Let My Politics Ride Your Corpse

There have been many instances of breathtaking feats of human stupidity and very often the best response is to simply ignore them. After all, everyone has an opinion and everyone's opinion is wrong to someone. This would have been my response had we not recently reached such an unprecedented nadir in ignorance as to be actively insulting to the memory of the dead.

As of this writing Star Wars icon Carrie Fisher recently passed away due to a heart attack, tragically followed by her mother Debbie Reynolds who suffered a stroke. Two incredibly talented, famous women who were loved all across the world. Tributes and kind words from friends and fans flooded in and seemingly no one had a bad word to say about them.

Except apparently for actor Steve Martin...

His words on Twitter were thus “When I was a young man, Carrie Fisher she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She turned out to be witty and bright as well.” It turns out that this was not a complimentary tribute to a lost friend, fondly recalling their first meeting but a terrible and offensive sexist remark, implying Carrie Fisher was nothing more than a sex object.

Much like the time Faux-Feminists decided Dr Matt Taylor's choice of shirt was more important than the historic landing of a NASA probe on a comet in space, the professionally outraged seem to overlook the reaffirming outpouring of love and sympathy for the late Ms Fisher and instead become transfixed on painting a target onto someone and making the inevitable, faultless yet horrible spectre of death a personal political issue.

My question is this. Do you really believe that was Steve Martin's intention? Do you honestly think amidst all this positive sharing of grief he meant to suddenly interject with hateful or offensive remarks? Let's re-examine his actual wording because I can see where people have planted their implied sexist undertones even though it is cataclysmically moronic to do so.

“She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.” I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say they are not suggesting that calling a woman beautiful is sexist because if you think that you need professional mental help. Calling her a creature could be considered offensive. She's not a creature after all, she's a human...But what are humans? Well, mammals, animals and creatures.

How often are the words beautiful and creature put together in an offensive way? Is it not more likely he is expressing that her beauty surpassed mere human standards and was in fact more beautiful than all the living creations on the planet. Does that not seem like a kind sentiment someone might say about the recently deceased?

“She turned out to be witty and bright as well.” I imagine this is where people think the subliminal insult lies. What you seem to be reading is “I was surprised she turned out to be witty and bright as well.” implying it is rare for women to be intelligent and funny as well as attractive. Except he didn't say that, did he? He said “she turned out to be” which simply means taking place after the preceding statement.

When you first meet a person the first thing we judge them on is their appearance. That's human nature. It is difficult to ascertain someone's personality from sight alone. If you initiate a conversation you will likely learn a bit about their personality, perhaps that they are witty and bright for example. Unless you walk blindfolded into a room looking for hands to shake, learning of someone's personality always comes after seeing their appearance.

Do you genuinely believe that Steve Martin wasn't simply recounting a fond memory of their first meeting together? Are you so blind to normal human speech patterns and context clues that you think this was a sleazy sexist remark?

I expect a rebuttal to this might be that it is irrelevant whether Steve Martin intended to say something sexist but the fact it could be interpreted as such is worthy of outrage by itself. In the constantly shifting ocean of cultural standards, the outraged faux-feminists who pointed out Martin's mistake so enthusiastically that he deleted his message, are simply ensuring that the outdated belief of women's appearance being more important than their personality does not ever take root in some young impressionable mind who might happen upon this tweet.

The offended are the only ones giving this idea power. For an idea to hold any power to change perceptions or prejudices it must be believed. The idea that Gordon Ramsey is actually a sophisticated robot who lived on the sun and dispenses spinach and Soviet political manifestos at hourly intervals who is only here to secretly tickle penguins is an idea no one believes. This idea therefore has no power to change anything because it is obviously absurd.

Most people with half a brain can recognise the context of Steve Martin's comments, the history of his reactions and opinions and not believe that he intended any ill will or base objectifications. It is obvious he was merely paying tribute to a lost friend or admired colleague, as had many other celebrities. The only people who believe otherwise are the ones potentially afraid of an underlying sexist ideology taking hold in people's minds. No one else interpreted the message as such however so these people are entirely creating their own problem.

So if the professionally offended continue giving this idea power there is in fact a chance someone else impressionable will happen upon it and believe it. The idea is so baseless and devoid of logic however that it might be interpreted in any number of ways as I listed above. Perhaps that calling a woman beautiful is sexist or the phrase “turned out” is a hateful and offensive remark, upon which conversations like this might occur. 

“I spent three hours trying to find a parking space, turned out there was one right by the entrance.”

“You sexist pig.”

You probably think this is a ludicrous leap in logic but when there is no logic involved who can tell where absurdity might lead in further absurdity. People try to spark outrages like this increasingly often and usually with the same lack of evidence but to do so mere days after someone's premature death goes beyond annoying and self-righteous. You are actively hijacking someone's death in order to push a political agenda and even if you had a scrap of substance to back your claims that would still be a deeply shallow, selfish and disrespectful act.

If you truly care about someone's passing, celebrity or not, you would not speak on their behalf, you would not create further misery out of nothing amidst an already distressing event and you wouldn't justify it all by masquerading as a political progressive when in fact all you are is a vulture.

Chapter Nine: “Contents May Vary” 17. 12. 2016

The pattering of the rain against the metal roof of the train carriage was far less comforting now Darren knew it would gladly peel the skin from his face in an instant. Myriad loaded up a selection of history mods on her bridge and indulged Darren in any questions he might have, since they were stuck inside the carriage for the unforeseeable future.

The shockingly familiar branding of TESCO on his otherwise quite alien new drink was his first line of enquiry and the answers revealed that modern life was now entirely catered for by three major companies: Tesco, Google and Xygon. The first two being hugely expanded from a mere supermarket and search engine respectively and the third, more recent company, despite now being the world's leading tech giant started its business as a humble pizza takeaway.

After wrapping his head around the idea of “Tesco-Value Nurseries” and the “Google Military”. Darren realised he had been rudely holding his gifted drink like a slack-jawed monkey and decided to take a drink from the bottle. A decision, it became evident, he took far too casually as an almighty surge of frighteningly potent sensations rushed through his body.

He couldn't even take note of how the liquid tasted before he began shivering and mentally preparing to die. The new flood of feeling was not exactly painful however. After a few seconds it struck him as invigorating, bringing forth a wave of energy, clarity, motivation and pleasure within him, the likes of which he'd never experienced before.

He finally shook himself from the experience, unsure if his blurred vision was now due to the fading effects of his abductor's blinding device or his eyes had transcended dimension and he was now looking at himself from the outside.

“Woeughal...Buh, what the hell is in this?” Myriad was trying to conceal an amused smirk.

“I actually gave you one of the weaker flavours.” Darren scans the sparsely detailed label on the bottle.

“Is it alcoholic?”

“Pass it here.” Darren leans over and hands her the bottle, wobbling slightly and becoming increasingly concerned about what the beverage's ingredients have done to him. Myriad turns the bottle in her hand and pauses looking at a blank part of the label.

