Set Pt.3

Pt.1
Pt.2

Coffee. He could hardly think of anything which could invoke such fondness, such nostalgia, a verve to live than the smell of coffee. He knew it would taste terrible, as all drinks do served from coffee shops; emporiums of bitterness, both taste and spite, where you can ogle the beshirted teenage slave pouring the powder - in a most unenthusiastic fashion - into the searing hot water. It audibly singes, crackling as the dust is burnt entering the surface, causing the paled ochre skeletons to rise to the surface and create a shrap layer of froth.
The chair he was in was uncomfortable; a fashionable chair designed foremost for style, compromised to befit actual human habitation. It, and he, were in the coffee shop; dining alfresco was impossible in this weather without breaking the shield of ice upon your beverage every five minutes.

So much he had seen on his way here. On the entrance to the city, the concrete began to rise slowly from parking bays, to unusual plinths, to houses, exponentially climbing up the storeys, to blocks of flats and suddenly plateauing at the behemoth cloud-headed skyscrapers. The mist was profuse, as it was on the day of his incarceration, driving made incredibly difficult in a blur of red and white lights, no sense of direction and seeing sights only when you bestride them. "It's just as well", said Dara, "if I'd have seen this all in one go, I might not have been able to handle it."
The pound shops had changed hands and names, but were still profuse enough to cause nostalgia. Various gimmicks of take-away shops rung bells in his head, and as his brain mapped out the scale and layout of the city, it rung a veritable peel. Still ringing the changes, he sat opposite a lethargic Marcus and an anticipant Anna, inhaling his coffee.

"I don't know what to say, really, there's so much going on up there, it's difficult to focus on one particular thing." He lied. There was indeed a vast amount happening, but there was still that niggling enigma about the city which stayed at the forefront and demanded most of his attention. What could possibly have changed here to make him feel this conspiratory suspicion?
"That's alright, maybe you can talk about it better in hindsight. How's your coffee?"
"It smells great." He replied, laconically. A weary sigh radiated from the half-conscious Marcus. He was still recovering from the irritations of driving in a dense city with a visibility of less than 10 feet.
"And any chance you're going to drink it?" he murmured beneath his cuff, hand on forehead with a placeboic massage.
"No, I'm enjoy the smell, I don't want to ruin it with the taste." Marcus chuckled.
"I'm with you on that one."
"Have you figured out what's wrong yet, Dara?" Anna asked. He could see she was getting impatient, but his mind wasn't to be rushed. He was exploring every avenue of change, every nuance in the outline of the city to see what could have struck him with such a sepulchral notion as that which he conspired within.
"No, it's still not… No. I'm sorry, this isn't really going to plan, is it?" It wasn't. This was planned for 3 years prior to his entrapment, every detail specified, every conceivable eventuality covered for. Anna mulled it over at least monthly through the years, determined not to forget the details. This was an important study, and people were in anticipation.
The notepad remained idle, it's face revealing only 'Culture shock; 1)' awaiting a graphite onslaught that just wasn't arising. Still, the rest of the team should be here soon, they may be able to help out. Something might be triggered.

One of the commerce servants came to the table, collected Anna and Marcus' empty mugs, refreshed their orders, and their palette by the time Dara noticed anyone had been. He was staring at an elderly woman shuffling along the street, wheeling her Zimmer-frame, the two parasitic upon the other, immobile without the aid of the other half. She stopped outside a charity shop, white curls bobbing and springing in the breeze, her floral print coat seemed desperate to be free of her grip and to float away on the breeze in anticipation of a better life with the lost handkerchiefs and washing-line goods the wind has claimed over time. But she was holding firm, staring fixedly into the window the the shop at some obscure garment that entraps the attention of only those of her ilk. He hadn't noticed quite how long he had been looking at her, before was interrupted by Anna.
"Please, Dara, have a drink or something to eat. I know it's a bit of a shock but you've got to get back into it eventually." Her hand was resting upon his arm. This open display of affection didn't seem to perturb Marcus; he knew how fondly Anna thought of him and respected that. Dara felt the same uncomfortable feeling he had had on the porch of his dilapidated home. And yet he was surprised with how well he had coped. Most accounts of segregated individuals returning to a populous eventually conclude with re-seclusion after the shock of human contact. But he had gotten used to it rather quickly. Why? Another question to add to his barrack of quandary.

"Okay." He capitulated in the firing line of common sense. He stretched his arm to the mug, robe sleeve catching on the pseudo-polished tabletop, clasped the white orb, and held it to his mouth. The liquid poured in, sediment following. He expected it to burn his mouth, but he remembered he had left it a while and was rather cold at this point. The coffee tasted precisely how he had anticipated it; dusty, sediment suspended in a globule of bitter liquid. And yet…

A coffee epiphany. His attention was riveted to his taste-buds. They hadn't let him down yet, but he had to check his hypothesis. He took another gulp, and another, consuming the drink in a matter of seconds. It was as he thought, as he remembered, an allegory.
He thought of his journey here, the fields he passed, his house and it's surroundings, the outline of New Avon on the horizon that had gripped his attention. Further back, Anna, her clothing, her hair, her mannerisms, the way she spoke, the way Marcus spoke. The blue estate car that ferried them here, it's contents and the myriad of cars intertwined in the city streets. The outlets, the street-side stalls, the feet of the homeless emerging in the mist. Telephone wires strung above his head like netting keeping up the sky. The sky, blue, cloudless, infinite. The layout of the city he remembered with such clarity. The handle on the coffee shop door, the nature of the staff, the bustling atmosphere, the whirr of the machinery, the acoustic variation of 'Silent Night' on the in-shop radio, the uncomfortable and incomplete furniture. The climate, the weather, the architecture, the atmosphere, the populous, the human race.
They had stopped.

