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A man’s disembodied voice announces overhead.
Attention. The bus will arrive shortly.
He never specifies which bus, or how soon. But the bus will arrive shortly, he assures you in a calm, confident tone.
We’ve been waiting at this bus terminal for over an hour. The bus was supposed to come an hour ago. Another one was supposed to be here forty minutes ago, and yet another twenty minutes ago. Whenever the bus failed to appear, the monitor simply updated itself and displayed the next arrival time. No explanation of what happened to the bus, if it was running late or if it was canceled. The only evidence for its supposed existence erased.
Each time we started walking to the other end of the terminal to check with the information counter, the voice would dissuade us.
Attention. The bus will arrive shortly.
We would then see bus after bus arriving at the terminal, pulling into their respective bay. We would quickly walk back to the waiting area, hoping the bus is finally here. But the bus never came.
Some people in this terminal look like they have been waiting for eternity. An old disheveled-looking man is sleeping on the bench without a care in the world. One of his shirt’s sleeves has been torn off. Another is sitting on the edge while leaning on the railing. He’s been staring at the road for hours. They might be vagrants. Or they might be lost souls like us who are trapped waiting in this Kafkaesque bus terminal.
But let’s wait a little bit more. Didn’t the man say that the bus will arrive shortly?