“This one's not alcoholic. Could've been any number of things that caused your little jitter-fit though.”

“How do you know that? There's basically nothing on the label.” Myriad passes the drink back to Darren who cautiously takes it as though handling a dented grenade.

“There's pages of ingredients and legal shit on there, you just need a bridge to see it. They couldn't print it all on the actual bottle.”

“So the ingredients are basically written in invisible ink? That's kind of fucked up.”

“Eh” Myriad shrugs nonchalantly and takes a long guzzle from her own bottle. She shifts on the bench seating, pushing her bag up against the far wall and resting her head against it.

“So what is in it?” Asks Darren glancing between Myriad and the selectively blank part of the bottle's label. Myriad sits up and throws her bag from behind her to down by her feet.

“I dunno what it was that kicked your colour, might've been the glucose in it, the caffeine, climbspon, cocaine-”

Darren spits his tentative second swig across the train carriage floor.

“Did you say cocaine?” He choked, wiping his chin and shirt.

“It might not have been that, it could have been the heroin.” Myriad adds reassuringly. Darren gawps in disbelief like a slack-jawed monkey. Myriad begins scratching her arm and restlessly crossing and uncrossing her legs.

“There's drugs in the drinks now?”

“You'll have to define what you mean by drugs. Everything's at least partially made of drugs.”

“Like, illegal, dangerous drugs that people die from.”

“They're hazardous sure but not really dangerous unless you're a moron. If they start to fuck up your insides you just get new ones. Also, definitely not illegal, they sell UNSH fucking everywhere.”

Darren blinks aggressively.

“You get new what? Insides? You can just do that...That's gotta be expensive even by crazy future standards?”

Myriad notices herself scratching her arm and leaving marks and slaps her own hand away. She swings her legs around off the seat and faces Darren leaning back against the wall.

“If you go for premium quality cloned human stuff then it's pretty sad prices yeah but most people just get mechanical replacements.” She lifts up her shirt to the lower half of her ribcage and the skin appears steel blue and pale. After a few seconds of squinting, Darren's repeatedly tampered with eyesight notices the metallic colour belies actual metal faintly visible beneath the skin.

“This is my fourteenth liver I think...I'm on like my eighth pair of lungs too...I kind of lose track to be honest.”

Darren remembers the similar markings on his abductor Wentworth, although his seemed far cruder with almost no effort made to hide the metal. It could have even been bare and exposed with no skin covering it. Darren had moved his gaze to the window of the train but he spots in his peripheral vision that Myriad is still holding her shirt up and gazing at her aforementioned replacement liver. Darren quickly returns his sight to the window suddenly feeling more than a little awkward in particularly awkward places.

Something about Myriad's personality seemed different. For the short time he had known her she had been terrifyingly perceptive and defensive despite a certain apathetic tone. Why was she now keeping herself exposed in front of him? Granted it was the less erotic half of her torso but at this point in Darren's prolonged stale love-life, a scandalous Victorian-era flash of ankle could probably get him going. Perhaps it is just this future's relaxed nature about sex and nudity. Darren fretted and felt that this in particular would take some getting used to.

“So yeah so there's all kinds of fucking crazy fuck in drinks and food now everywhere here now, it's pretty bleak to be honest, you probably shouldn't have too much of anything any before too you can register you at a chop shop and we can't do that or anything any time any soon 'cos of your stalker abductor people, gotta stay off any public servers, this making sense? tell me if it's not making sense 'cos I don't wanna just be wasting my ime-time t-here.” Darren waits a moment before answering if only to give Myriad a chance to breathe.

“They're not really called chop shops are they?”

“Nah, none that I've been to round anyway, nearest one I normally go always down to is SomeOfIt'sParts, pretty bleak there. Is it municipal? is it still raining? did you ask a question? what's the next question? hurry der-the fuck up, why are you still so quiet all of the sudden?” Darren looks back at Myriad who's finally let go of her shirt but is fidgeting like an electrified hamster with a jack-hammer. She squints and then opens her eyes wide before tapping an unintelligible rhythm on her lap with her hands.

“Are you feeling alright?” Myriad's eye twitches and she looks at Darren quizzically. There is a considerable pause with the rainfall alone puncturing the silence and only serving as an ambient drum-roll to heighten Darren's anxiety. Myriad finally turns away and makes some gestures as her bridge's visor flips across her eyeline and different screens appear on its surface. She pauses and lets her arms fall to her sides. Her hands are rapidly tapping the nearest surface but apart from this she remains almost motionless.

After an unsettling half a minute in which Darren is unsure if something fatal has happened or if speaking to her would provoke something fatal happening to him, Myriad's hands start to slow the pace of their tapping. Her eyes move down to look at the gradually decreasing twitches until after around ten seconds she pivots on her seat back to face Darren, avoiding eye contact and looking quietly aggravated. An expression that is subtly new to Darren as until now the only thing Myriad has been quite open and relaxed about displaying is her anger.

“Drank mine too fast.” She eventually says, in a far more familiar and downbeat tone. Darren smiles in baffled relief.

“So what on Earth is in yours then?” He asks with a chuckle. Myriad seems to grind her teeth together and pushes a strand of hair back behind her ear before looking at the ingredients of her orange labelled bottle of UNSH.

“Fuckin' amphetamines.” She growls. “They added that since I last had it. Used to just be MDMA and Tripaplin.”

“Wow.” remarks Darren.

Myriad scratches her forehead, frustrated at her own embarrassment. She clears her throat and looks outside.

“Well the acid rain's stopped.” She states, attempting to change the subject. Darren is leaning forward, amused by Myriad's frenetic phase and also relieved it wasn't in fact a coma. He glances outside briefly but turns back promptly, unable to resist the refreshing enjoyment of someone else being the centre of humiliation for once.

“So what happened there? You got an implant or something that can counteract drug highs?” He asks with a grin.

Myriad sighs and glares through the top of her eyes at him.

“Not an implant, it's just come-down drugs. Injected, like everything else through the bridge into your blood or your brain.” She points to the pebble-like devices on her temples used to initiate the bridge visor.

She squints and chews her cheek, clearly uncomfortable with being on the back foot. “The scrubber will probably have the street safe in about twenty, forty minutes. Are all of your questions going to be shit-circuited and fucking beverage based?” Darren drops his grin and withdraws upon confirmation that Myriad is completely back to her usual prickly self.

Chapter Eight: “Steely-Eyed Missile Woman” 28. 11. 2016

“Why is Laurence Fishburne talking inside my head?” Darren's voice broke and he couldn't hide feeling like a terrified child being dragged away from danger by their parents.

“Because I put him there.”

“Wha...h, how though and why?”

Darren's physical and mental exhaustion had caught up with him all at once. The brisk jog through the “Sub-Parking Floor” seemed to take an agonisingly long time. A week and a half longer than it should have if he had to guess.

