he grabbed his suitcase as he boarded the train. The walkway was crowded with people bumping into one another, sadly Everette including, and dodging into any passenger car they could. The thought leaked over and suddenly crossed his mind that not jumping into a car would be a lost possibility, and he was overcome with the thought that all the cars were completely equal. He stressed at this, and wondered how he would ever decide. Suddenly, it occurred to him to use the object that drove him into this philosophical mess. He was to flip the quarter and when he finally won one of self-bets, he would immediately dive into that car. However, one after another flip, he would lose; he lost so much it became daunting to flip again. He was now officially starting to worry, and just when he was losing hope that his system was going to go without fault, a man bumped into him, knocking the coin into the churning sea of shuffling feet. Distraught, he decided that was the coin giving him his answer, and he dove into the nearest car.
Two women sat in this car, and he was surprised to see one wearing pants. The common progressive was nothing to blink at in America, but this had been the first he has seen while in English countryside. The second seemed a bit off, fearful of trains maybe, but even past that she seemed like the one to be reserved, so he decided to introduce himself to the dark-haired woman first.
“You got enough room in this car for an American?” he inquired, resuming the act of flipping his last American quarter dollar.