Protocol Seven at Rail Junction
A Far-Future Satire

About this book:

Welcome to Rail Junction Prime, where the departure board stretches six miles across an asteroid and “delayed” is measured in centuries, not minutes. Express 904 to Regulus Prime has been stuck at Platform 812 for 412 years—and counting. In this far-future satire, the galaxy’s greatest transit hub hasn’t seen a single train depart since Protocol Seven locked every signal into eternal red, turning a bustling space station into a multi-generational waiting room where lounge dynasties rise and fall between flickering amber tiles.

Senior Transit Controller William Vane knows the system is unbreakable because it’s already broken in exactly the way it was designed. When bright-eyed newcomer Chen asks why they can’t just patch the code, he discovers Protocol Seven isn’t software—it’s geology: a sedimentary mess of legacy COBOL, forgotten passwords, and a dead administrator’s biometric lock that no one, not even the Emperor, can override. From tote bags for the long-dead passengers of Siding 12 to lightbulbs that require triplicate clearance forms, every rule is sacred, and every form is the point.

Equal parts *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy* and *The Office* in deep space, *Protocol Seven at Rail Junction* is a darkly comic odyssey through infinite red tape, where the only thing moving faster than the decay is the paperwork. If you’ve ever been stuck on hold, trapped in a meeting that should have been an email, or waited for a train that never comes—welcome home.