“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.”
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