Set Pt.2

Pt.1
He rose from the ground, anti-angelic in a plume of soot and dust; a negative of the pearly gates, splintering as they landed with a crack on the adjacent concrete. Tartan robe clashed with grass, holed slippers absorbed the dew of a crisp spring morning, the joyful shrieks and twitters of passing aviary; the nostalgia tore a tsunami through his memory. He turned to face his old house, his bungalow. It hadn't changed much; the roof tiles were a tad worse for wear, and the wood panelling showed signs of rot, but nothing 37 years of neglect hadn't catered for. The nest atop the chimney still remained, although with no sign of it's former inhabitants. Shame, he'd become fond of their midnight warblings.

He stood, gently swaying with the throng of emotion and renewed feeling he was experiencing after so long in clinical emotional sterility, a caged animal freed to feel the air. He remembered it was thin, much thinner than in the chamber. The sky was clear blue, not a cloud to be seen from horizon to horizon. The sun, the giant spheroid still irradiated it's way through the solar system, fusing hydrogen at a phenomenal rate, yet somehow without warming up the spring morning. Bright as anything for lightyears, and it's still minus 3 Celsius. He caught a glimpse of the old thermometer precariously nailed to his doorframe as he stepped up onto the porch. The wood flooring heaved and grunted under unfamiliar weight, re-engaging their suppleness and elasticity after 30 years retirement. The thermometer was covered in a veil of frost, a blanket from the dawn humidity. The white mask contrasted with the yellowish discolouring of the white plastic beneath, emphasising it's age and the absence of it's master.

"You could have at least got dressed"
Dara shivered. A heavy wave of nostalgia and fondness thundered his nerves at the sound of that voice. Any voice would have done the trick, but Anna's in particular…

"Well, don't you want to see how I've changed?" she renewed her plea for his attention. Suddenly Dara became paranoid, nervous about his own expectations, and indeed his vanity. Would 37 years make either of them unlikable. His trampish unshaven face, wrinkled under the pull of time. He knew he was no oil painting, and if he were, it'd probably be a landscape. And her, would she have lost her spritely charm, her gallant but often foolish jollity which characterised her from the rest in the psychology department. He at least felt he should say something.

"I'm a bit worried you might look ugly". He immediately cringed. Life is but a blinding array of colours and light until polarised by the double-blade that is hindsight, and it was currently digging into his brain like a knife through hot water. He could've made a dramatic entrance into the real world. His first words to another Human Being for decades, and that was the best could conjure for the job.

Anna laughed "Oh, well you certainly haven't lost your smooth touch Dara. Turn 'round, I won't bite." He sighed, gripped the hem of his pockets and swivelled on a slipper, grinding at the wood underfoot, spiralling splinters. "Oh. Well you certainly made an effort for your entrance into the new world, didn't you?"

She looked the same as ever. A bright young smile, unusual colours chemically woven into her otherwise black hair, hypothetical colours emotionally woven into her otherwise charming smile. Hands behind back, head tilted to the left and bouncing on the balls of her feet, she could've been 22 again. Aside from a touch of definition around the features, she was no different. He gawped. He expected many things from her but not stoicism in the face of time. In response to this show of amazement, Anna swung her head to the other shoulder and puckered.

"What? Go on then, do I look ugly?"
"N… B… No, you look… Great." This was all his brain could manage for the moment. Too many stimuli at once. He tried to exercise his mind in the bunker, but how do you prepare for a marathon in a cupboard?

Anna giggled, a digital recording of 40 years ago. "Oh good. You look quite, well, rugged. At least you would if you didn't have toothpaste in your beard." The vanity took hold again, and he gripped the robe's sleeve, and abbraised it against his week-long stubble.

"Fuck, sorry, the clock took me by surprise." he apologised through a veil of tartan.
"That's alright", she said, approaching, walking with a swing in her hips slightly narrower than usual, but still characteristic. Her knee-high skirt gleefully flittered in the breeze, and skipped over the horizon of her socks as she jumped the porch stairs. "Oh, it's been so long. How was it in there?" She held his hand. This felt odd, uncomfortable almost, but something he would have to get used to. He felt her nail-polish pulling on his palm.