Myriad continues dragging him forward, chucking a coat or blanket loosely around his shoulders and nonchalantly explaining the most recent spate of baffling circumstances.

“Basic GPS pin and mental modulator I injected you with when we shook hands.”

“I didn't feel anything.”

“Well obviously. If people could feel their injections how do you think anyone would keep on their meds?”

“Don't they just have pills or something?”

“Yeah look I'm sure you've got a whole season and spin-off prequel of questions but save it until we reach a train alright?”

Eventually they reach a road only recognisable by the warmth under Darren's feet that he now assumes is electricity or some kind of energy that powers the golden train-tram things. They stand still for a minute and Darren can't help but inquire further details.

“I still don't understand exactly how you did that, why I was grabbed in the first place or why you chose Morpheus to telepathically guide me.”

“It had to be a familiar voice you'd trust, so I looked up episo-sorry films from your time period and that The Matrix was a big one I figured you'd have seen so I got that guy's celebrity voice mod...Old ones like that are chronic cheap actually.”

“But why not just use your voice?”

“I just said, like, would you have even trusted me?”

“Yes.”

“...Oh...”

The awkward silence lingers only for a moment before a gust of wind sweeps onto Darren's face and he's pulled into one of the coral-golden carriages from earlier. He stumbles onot his seat and hears Myriad drop a bag to the floor and sigh. Darren hesitates for a second.

“Shouldn't we leave?”

“We are, the train's already moving.”

“Oh...It seemed more noticeable before.”

“They probably made an unsignalled stop to cover their tracks.”

“Like an emergency stop? Wouldn't that be more suspicious?”

Myriad sighs again and seems to adjust on the seat somehow.

“GUH, you're such a bubble bush, getting you current is gonna take forever...Unsignalled means the location isn't input to the train's terminal like you're supposed to and if anyone asks them I'm sure one of their many icehole admen will just claim it was kids on the track or a dog or something.”

There is a pause.

“Did you understand that?”

“Er...So you guys still have dogs in the future?”

“Jesus skullfucking Christ.”

“Hey I'm sorry, I'm doing my best here, I was just abducted remember and I'm bloody blind as well...And also you use a lot of weird slang.”

“Alright well let's deal, I'll try and use less slang and you stop staring at me like a throbbing spongecloud.”

“Well I can't see so I don't even know if I'm staring at you.”

“Yeah but you could be lying about when it's worn off and even if it hasn't you're creeping me out.”

“Wait, it's going to wear off? I'm not permanently blind?”

“Seems unlikely they'd terminally disable you, it'd just mean they couldn't run tests on the chocolate's cognitive effects.”

“Oh thank God for that.”

Darren holds up his end of the bargain and stares out of where he imagines a window to be. He feels as though Myriad is glaring at him.

“You seemed oddly resigned to that.” She queries suspiciously. Darren exhales in amusement as the first sensations of relief in hours begin to calmly lap over his frenzied mind.

“I guess I hadn't time to process it really. The same for all of this actually...Thank you, by the way. I've never had someone save my life before so I don't know what It feels like but I reckon you probably did just now.”

“Mhm.”

They sit in silence for a while, Darren dozes in and out of sleep at points. When he awakes he's relieved to open his eyes to actual sights albeit still blurry and with a cloudy white mist at the edges as though surrounded by dense fog. A pang of familiarity is also hugely welcoming as a heavy pattering on the carriage's roof is confirmed by his murky sight to be a downpour of rain.

He looks over to Myriad who is gazing out the opposite window by the carriage door with her Bridge on seemingly scrolling through different depictions of text.

“Hey, my sight's come back a bit. Everything's blurry but I'm guessing that'll fade too right?”

“Yeah, maybe.” She seems sulkier than before which is not to say she has proven anything close to friendly in any of their encounters. Darren makes an effort to continue the conversation.

“So, I never asked where we're going?”

“Well I considered dropping you at a homeless centre but they'd probably track you and grab you again, so you can stay at mine for a bit.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“You try anything though and I'll drop you at the homeless centre, just your head and balls.”

There is a brief pause which is seemingly only awkward for Darren.

“...Ookaaay....”

Darren gulps and looks out the door side window.

“Can't really see through this, are we close?”

“We're there.”

“Oh...Shall we go then?”

“Yeah go ahead.” Darren looks quizzically at Myriad but she doesn't return eye contact. Her tone sounded almost sarcastic but regardless Darren looks to the podium by the door and sees a symbol on the panel at the top. Two overlapping rectangles and an arrow pointing outwards must surely denote an opening door. He taps the symbol and the carriage door clicks and slides open.

“Are you a spinning skull fracture or what?”

Myriad immediately smacks his hand off the panel and slams her fist on an adjacent symbol and the door slides shut again. Darren holds his palms out in defence of whatever mistake he has unknowingly made, Myriad glares at him with contempt and disbelief.

“They didn't have fucking sarcasm in your time?”

“No, they did I, I wasn't sure though...I mean why aren't we leaving if we've arrived?”

“Oh only 'cos we'll melt to our titshitting skeletons before we reach the front door. But why not? I'm sure it's only a light shower of acid rain.”

Darren glances back out the window and sees the large clouds of what he thought to be mist emanating from the road and pavement. There's no other visible people outside and it strikes him that the golden carriage's paintwork ranging from shiny golden to lighter orange could in fact be the efforts of some poor sod tasked with minimising constant rust damage. Darren turns back to Myriad.

“Okay see, we didn't have acid rain in our time.”

“Ugh, are you shitting me? I'm gonna have to keep a fucking history mod on standby with you.”

“So um, do we just wait for it to stop then?”

“Normally yeah. We'll have to wait for a ballgargling street-scrubber as well this time though 'cos you lost your shoes.” Darren looks down at his grubby socks. He's quite insistent on having no pairs with holes in them but even so he's not sure the thick cotton will stand up to acid-drenched tarmac.

Myriad pinches the top of her bag and an invisible seam loosens and opens. She rifles around inside before throwing a bottle in Darren's direction. He fumbles his hands up to his chest and the bottle bounces off his lap and onto the floor. He picks it up and forces an awkward smile to her.

“Thanks. I'm assuming this is a drink and not bleach or something?” The joke clanks off of Myriad's cold, unimpressed expression. She removes a similar bottle and twists the top. No cap or lid comes off but it seems to unlock the drink somehow and she takes a long swig from the bottle. Darren follows suit and examines the seemingly plastic bottle, minimalist label and dark liquid inside. “UNSH” is adorned at the top of the label in large glistening and bold lettering. Just below that in smaller, turquoise letters reads “DRAMA FLAVOUR”. No other text appears visible on the bottle.

