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...