Staircase to heaven

Not long after dawn, an orange light shines on the end of the street. A group of five pigeons walk in circles around some puddles of water and, to the north, the dark clouds are heavily contrasted against the clear skies to the east and south. I am heading down towards the famous talking lifts of Caledonian Road.

This station is misleadingly named. Unusually, it does not deposit you at the start of the street it is named after but instead right in the middle of a waste land of bridges and faceless student housing. There is the now universal tiny Tescos unceremoniously competing with the local shop that is open later. For this privilege of universal access to milk, the locals pay an onerous toll.

There is a Chinese takeaway and a couple of coffee shops offering custard tarts with bitter espressos. To the left is the fascinating North Road which combines an ornate clock and new build with the prosaic ambience of an industrial estate. But it is to the speaking elevators of the underground station that people come.

There are two lifts inside the station and it is advisable to take them rather than the many steps. Caledonian Road is one of the few stations that has classical music piped into them all day (another is Turnpike Lane - also on the Piccadilly line). An automatic voice says which of the two lifts will arrive next.

Crucially, when it is the lift on the left that will arrive first, the voice says "the lift on the left shall be the next lift". When it is the lift on the right, it says "the lift on the right will be".

Shall and will. Who will still enforce these subtle predictors of mood? In the third person, "will" is a simple prediction about the future, but "shall" invokes an element of intention, and well, will. For the lift's mind to be split shall/will enables one to even be talking about the lift's mind and indeed implies a level of sentience on the speaking voice's part for there is one lift it/she has gained control of and one lift which has been lost control of or has never been controlled.

Come to the empty box of Caledonian Road underground station. It is good to alight or depart here. Listen to the speaking voice of the opening and closing doors. In years to come you may look back on this place as the place where the split mind of technology became manifest.