The blue and purple label visually seems standard enough with an attractive male model smiling out at you, mouth agape, in some kind of mid-jump action pose and holding the bottle in a position neither optimal for drinking or safe from imminent spillage. Unsettlingly the logo on the bottle the model is holding is the man's own face with the exact same expression. He too is holding a bottle upon which the same man's face is again holding the same bottle with his own same face on it and so on ad-infinitum or at least to the extent that human sight can distinguish.

Darren swivels the bottle around and blinks sharply upon finding an image of two female models half naked and engrossed in each other's mouths. This added to some of his earlier sights suggests that sex is far less of a private matter in this time, to the point where softcore pornography is openly plastered on beverage labels. He glimpses up at Myriad who is casually drinking her own bottle with different colouring but similar labelling. Her eye shifts to notice him and Darren quickly breaks eye contact.

At first glance the liquid inside appears fizzy but upon closer inspection it seems as though it is mixed in with glitter the way it gleams and sparkles. It seems like there are dark red streaks to the brown liquid but Darren is unable to confirm or make them out clearly with his limited vision. Rather than continually squint at the bottle, aware now of Myriad observing him, he goes to drink the beverage, pausing only upon spying a previously unseen bit of text at the bottom of the label. It reads “TESCO.”

Chapter Seven: “Wall Street-Surgeon” 13.11.2016

Glancing outside the carriage Darren spies only a tall sliver and mostly featureless building looming over him. He would have to look for landmarks or anything distinctive beyond this place. The thug coughs and pulls him back to his seat by the shoulder. Darren sees the bruiser has for some reason equipped a pair of tight fitting science goggles over his eyes. The reason quickly becomes apparent as the thug sprays a small canister of wet vapour into Darren's eyes which alarmingly begins to sharply sting rendering Darren incapable of opening his eyes.

He is promptly shoved out of the train carriage and falls flat on his face. Without a word, someone, presumably the thug, lifts him up by the back of his shirt and starts dragging him into the building. Darren furiously rubs his eyelids trying to remove the stinging mist but despite feeling the moisture transfer slightly to his fingertips it does nothing to alleviate the pain and inability to open his eyes.

For the next several minutes Darren is blindly thrown around by an uncertain amount of people with the sound of footsteps clearly entering and exiting rooms but no one saying anything distinctly audible to one another beyond murmurs. Eventually he is relatively settled by being slammed onto some kind of table, his muddy shoes removed and a voice is finally heard.

“Welcome Earthling, you have been chosen as a pet for your galactic overlords, but first you must be cleansed via deep body probing.”

“Gym how many times do we have to go over this? Don't mentally torture the test subjects...It makes the physical torture much harder to maintain.”

“Sorry.”

Darren feels his arms and legs pulled away and placed into tight, cold metal clamps. Something pokes him in both eyes simultaneously and Darren is struck with the realisation his eyes have been open this entire time. The acidic assault of the thug's spray has completely robbed him of sight leaving him in pitch blackness with his eyelids completely numb.

Darren takes a deep breath and then clenches his teeth together. He tries to think rationally but his deductions feel anything but calming. He's blind, stuck to a table and surrounded by at least two people who may or may not be aliens. Darren is quickly overcome with panic.

“Please don't kill me!” He squeals. Today was already a low point for dignity but if he could just somehow survive he wouldn't care so much. It's one thing to die scared but to die confused feels especially uncomfortable and frankly unfair at this point.

“Oh fannycrackers. What did I tell you? Huh? You want to waste another one 'cos he dies of shock? Do you?”

“No.”

“No? Then stop being such a flannelwanking brain-cavity every time we get a live one.”

“Sorry, Gluke.”

“Don't apologise to me, apologise to the potential biomods you pissed away for a joke.”

“Yer gonna want to quit fuckin' about. This 'un's priority efficiency and precision.” The larger words sound clumsy and distasteful in the man's mouth and Darren feels fairly certain that the voice is that of the thug from the train carriage. These people probably aren't aliens then unless extra-terrestrial life is as prone to bickering as we are. Darren ponders that he can't really be certain of anything anymore in this new time and a wave of icy futility washes over him.

“What's so special about this one?” Asks the voice identified as Gluke.

“Pretty shoddy scientists if yer ain't worked it out yet...Genuine samples ain't it.” chides the thug. There is a pause and Darren feels something prod him in the shoulder and torso.

“You mean this is actual pre-famine cocoa substance?” whispers Gluke.

“Yep. Highest up wants it contained, studied, all that shit, without fault.” There is another pause where Gluke makes some illiterate dumbfounded stutters before finding a full sentence. He slams a hand on the table next to Darren and a collection of things bounce from the impact with a clattering metallic sound.

“Well colonise my bollocks Wentworth! When were you planning to tell me this?”

“Figured yerd 'av got it by now to be honest.”

“Well no! I'd assumed it was faeces. You know, because all you ever bring us are homeless or crazy people!”

“Well yer got the real thing now so get going an' don't fuck it up.” Gluke audibly sighs and sounds as though he starts to storm out of the room. Darren hears a door swing open.

“I need a fucking coffee. Gym, prep the anaesthetics, cell manipulants, laser scalpel and steam capsules, do NOT bloody talk to the subject any more...Mr Wentworth, Mr Jams, before I start this very delicate but potentially historic surgical procedure I just want to take a moment and say that I thoroughly despise both of you and always have.” The door swings shut and Gluke's footsteps trail off down a hallway.

The room is mostly quiet as presumably Gym fiddles with some utensils on a metallic tray and the thug or “Wentworth” as appears to be his name, stands motionless and silent. Darren panics at the thought of being pulled apart by mad scientist surgeons but mentally writhes in anguish at the impossibility of blindly escaping metal clamps on his limbs, Wentworth's Gorilla arms and the building in general. How is it that something so extraordinary as time-travel befalls him and then almost immediately his life comes to an end.

Darren's head throbs with the overwhelming stress of his imminent demise. There is absolutely no way out and he can't understand or even see what's going on. If this were a film some miraculous happenstance would carry him out of this nightmare. The stinging in his eyes has faded somewhat only to be replaced by a deafening ringing in his ears.

It's a strange kind of ringing in that it's not overly high pitched or confined to the background, it sounds very much like a mobile phone ringing directly in his ear but seemingly Gym or Wentworth are completely oblivious to the noise so it must be only in his mind. Darren reconsiders the sound. If I'm about to die anyway I suppose nothing I do matters anymore.

“Hello?” To Darren's surprise the ringing noise abruptly stops, and a rich and deep, yet oddly familiar voice reverberates within his head.

“Hello Darren. Do you know who this is?” Darren blinks in bafflement and uselessly turns his head to look at where he believes Gym and Wentworth to be standing. There is still practically no noise from either of them apart from the tinkering of medical equipment from Gym. Darren concedes he is finally going insane and hearing responding voices in his head.

“No I don't know who this is.”

“Yes, I've been looking for you Darren. I don't know if you're ready to see what I have to show you but unfortunately you and I have run out of time. They're coming for you Darren and I don't know what they're going to do.”