He finally realised what was so odd about the horizon, it hadn't changed. In 37 years, nothing had changed. No new buildings, the vast planes of grassland surrounding his house remained grassland. The skyscrapers had gained no numbers, the city remained in it's layout, no expansion necessary. This was why he had no trouble re-adjusting to sociality, there was no adjustment required, no change had been made, nothing to get used to.
Anna, she had aged, that much was certain. Time had passed, but the race had ceased to develop; they had plateaued. Like the skyline of the city, it had risen very hurriedly into the heart of the city, stories rising higher and higher, but had eventually peaked. The race had peaked. We had become comfortable, we had become set.

This was something he didn't expect, something he wasn't prepared for, something his mind couldn't cope with. Could this species, this wonderfully diverse populous just stand still for several decades? This wouldn't happen, it couldn't happen, his imagination wouldn't take it.
He was conscious of the same unusual vibration he felt in the car, but internally. He was the source this time, a fleshy sack of nerves ready to implode in an excited electric fury. His hands provided percussive accompaniment for this distortion, rapping out a syncopated progressive rhythm on the chair handles, his feet flittering about on the rim of the table-leg. His eyes followed a 4-dimensional tennis match, shoulders leaping with the energetic excitement of the moment.
And then it stopped.

He was still. He felt nothing, but a minute cold dread. A rising panic, a sheer absolution erupting from without his soul, rising, rising through his torso, expanding into his limbs. He began to clench, to tense up in the chill. Steadily it rose, overwhelming his deprived senses, until it, filling his every focus, became hotter and hotter, the beads of sweat trickled into his eyes.

Dara jumped with such a fervour that his chair was catapulted behind him, Marcus choked on his chocolate snack. Anna was almost scared witless, after analytically examining every subtlety and nuance in Dara's behaviour, unprepared for anything like this. He apologised hurriedly, in a mangle of words and hasty grunts, and ran out the the door toward a nearby newspaper stand, grappling at the first sheet that caught his attention.
The same fonts, the same colours, the same inky scratchy textile, the same unnecessary drivel. A picture of the president, a different person for sure, but he looked the same; the same kind of person, in the same clothing, with the same hair, performing with the same mannerisms, regurgitating the same sound-bite quotations. To the impatience of the stall-holder, publication after publication scrambled past his attention, all screaming the same confirmation. Culture was still.
He moved on, leaving the straggling Anna to apologise to the stall-holder. Trendy clothes shops, all prostituting their wares through glass-shielded preview, all contained the same variety of garb as he recognised. But fashion could come full-circle, it often has done. He needed something else, something more human.

A small ginger-haired youth approached, resplendent with the misplaced respectability and gallant strut as befits a knight or monarch. Dara, sprinting toward him, clenched his shoulders through white hooded-sweater, and bellowed into the angrily confused boy's face.
"I'm terribly sorry, but I have to ask you, what is your name?" The teen was dumbstruck unaware as to whether he should capitulate or knife the man in the kidneys.
"Err, I'm Wayne." The accent was unmistakably the same anti-poetic dissonance as he recalled, the name doubly so. He relinquished his grasp, and passed by the boy gathering more evidence. Everyone he interrogated, a David, a Gerald, a Susan, a Kirsty, two Johns and a Stacey. Nothing new, nothing. Still with the arms on the shoulders on an unfortunate Twenty-something, he began to weep. He sobbed, his head failing into the chest of the stranger. He descended, his howls sepulchral, morphing into hysterical shrieks, crescendo, cackling in the street, tears in his eyes, blurs in his retina, blood in his head, silence in his chest.

---

The board unanimously decided to place an outright ban on this form of testing. The post-mortem was released today, ambiguously blaming a nervous breakdown and stroke as the causes of death. Anna sat on the board, damming the tears. The board couldn't blame her, she couldn't have handled this any differently, it was culture shock, pure.
The report was concluded. Extreme changes in environment and unfamiliar surroundings can have a catastrophic effect on an individual's sensibilities, healthy or otherwise. The changes in the world are too much for secluded people to handle.
The hearing over, Anna pushed the papers into her denim bag, stood, looming over the air of mild depression in the room and retreated to the corridor where she rushed, heels reverberating against marble, into the arms of an awaiting Marcus.

"How was it?" He asked, with genuine concern.
"Oh, it was fine, they don't think it was my fault."
"It wasn't honey," he brought his hand up to her head, gently cradling it in his chest, "it wasn't your fault."
"But if i'd have introduced him slowly, exposed him to…"
"You did all you could. Don't blame yourself, this world was just too much for him." He conceded. Everyone had conceded at this point, that the world was so different, that the past was outdated, that changes had been made. All that is needed is a careful eye, a fresh view to see how the race repeats itself; for all it's superficial changes, it's makeovers, lifts, tucks, touch-ups and technological masks, we return to the same default. To get comfortable. To get familiar. To become set.