Marcus Feldman had driven the late-night commuter train for nearly twelve years. The route was predictable, quiet, and usually uneventful after midnight. Most nights, the same half-dozen passengers rode the final line out of the city.
But one detail began to bother him.
Seat 14C was always reserved.
Every night, when Marcus checked the digital manifest before departure, the system showed the same thing: Seat 14C — occupied. Yet no one ever sat there. The seat remained empty from the first stop to the last, untouched and unclaimed.
At first, Marcus assumed it was a software error. He reported it once, then again. Each time, the system was “fixed.” And each time, the reservation returned the following night.
Always 14C.
Always after 11:40 p.m.
Always unoccupied.
One night, curiosity got the better of him. During a scheduled pause at a terminal, Marcus walked back through the cars to inspect the seat himself. The cushion was cold. No bags. No signs of recent use. But tucked into the seat pocket was something new.
A handwritten slip of paper.
It wasn’t a ticket. It wasn’t a receipt. It was a note, folded neatly and dated that very night.
It read:
“If you’re reading this, the system is still running.”
Marcus felt a knot form in his stomach.
The next day, he requested access to archived route logs — records that tracked system reservations and overrides. Buried deep in the data, he found something unsettling. Seat 14C had been auto-reserved every night for more than twenty years, long before the current reservation software was even introduced.
The designation came from a legacy system tied to a discontinued pilot program.
Further digging revealed the truth.
In the late 1990s, the transit authority had quietly tested an early automated passenger-tracking system designed to predict ridership patterns. The system assigned “ghost reservations” to simulate demand, allowing engineers to study behavior without live subjects.
When the program was shut down, most of the code was removed.
Most — but not all.
Seat 14C had been left behind, hard-coded into a subsystem no one remembered to deactivate. Every night, it reserved itself, logged its presence, and updated internal records as if someone were sitting there.
The handwritten notes Marcus found were added later.
An internal auditor, assigned years ago to investigate unexplained discrepancies, had discovered the anomaly and begun leaving messages to confirm the system was still active. When he retired, no one followed up.
Transit officials were alarmed by the discovery. The system was immediately shut down, and the phantom reservation finally disappeared.
Marcus still drives the route, but he says the train feels different now.
Seat 14C is empty — truly empty — and for the first time in years, the manifest finally matches reality.