Darren bitterly responds to his lunacy voice, irked by the strange familiarity of it.

“They're not coming for me, they've already got me and I don't think I'm going to see anything ever again regardless of if I'm ready.”

“Hmph, better hurry this up, he's goin' off the deep end.” Growls Wentworth at Gym who doesn't respond, perhaps out of fear but continues assembling or assorting equipment and utensils.

“Stand up and see for yourself.” continues the mental voice.

“I can't stand up or see.”

The voice no longer responds but Darren subconsciously or perhaps even involuntarily twitches his wrists and finds them startlingly loose in the metal clamps. He had heard no definitive clack as the clamps had made when being locked to suggest they were now unlocked. Moving his hand upwards, it seems they were not in fact unlocked but his hands and feet could slide through their grip, previously thought to be absolute and unbreakable.

Darren had attempted to only wiggle his hands and feet to subtly test if he was genuinely free or simply suffering another mad fabrication. Unfortunately his extremities were far enough from the restraints that the burrowing gaze of Wentworth had noticed.

“How tha fuck?” Wentworth takes an audible step towards the table. Darren scrambles to get his limbs in order then pushes himself off the table and bolts towards where he thinks he heard the swinging of the doors that Gluke left through.

Feeling the slap of the doors in his face but mercifully pushing them open as he passes, Darren collides swiftly with a flat wall outside the room.

“Go right.” The mysterious mental voice returns but Darren decides to spend no time questioning it and sprints off to the right as the heavy thud of Wentworth's boots chase after him.

“Now left.” Darren skids and slips trying to change direction in his socks but fortuitously avoids colliding with anything or anyone.

“Now left again, you'll hit a door, keep running until you hit a wall.” Darren blindly follows the voice's instructions both figuratively and literally until stubbing his toes and smacking his head on the far wall of another corridor. He seemed to have passed one or two people but he can't be sure and they made no attempt to grab him. Despite this Gym and Wentworth's footsteps quickly grow in volume as they catch up to him.

“Now say Sub-Parking Floor.”

“What's a sub-parking floor?” Mechanical doors whir shut behind him and the sensation of descent tells Darren he's somehow escaped to an elevator. A moment later and a cold gust of fresh air swoops into the opening doors and something grabs him and pulls him out of the elevator. A different but also familiar voice speaks in hoarse tones as they continue pulling him somewhere seemingly outside the building.

“Hello Darren, do you know who this is?”

“Myriad? But how the hell did you get, find me, what the, who was that other guy?”

“That was Laurence Fishburne. Now quickly follow me and pretend you're not blind and have shoes.” Darren makes a noise only describable as a verbal brain aneurysm.

Chapter Six: "A Streetcar Named Apathy" 05.11.2016

Darren struggles to regain some practical thinking and wriggle free. His arm is caught in some kind of lock by someone infinitely stronger than him and Darren only manages to twist his body a fraction to glance up at his assailant. The bright red suit is the most immediately apparent descriptor but beneath it is the face of a grizzled older man. Strands of his greying hair escape from under his red tightly-affixed baseball cap.

Bizarrely he is the first person in this new city Darren could objectively call ugly. For their alarming characteristics and outlandish fashion sense, everyone else in the city has near model-like beauty in their face and figure. This guy though, was a hulking ogre of a man with scars on his cheeks, shoulders a doorway apart and rough white-black stubble stabbing out of his chin. Darren attempts to squirm free again to absolutely no avail.

“Hey! Let go of me! Listen! Stop! Mate, just stop a second, seriously.” The huge shovel-faced thug doesn't flinch in response to Darren's requests and continues dragging him along the street to an unclear destination. Darren glances back towards Myriad but can no longer see her or the white forcefield of her “Personal Space” through the overcrowded streets.

“Woah okay, HELP! HEEELP! Somebody? Not agreed to this at any point! I'm being kind of kidnapped here! Anyone going to help!? No?...Fuckin' seriously people?” Darren reflects that no one really rehearses their hostage pleas in case of random abduction but even he felt he communicated more or less that a crime was taking place here. Why was no one paying attention?

They brush past entire crowds of people and despite Darren grabbing them with his free hand, the red-suited thug simply pulls him and the pedestrian down the path with the random citizen eventually writhing free and exhaling in frustration before getting up and continuing down the footpath. It's the “bridges” Darren realises. Everyone is glued to the immaterial screen wrapped around their face and apparently they're so engrossed even physical conflict won't disturb them.

Darren recalls his still slightly stinging cheek and Myriad's first words to him. She had mistaken him for a “charity advert” and presumably something she could swipe away judging by the barrage of slaps to the face. So is everyone practically numb to outside stimuli because they just assume it's...A pop-up?

“I'm not an advert! This is real, crim-kidnapping happening in the real world here! Turn off your vis-your bridges!” A few people seem to change their expression but are they hearing his pleas or just doing an online Sudoku? Before Darren can continue the invisible hulk pulls him onto the road and a huge gust of wind nearly blows the kidnapper's hat off. A large golden-orange tram is hurtling down the street past them. Darren twists his neck to see a similar smaller vehicle closer to them, paused in front of them.

The scarlet gorilla-man drags Darren into the cart and slams his hand on a small pedestal inside. Something bleeps and the door clicks shut. Before Darren can take in any more of his surroundings the carriage jolts forward to rejoin the path of the longer chain of trams now barely visible snaking off down the streets. Maybe trains do go on the road here after all.

Darren's assailant simultaneously pushes him back onto a bench and sits down himself on the one opposite. Darren expects to see a knife or handgun pointing at him but what he's faced with looks more like a stapler with two marbles jammed into the top. Perhaps this is actually a terrifying weapon to be on the wrong end of but in this particular wielder's grip it looks more awkward and clumsily undersized. Taking a breath and settling onto the bench on his wall of the cart Darren gets a closer look at his captor.

Contrasting the formal red suit blazer the man is shirtless beneath it and an element of Myriad's harrowing random strip search finally fits into place in Darren's mind. The man has several patches of differently toned skin as though he underwent multiple poorly chosen skin grafts. This would be the usual conclusion except some of these have a metallic quality to them and others even have visible lights and mechanics faintly visible through their semi-opaque surfaces. The man seems to have two either side of his torso roughly where his kidneys would be and another by his heart.

The man seems content to stare at Darren as though he weren't there. A gritted scowl folds up the man's face but there's no especially perceptible malice behind it, as though this is the guy's natural resting expression. Darren glances out of the window of the tram-type vehicle he finds himself trapped in. The outside scenery is whizzing past so quickly he questions the point of having windows here when all you can see is a slightly nauseating rush of coloured blurs.

“I don't suppose I'm allowed to know where we're going?” Darren coyly inquires.

“Just the next stop on our business trip.” His voice sounds like a demolished apartment block and his face resembles an unfinished granite statue of a bulldog defaced by a cheese grater. Darren furrows his brow and questions the poorly packaged truck of a man.