"Alright, I guess. The first 5 years were a bit of a nuisance, but it got better after that."
"Oh good. I suppose we'd better get down to business and show you the new world then. I have my notepad, like you said, and anything you want to say about it, I'll write down for you. 'Kay?" A diagonal smile loomed in Dara's periphery as he stared out at the city in the horizon. He remembered the sight well, but was somehow confused by it's appearance. He expected it to be…
"Are you coming?" called a voice in the distance. Dara shook himself out of the fixation and looked inquisitively at Anna.
"Oh, that's just Marcus, he's my husband."
"Oh, right. What happened to David?" He had no idea how he remembered this piece of aged trivia, but the small-talk part of his brain seemed to have rebooted.
"Hah, oh yeah. I guess we've got a lot to talk about. But first, business. Can you walk? Good, let's get to the car."
She led the way across the lawn, past the mailbox, and the small heap of decomposing paper beside, past the flattened fencing, towards a slightly beaten-up navy estate car. A sharp-looking but proper, genial man sat at the helm, arm outstretched through the window in anticipation of a clasp.

"Good day Dr Merriman, I'm Marcus Gilmore. Welcome to our world." Anna chuckled at this obviously forced display of goodwill and cheesy scripting.
"He's been practising that all week. Bless him." Dara suddenly became aware of an anticipating hand within his grasp, and the manners department started operations again. He met it with his usual firm grip, and shook.
"I'm sorry, slightly dazed is all. I'm Dara Merriman."
"I know, I've heard a lot about you over the last 25 years. Wasn't quite expecting you as you are though. You okay?" Dara was looking down the highway toward the city. A great hyperbolic line segment stretched toward it, only Euclidean grassland either side, stretching to an elliptic infinity in his periphery. The city still seemed unusual. Something he couldn't quite focus on. Something was distracting him…

"Dara… Dara… Dara." Anna gave a sigh, and raised her hand to give the dazed man a knock back to reality. He started with a slight fumble and apologised again.
"I'm sorry, something's just…" he unfinished, aposiopesis becoming ever-more familiar to his speech.
"Don't worry, we've got plenty more to see yet. Jump in, and Marcus will drive us into town."
"My pleasure, Mr Caveman!"
"Oh stop it Marcus."
"Sorry, but when else do you get the chance?" He gave a wry, sneaky smile, one he knew would irritate Anna. She audibly exhaled and turned away.

"Sorry about this Dara. Come on, let's get in." She opened the door, dislocating it with a familiar plastic-a-la-metal thunk and beckoned the time-traveller in. One leg after the other - motor senses purely on auto-pilot at this point - he landed with a thud on the velour seating, vortices of dust ejaculating into the air as he did so. Anna entered soon after, thudding lighter than he into the chair. She clunked the door back into place, fiddled through the small denim bag she had strapped around her torso, sash-like, and withdrew a notepad.
Dara was conscious of an unusual vibration. 37 years without being in a car, there was so much to remember, such a vast amount of minute details; the vibration, the acute smell of petrol, chocolate bar rappers emerging like foliage from the seat compartments, the frayed ends of the A-Z, the antennae-like indicator stalks protruding from the head of the steering-wheel, the click-clack of the indicator as the small green light on the dashboard flashes slightly out of sync, small futile air-fresheners dangling from the rear-view mirror. Small things, but snowballing.

The indicator was interrupted mid-clack, and it acutely changed location. The car swerved, inertia taking force and flinging the unprepared Dara toward the car door. Anna chuckled, as he peeled his face from the window. The car turned on the deserted road, and headed toward the mouth of the concrete beast up ahead.

"Any time you want to say something, I'll write it down." Anna sat expectantly, HB in hand.
"That city," Dara murmured, "New Avon."
"Yes, that's it."
"It's not right…"
"What's not?"
"I…" he tried to think. That was the wrong approach, "I don't know." He continued to ponder as the blue box fumed it's way toward the perplex-city. Anna twinged with uncertainty at her friend's behaviour - this isn't quite what she expected. Marcus was quite happily tapping out a rhythm on the steering wheel to face the subtle nuances of his guest's bewilderment. And so he sat motionless, yet approaching with speed toward New Avon, attempting to decipher exactly what about it was so unusual.

Pt.3