Set Pt.1

That was it, the last beans had been eaten, the oxygen was wearing thin and it was time to emerge into a new world.

'As social experiments go, this was a good one', thought Dara. 'Culture shock experienced for the first time on a human who hasn't been in a coma'. He wandered, lurching toward the hatch, dragging his feet against the floor, such that the bulkhead gave him a small static shock. Gripping the circumference of the seal lock, he waited for the timer to count down.

00:000:00:01:23
'I wonder how my parents are. They were thinking of buying a car when I came in.'

00:000:00:01:16
'Do they still use cars now? It's been 37 years, they may have developed something better by now.'

00:000:00:01:00
'No, don't think about what might've happened, that will corrupt the result. I have a reputation to live up to here.'

00:000:00:00:51
'Will they have remembered me? Will I remember them? Will they be alive? Who am I thinking of exactly?'

00:000:00:00:44
'I was always very fond of cats. I wonder if we're still allowed to keep them.'

00:000:00:00:44
"Arse…", he sighed. He jumped up and thumped the clock with his fist. It took several attempts, but it had been running now for just under 37 years, so you can't blame it for wanting a rest. It staggered back into the rhythm of linear time. The rhythm that had accompanied Dara's life in his bunker. His underworld time signature. Significantly more worn now than it was in 2014, but still, nonetheless, homely. But homely or otherwise, Dara had a job to do. To be shocked.

00:000:00:00:31
'I'm half a minute away from freedom. I've kept my head for this long, I can't let go of it now.'

00:000:00:00:20
'Maybe humans will have been surpassed by another race. Maybe a huge disaster has wiped them out. What if civilisation as I know it will have collapsed?'

00:000:00:00:09
'I wonder if Starbucks still exists.'

00:000:00:00:00

To Dara, time seemed to pause. As it happens, over the course of 37 years, the clock's inaccuracies led up to a 3 second difference, and time continued its usual steady pace albeit with a somewhat tarnished reputation.

The door began to hiss. Air cracked in, a two-way stampede of molecules as the outside air thundered into this mysterious sealed chamber, whilst in the opposite direction thrashed past the stagnant air that had been bored with stagnation for the past 36 and a half years, and desperately wanted to socialise/oxidise. The seal of the door flapped in the hysteria of the moment, and some small particles of rubber disintegrated in the excitement.

Once it was an inch ajar, a gust of cold air barraged its way through and threatened to close the hatch on him. Dara was nothing if patient, but he was not about to be deprived of freedom by a gust of cold air. He forced the door open, it screeching hideously on oxidised iron hinges. The sheer weight of the door allowed him to push it only half open, and let its momentum do the rest.

In front of him now were a series of stairs. Exactly as he remembered them before, if not a bit more infested with dust. To the outside nose, this ante-chamber atmosphere would be considered musky, thick and generally 'orrible. To Dara's nose however, it was very nearly nasal nirvana. He forgot his hurried excitement in an instant, and stood there for a full 25 seconds breathing in great lungfuls of this new air. Compared to the seconds which agonised their way forward in the last minutes of the chamber opening, this time had no weight to it at all. Nevertheless, he shook out of his olfactory stupor and proceeded to ascend the stairs in slipper-laden feet.

'Is this acceptable dress for modern society?'. It had taken Dara a little by surprise to find the clock at but a few minutes to go, and he was damned if he was going to get dressed during that time, and so the bath-robe clad Dara ascended the stairs, creating rising eddies of dirt and residue in his wake. A vertical line of brilliant white light stung his eyes slightly as he headed toward it, knowing it as the gap between the ill-fitting hatch panels.

This was something he hadn't expected, a difference between natural and artificial light took him entirely by surprise. He didn't know how it was different, only that it seemed less piercing, despite its intensity, but in comparison with the light he'd had to live with for 4 decades, they were about as different as a Boeing 747 and the word 'synonym'.
He quite didn't know what that meant either.

He came prepared for this as well. Deftly amputating the pair of prescription sunglasses from the lint in his robe pocket, he adorned them on his face, without once removing his eyes from the natural light.

He touched the metal. It was cold. Another unusual sensation from the mechanically heated box he'd been living in. The rust felt rough and he could feel it's stray particles grinding on his lungs. His arms tingled, partly from the cold air, partly from a minor heart irregularity he'd created in the tension. He exhaled, a hand on each panel, a foot on the 3rd and 4th step, a prayer in his heart and a heart in his mouth.

He swung the doors open and rushed out...

Pt.2
Pt.3