“Is that what you're calling you blatantly kidnapping me off the street?”

“I'm sorry you feel like I dragged you along to this.”

“I don't feel like that, you literally did drag me into whatever this is.”

The man sighs and pulls up his sleeve. Darren presses his back to the wall anticipating a punch that upon further inspection of the man's arms could easily pop his head like a balloon. Instead the rusty-bear trap of a man delicately taps at a bracelet-watch hybrid clamped over his wrist and much of his forearm. Static crackles and a fizzing white projection like the Personal Space forcefield appears around them. Unlike before the gadget disperses the immaterial white particles not in the shape of a walled box around them but like a huge plume of dust floating between them and throughout the tram carriage.

Darren hesitates for a moment, glancing at the floating little spheres around them. They appear fewer yet larger in size than the thousands comprising the walls that Myriad used.

“So they do those Bridge things as watches too.” Darren remarks.

“Not anymore.” The thug grumbles. They both sit in silence for about a minute whereupon Darren dares himself to speak again.

“Did you activate this for a reason or?” The man might have narrowed his eyebrows a miniscule amount but Darren is unable to tell for sure.

“Just so you can say whatever you want and I don't 'ave to fuck around with the pretence.” There is a weariness to the ageing thug's tone that suggests he's abducted people like this before but enough to find it boring.

“What do you mean pretence? Who do you have to pretend to at this point?” The man scoffs.

“You ain't been awake long have yer? Police got microphones everywhere, they have to at least hack company servers and shit to get conversations in here.” Darren digests the information for a moment. The tram shows no signs of stopping or even slowing down.

“Wouldn't the companies hand that stuff straight to the police though?”

“Not this company.” Feeling like he's gleaning a scarce few drips of information from his captor, Darren attempts some follow up questions.

“How would they go about hacking one of these companies? Say your company for example.”

“Give it a rest kid, I ain't said shit you can use and I ain't going to.” Darren looks to the floor awkwardly feeling embarrassed at how immediately transparent his intentions were.

“Ain't my company anyway.” The thug grumbles to himself.

There is a long silence as the tram cart continues it's indeterminable path past indistinguishable landscapes. The grizzled old thug barely moves an inch apart from his slow heaving breaths and infinitesimal blinks between his piercing cold glare. Darren fidgets in his seat having become quite uncomfortable left with only thoughts on his probable fate at the end of this situation.

“Quite a long distance considering how fast this tram goes.”Darren barely posits this as a question and the thug seems to notice his more solemn tone of voice.

“Been going in circles mostly. Use all the routes an' it gives the pigs more to work through.”

“You still call police pigs or do they have actual animal authorities now? Detective Porkins? Something like that?” The dented garage door that is the man's face shifts into the closest thing to a smirk seen so far.

“You worked it out then?” Darren looks up from the floor and meets his captor's eyes briefly.

“I think I did. I don't really believe it yet.”

For whatever reason the thug relaxes a miniscule amount.

“You reckon these look more like trams then?” He gestures to the window of the vehicle with his free hand not gripping the strange betesticalled gun. Darren exhales and glances at the window before returning his gaze to the floor.

“What do most people call them then? Magnet-Buses?”

“Most just call 'em trains.”

There is another long pause as more Jackson Pollock scenery flies past the window and the train carriage makes little more than a low-pitched faint humming sound. Darren wrings his hands together and grinds his teeth, all the while watched by the monolithic stare of the kidnapper.

“You're going to kill me aren't you?” Darren eventually and reluctantly asks.

“I'm not.” The thug replies casually. The train carriage abruptly jolts to a stop and the door clicks open...

Chapter Five: “Mark Denton Citizenship Test” 28. 10. 2016

There is a particular palpable silence when two people both begin to suspect the other's sanity. Unfortunately for Darren he lacked the luxury of appealing to common sense when “common” seemed to be entirely redefined for miles around him. The silver-haired and eyed woman tapped her foot impatiently, clearly adverse to wasting time and money on the frightening electronic box surrounding them. A “mod” called “personal space” was how she described it but to Darren it could only be perceived as sorcery and the breaking point of this unsettling unfamiliar environment he had stumbled into.

“Well?”

“I'm not taking my clothes off.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm in the middle of the street, you're a complete stranger and I don't even know how it would help in working out my identity.” Darren scratches his head at such a case where he even has to explain why this request is weird and intrusive. The woman removes her long black coat.

“Would it help if I did it too?”

“Hm?-No!” Darren hesitated for perhaps a second too long. “Can you not just believe I'm not a hospital escapee? I mean, how do I know you're not the crazy person?”

“What would it matter to you if I was? You approached me.” There is another lengthy silence between them. Darren considers his options but all appear limited or unappealing. Despite her abrasiveness and possible sexual predator conviction, this woman was still the most normal-looking person around.

What kind of sense would he glean trying to talk to the rainbow-suited dog-brained businessman? Or the metallic-nippled invincible-beard gang leader? He had to persevere with this. Besides it was probably all a terrible fever dream or hallucination from hitting his head in the factory. He would probably wake up soon and everything would be back to normal...Dull, dreary normality...

“Okay fine, I'm doing it, just tell me how it's going to help.” Darren begins clumsily removing his work uniform shirt. Originally grey but stained with enough fudge to as appear brown patterned, he notices that he has long since lost his apron with no recollection of when exactly. This strikes Darren as another irregularity in detail consistent with dreaming helping cement the idea in his mind.

Glancing back at the misty white forcefield, the circus-clothed citizens walk on by briskly and indifferent to Darren fidgeting awkwardly before a strange woman in only his boxers.

“Why have you stopped?” Darren glares at the woman in disbelief.

“You're joking right?” The woman shakes her head in a patronising fashion, she taps the pebbles at the side of her head and the visor flicks around her eyeline again.

Darren continues telling himself it's just a dream despite his repeated pinching and mental gymnastics to wake himself up all proving fruitless. He takes a deep breath and yanks down his boxers trying to mask his embarrassment with misplaced authoritative interrogation.

“Well? Find the answer you're looking for?” The woman's expression is one of confusion as she eyes him up and down. Darren was bracing himself for amusement, disgust, anger and pity but was not prepared to see his naked body outright confusing someone.

“You're naked.” This being the paltry conclusion to a deeply intrusive and unexplained demand sets the spark to Darren's temper.

“What the fuck? You just told me-Of course I bloody am it...What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What's wrong with you?”

“Wh...Y, you can't just say that to a naked guy! Are you trying to demolish my self-esteem?”

“I'm not talking about clothes naked, I mean you've got no mods or implants or anything.”

“...Well no, I mean I've had a few fillings but-”

“If you were in hospital they'd have marked you or attached a bracelet. People can shift them around but they can't take them off without the codes from the nurses...So...I guess you're like some backwards, technophobe villager although even they get mods for like diseases and stuff.”

