Fare Card, Dave?

How May We Help You? Originally uploaded by Samer Farha.

More DCist love for Samer.

When we saw this, we were immediately struck by how this image evoked HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey," even down to the colors and brightness. Amazing. But we were not alone -- a previous commenter on this picture at flickr made the same observation, first.

This is a great example of how the eye and brain of a true photographer work. Here is something that tens of thousands of people see every day, but this capture seems unique -- special.

On the other hand, maybe nobody has taken this before because there is never nobody in the shot. There is always some poor soul struggling to get one of these machines to do what it is told, fighting to prevail.

Hmmm ... perhaps they are HAL.

A view of HAL 9000's Brain Room in the Discovery.