Photo by Victoria Pickering

Ahead of the DC Streetcar’s launch earlier this year, the DC Department of Transportation released a goofy how-to video to prepare riders for the beleaguered transit system. And today, Jason Koebler has shared on Motherboard that the film has an alternate ending.

The premise of the original video is a love story, in which riding the X2 Metrorail an Uber Lyft a taxi a bike the streetcar is the only way for a D.C. man to meet a woman he met online. Totally stressing out, he calls someone for guidance, an adult friend who happens to wear her hair in a high side pony. Stretching a lifetime more than three minutes long, the video shows sequences of boxer-style training and flash card quizzing, as the man learns the rules of the Atlas District road.

The film wraps up in a tight bow when the trainee meets his online crush via streetcar, free of flubs, and they walk off into first date bliss. Viewers, subsequently, are left wondering why they sat through the entire video of their own free will.

But in an aforementioned twist, the agency also prepared an alternate-ending video (which switches the narrative around 3:40). A light bulb goes off, and the guy realizes that the trainer is his real love. He then ditches the online crush, and chases down the other with a dose of his newfound athleticism … but he just can’t keep up with the streetcar.

Koebler came across the alternative ending, along with other fun/distressing facts (like the fact the video was finished a year and a half before the streetcar), within 500 pages of FOIAed emails from DDOT.