“Okay, I don't really get what you're saying but can I put my clothes back on now?” The woman seems to have become less prickly, faced with something apparently she can't understand for a change.

“Yeah, go for it.” Her voice is distant and indifferent. Darren scrambles to get dressed as quickly as possible. The woman flicks her visor on and off several times before coming to some kind of decision. Darren stands for a while adjusting himself and trying to look like he didn't just gracelessly debase himself at a random woman's request. He checks through the forcefield again but beyond the misty wall, not a soul seems aware of their conversation or their movements within the box.

“Look, you seemed really uncomfortable with the whole naked thing so I feel like I owe you.” Darren decides to ignore the implication anyone else would be fine with stripping bare in the street but notes that the pity he expected has finally arrived. “If you're lost or brained or whatever's going on I can help you find a hospital or something if you want.”

“Wait, I thought we got past this?”

“No I don't mean the prison terminal, I don't think you're shit-circuited anymore but if you dunno where you are maybe you injured yourself.” Darren struggles to decipher the woman's bizarre language. Does she think hospitals have terminals like airports? Is there an insanely huge hospital here that has to be detailed by terminals? She also seems to think a psychiatric ward is akin to a prison.

“I kind of thought I'd have woken up by now to be honest.”

“Unless you're blitzing on some kind of biomod, which is impossible now I've seen you naked, you're not dreaming.” Darren furrows his brow, bombarded with yet more new words and starting to lose confidence in his comforting resignation that this is a semi-lucid dream or the hallucinogenic death throes of excess fudge poisoning.

Marginally more sympathetic, the woman takes a step towards Darren and switches off her visor. “Normally I'd just Ping you my profile but I guess if you're all retro we can just shake hands. My name's Myriad.” Darren sighs, feeling stressed by this new world but is grateful for even an imitation of something familiar. He shakes the woman's hand and forces a smile, her fragmented silver eyes seem to pierce through his own as though he were transparent, or perhaps he just still feels vulnerable having been naked moments before.

“I'm Darren, nice to eventually meet you Miriam.” Darren exhales trying to lighten the mood with a joke but his new acquaintance seems less than impressed.

“Not Miriam, Myriad. Myriad Bethlehem.”

“You're name is...I, okay never mind for now.” Myriad crosses her arms and again gives Darren the cold analytical squint.

“You really must be from some ultra-stiff little bubble bush.”

“If the half of that I understood means what I think, I didn't think Droyslden or Manchester were particularly remote until now. I mean the factory where I worked is literally just over there.”

“The chocolate factory?”

“Yeah.”

Myriad goes silent and contemplative again. Darren is grateful to have reached some kind of placated parley with her but can't help feeling a less secretive and private person would have explained a lot more to him, both quicker and easier.

“Why is that so strange?” Darren asks. Myriad flicks her visor on for a few seconds. If you look closely you can see images and words appearing reflected backwards on the immaterial screen but before Darren can pinpoint much the visor flicks back off.

“Where exactly is the factory?” Again, she seems physically averse to providing a straight answer.

“A few streets back that way.” Darren points down the streets he came from, his finger clipping through the forcefield and probably appearing quite strange to passers-by as a disembodied index finger...Then again, given his sights here so far maybe that's entirely normal.

“This is why I'm thinking you're brained or spinning on some drug date. There's no factory back there and proper chocolate doesn't exist anymore.”

Darren's eyebrows crash into a mass hair pile up on the road to his forehead. Quite exhausted by the relentless barrage of weird today has thrown at him, Darren can only blink in baffled disarray and disbelief at the statement. Myriad watches him closely as this revelation unfolds. Neither of them notice the “Personal Space” forcefield flickering around them.

“The only thing beyond the city in that direction are fields and an old restricted archaeology site that you wouldn't be able to even get near.”

Darren looks to the floor and is silent for a long time. He puts his hands in his pockets and exhales several times. He chuckles to himself in a pitch dangerously close to hysterical. Myriad takes a step back and fixes her sight on him carefully.

“Darren?”

“I, er...Your visor thingy. I noticed something on it the last time it was on.”

“Oh my Bridge? Only my nan calls it a visor.”

“Heh, well I think I spotted the time down in the corner there. Just after half nine is it?”

“The...” Myriad freezes with a realisation. Apparently the same realisation that is breaking Darren's mind apart in front of her.

“It's not the time is it?”

Darren finally looks up with a demented half-grin as though he can't decide if he should be happy or angry. His eyes slightly better reflect the distraught cognitive combustion imploding and rupturing within his consciousness.

Myriad had considered the possibility long before it dawned on Darren but unlike Darren who had no other explanation, Myriad never entertained more than a shred of the idea being at all plausible. Upon witnessing Darren's conflicted internal collapse though even her intensely sceptical barriers are lowered somewhat by how genuine his mental breakdown appears to be.

Before either of them can reach a word to puncture the searing silent atmosphere of confusion, someone else reaches through the Personal Space and grabs Darren's arm. Suddenly and violently, he is dragged through the supposedly private conversation area and out onto the street...

Chapter Four: “Chocolate Coma” 21. 10. 2016

“Excuse me? Could you spare a moment to-” A sharp slap to the face was Darren's reply knocking him staggering off the footpath. His brain rattled around in his skull as he tried to get his bearings noticing the woman hadn't even slowed her brisk walking pace and continued down the path as though swatting a fly away from her.

Mildly aggrieved but mostly puzzled Darren jogged back up to her and alongside noticing the profoundly glazed look in her unblinking eyes, the pupils seemed to be split into sections. Still wholly intact and functioning but as though the eye had been shattered and glued back together. The colour of both her iris and her long hair were a metallic silver and Darren momentarily questioned the possibility he was talking to a robot. Apart from these oddities she was round faced with sharp small eyes and Darren felt she was surprisingly attractive for someone who had just hit him in the face.

“Sorry, I just need-” Another swift and hard slap rippled across Darren's cheek. He recovered more quickly this time but was losing his temper at the repeated random assaults. He jogged ahead of her again but kept at an arm's length away.

“Look, I get you're busy but-” Her arm swung at him again but only swiped through the air between them. Darren hesitates and exhales in frustration at the persistence of her attacks. “But I'm really lost here, I was in an accident and I dunn-” Having lost track of the woman's intense walking speed or perhaps she closed the distance Darren stumbles into the wall beside them after another clout across his jaw.

Darren immediately stamps back into her view having lost all patience with his attempts at civility. “What the hell is your probl-” Darren trips backwards trying to not fall off the footpath again. He hears the woman audibly exhale in frustration and her eyebrows narrow. Darren staggers back onto the footpath and stops moving. “Will you stop slapping me for fuck's sake?”

