The windows still look out onto dark nothingness.

How's the orb doing?

It still hovers above its seat and glows magenta. It looks like it might be reasonably content?

It's a shame he can't contact Relay. Would be interesting to see if the orb has thoughts.

He sighs and gets back to playing games on his phone.

The phone continues to inexplicably fail to lose charge.

After about ten minutes he looks at the orb again.

If it hasn't moved or changed colors, he'll try saying, "Hi."

It pulses brighter, for a second.

"… Do you understand me?" he tries. "I don't understand you, but– uh, if you can change colors at will maybe go darker for 'yes'?"

It pulses brighter again, and turns yellow.

"… I'm taking that as a no," he says, sighing.

It pulses bright again, then returns to being magenta.

Unless the orb has anything else to convey, he returns to his phone.

The orb returns to impassively floating and glowing.

Games! Woo!

Checking outside intermittently to make sure it's still dark.

Same for checking if he can contact Relay.

Outside remains dark, and Relay remains un-contactable.

After another fifteen minutes, he tries communicating with the orb again.

He doubts it'll work, but maybe it understands some hand gestures? Like a wave?

It pulses brighter again, but does not change colors or move.

… Does it respond to a shrug?

It turns yellow again.

If he shrugs again?

It pulses brighter.

… He thinks he'll go back to his phone unless the orb continues to communicate, then, because it seems like trying to learn what the different pulses mean will take a lot of effort and he's not sure if the orb is even going to stay on the subway for particularly long.

The weird subway into the void that sort-of-probably abducted him from his home planet.

Ugh.

After about 15 minutes of this, by his phone's clock, tiny far-away pinpricks of light begin appearing amid the darkness through the window.

Okay, well, that's a thing.

He gets up to try to see some more detail.

Little dots of white light, very far away. They're scattered fairly evenly, but some seem to be closer than others. The car seems to be moving past them, some passing out of view at the edge of the window and some new ones coming into view every few seconds.