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...
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