The woman pauses inches from colliding with Darren but doesn't raise her arm again. She looks Darren up and down with a confused almost disbelieving expression. She remains planted to the ground but slowly leans to the left staring at him with an analytical squint. Darren watches her equally puzzled as she rights herself and takes a step to the side of him.

“I er, was hoping you could give me some directions.” Darren curls his lips together at the side of his mouth, rather unsettled by the situation but still distinctly annoyed as well. The woman taps the small black pebbles at her temples and the visor somehow vanishes.

“I thought you were a charity advert!” She speaks as though genuinely surprised but her tone is decidedly non-apologetic. Her voice sounds hoarse and gravelly as though from talking too much or too little.

“What?” Darren is only increasingly miffed by her opening statement in the long list of today's events that make no logical sense.

“Why didn't you ping me?”

“What?”

“If you wanted to talk, why didn't you just ping from across the street?” Darren takes a step back and is bumped into by a businessman rushing past. He also doesn't apologise Darren notes.

“I don't know what you're saying. What is a ping?”

“Oh fuck off cuntfamily, everyone knows what ping is.” Darren's eyes widen at the blindingly excessive vitriol in her retort.

“You don't have to be rude, I told you I'm really lost here, wherever here is.”

“Mark Denton.”

“Huh?”

“Mark Denton.”

“No I said where. Where is this?”

“Mark Denton”

“N-Wha...Is English not your first language?”

“Why does that matter?”

“Wha, What do you mean why does that matter? It matters as to whether you can understand what I'm saying.”

“But if I couldn't, I'd just translate it so it's irrelevant.”

“Oh well sorry, we're not all bilingual translation experts.”

“Yeah we are.”

Darren takes a deep breath and tries to compose himself despite being more baffled and aggravated than when he was lost in the pipes. He stares at the woman silently who stares back at him until they are both jostled by another group of hurried pedestrians.

“Look do you actually need something or are you just spongeclouding?” Darren blinks aggressively.

“I dunno if this is a prank or something but yeah I am actually lost and need directions to a phone or train station or something.”

“Pff! what kind of plastic tumour are you?”

“Excuse me?”

“How can anyone need directions to a train station? Just follow the road ya skull fracture.”

“TERRRAAAINN STAYSHUN. TRAYNE! SINCE WHEN DO TRAINS GO ON THE ROAD?”

“Okay we're dead now.” This phrase seemingly signalling the end to the conversation as the woman begins swiftly walking away down the path again. Darren glares at her but his humility is barged back into him by a muscular man pushing past him.

Darren glances up at the man who seems to be suffering from some kind of skull deformity as the bone pushes against the skin of his face. It almost seems to glow and gives a chilling impression even from an angle. Darren nervously scans the streets for another potential good Samaritan. A businessman in a rainbow-coloured suit crawls along the ground panting like a dog, two women on a nearby bench openly pleasure each other with objects looking like egg whisks and another bald man whizzes past on the advanced Heely things before turning and nonchalantly slamming face-first into a brick wall. Unflinching he slowly sinks into the brickwork and is swallowed up by the building. Darren runs to catch back up with the leaving woman.

“Okay look, I think maybe I'm hallucinating or I'm concussed or something but I need some help and what you're saying doesn't make any sense.”

“I'm not giving you any money.”

“I don't want...Oh shit! Do you think I'm homeless is that it?” The woman scoffs. “No I'm serious, just tell me what city this is, are we near Droylsden?”

“I already told you we're at Mark Denton”

“So what, the city is called Mark Denton?”

“Yes! Fuck my skull! Where the hell are you from?”

“Er, Droylsden, just outside Manchester. I work...worked in a chocolate factory there and got pulled into one of the vats, I only just crawled out of the bloody pipes over there.”

The woman stops abruptly and looks deeply into Darren's eyes with a terrifying unseen conviction. Darren tries to maintain eye contact but the focus of the glare is more than a little frightening and yet another group of bustling people soon knock him off his feet. As he regains his balance, he notices the woman has switched her visor back on and makes some swift hand gestures, flicking and pointing and clenching her fists.

She turns back to Darren and grabs his arm, dragging him over to the side of the footpath.
“Okay fine, five minutes for whatever toxic shit you're peddling.” They reach the side of the path by a small cutaway between the buildings left for a pitifully tiny patch of artificial flowers and trees. It's here that Darren stiffens like a pigeon's neck, rapidly and fearfully glancing at all the corners of his eyesight as a cloudy white electronic wall suddenly fizzles into existence and shoots out from the bottom of the pavement to several feet above their heads in a miniature hut shape that in a matter of seconds completely surrounded them. Darren cries out in shock and fear.

“WAEGH!”

The woman looks rather pitifully at Darren who slowly stands back up after ducking for cover crouched to the floor. He stares at the encapsulating walls like they're about to collapse on them or slam together and crush them.

“W-what the flying fuck just happened?”

“Really?”

“Where the hell am I that this can happen?”

“In my personal space.”

“Oh sorry.” Darren instinctively backs away from the woman before pausing and shaking his head. “Wait what?”

The woman sighs and rests against the wall of the floral area.

“Is Trollsden some backwards Luddite community then that you don't know what any of this stuff is?” Darren glances back at the woman but is more interested in the shimmering white forcefield surrounding them. He tentatively puts a hand to it only for it to faze straight through with no texture to grip or feel.

“What is this thing?” Darren looks back at the woman flushed with disbelief, confusion and uncertainty. The woman frowns and rolls her eyes looking to the side, tapping her foot in frustration but also slightly embarrassed and awkward.

“It's a mod right? You make a small section of a public area temporarily private for conversations or whatever. I'd say you must have seen the adverts but clearly they don't even have showers where you're from.” Darren tries to inconspicuously smell his armpit.

“I've put five minutes on the clock but this costs me so don't wank around...And don't go screaming your tits off again I've only got seventy five decibels soundproofing.”

Darren tries to formulate a sentence but is too petrified of his surroundings to control his thoughts. He'd thought this a weird new metropolitan city, a cult gathering or some hidden camera prank scenario but now he was seeing impossible magic forcefields and all the smaller oddities of the place and its people became terrifyingly alien and isolating to him. The woman takes on a slightly different expression. Not enough to be called sympathy but perhaps a lowering of expected intellectual capacity.

“Did you actually come from a chocolate factory or was it a hospital?” Darren realises that this new line of thinking could quickly end with him in whatever bizarre slick building counted for a mental asylum here. He needed to say something clever and convincing that would immediately dissuade the woman of the notion that he was mentally impaired and had escaped from hospital.

“...I'm definitely not a crazy person...”

“Uh-huh.”

“No, I'm really not, honestly it must be fudge poisoning or something.”

“Oh yeah or Dragon Cancer or Fairy Thrush.”

“I'm not making this up! It's everything else I'm seeing that seems made up. Please can't you trust me on this?”

“No.”

“Why not? What can I do to convince you?” The woman sighs again. 

“Fine. Take off all your clothes.” Darren stops talking immediately...