Tourist - Part One
Rating: R, Very AU, Dan's POV
Disclaimer: Imitation is the highest form of compliment. I don't own Darren, Daniel, Karl, or Ben, but everything else is a creation of mine.
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2249
There's a certain beauty in airports. People rushing, the speed of life propelling their fears and anxieties of being late. They remind me of the white rabbit from Alice. Airports: the beacons of speed. Walking wasn't fast enough, so they made cars. Cars to trains, trains to airports, always faster. More convenient, even if it wasn't.
For a guy like me, the airport was a perfect place to hide. I hide from real life, because people assume things. The snippets of life that I reveal in the airport lead them to believe I'm someone important. I can sit there, all day, in those annoying lounges and people will pass by. Hundreds. And they see me there, dressed to travel, and assume I'm rich, annoyed at delay, held back, that I have a need for speed like the rest of humanity.
I'm a faker. I don't go to the airport to travel. I go to observe.
Always a new terminal to visit in the London Airports. Sometimes I only visit the same place twice in a year. I hold conversations with other repressed travelers, and they feel a connection with me, feel the need to tell me their problems and who's waiting for them at the other end of the world. I nod and smile. Yes, of course I understand sir. Yes, I hate TransContinental too. Yes, they're a bunch of shitheads. Smile, nod, they move off to find someone more effective to fume to. But my real observations don't come from the people that come to talk to me, Mr. Fellow Passenger. They come from the people who are afraid, the ones that are oblivious. The tired mother who will let her child grind french fries into the floor for an hour without realizing he's planning on eating them later. The guy who shoplifts from the magazine store. The teenage girl who's never been on a plane before, but is flying alone. These people interest me. This is real human life, something I can no longer have. Something I am no longer a part of.
Stripped of my name, assigned a number, that is the way of my generation. I was around for the end of it, the defamation of personality. Everything that was artistic, soulful, the statement of body, had been slowly stripped and peeled away. Gone was offensive clothing, language, music. Gone were the airports. Gone.
An offer was made, and accepted. If there were people like me who couldn't handle the adjustment, we would be compensated. Frozen. Cryogenically, until one day we'd wake up, and bam, we'd be as serene as Hindu cows. They called it synaptic readjustment. They could have called it Fun With Enemas for all I cared...I just wanted out. And from then on, I was just number 7765329. Goodbye to Daniel Jones.
~*~*~
2299
Cold, cold, everything was so cold. I could feel my eyes blast open, only to immediately close again, the intense light burning into my pupils from underuse. My whole body ached, but the worst was the cold. Slowly, ever so slowly, I opened my eyes and let them adjust to the room.
Everything had a silver, metallic look; doctors covered in quarantine suits traversed the large open room. There were vats everywhere, like a giant bathtub sales floor in a Sears. Two people stood in front of me, a balding man and a woman with a distant look in her eye. She seemed to look past me the entire time. "Bloody hell," I swore, as my teeth began to chatter together. "Is it always so fucking cold?"
Her eyes locked on me, growing wide. She looked like she was about to burst into tears, and the bald guy hit a button. "Another reject," he mumbled, shaking his head sadly. "Such a shame. Such a shame, indeed."
Then I blacked out.
~*~*~
When I came to, I was acutely aware of time loss. I was sitting upright on the floor of a windowless room, a small place with a depressing atmosphere and even more depressing individuals. The figures in front of me had changed, mutated into one young black man covered in dirty rags and chains. I wondered if the lab had ever existed. "Great," he spat. "Splendeed. I an' I was wondrin if you'd be gracin' us wit yor presence dis millenia."
I almost cried with joy. I hadn't heard an accent so exotic since ten years before the Freeze. They had been deemed personal expression, and banned. I realized belatedly that I still had mine. Swearing from behind me made me stand and turn, wavering. The Jamaican steadied me. "You be healin', neh? Deys lef' you here wit I an' I," he explained. "Called you anotha faile' speriment o sometin. You one o dah frozen, neh?" I nodded weakly, and he slapped me on the back. "Fuckin' good, den. He'll be glad to be seein' da likes o you."
"He?" I asked, feeling dizzy.
"Hayes, leader o I an' I and all de rest, neh? Surely you heard o him?" The man led me slowly toward a door. "He be de reason dat I an' I be a livin'. He take care o you no problem." And with that, he shoved me through the door.
A scraggly excuse for humanity surrounded a small bonfire, gloves with fingertips cut off and knives and torn jackets surrounding them like armor. A platinum blonde squatted on his haunches, closest to the fire, rubbing his hands rapidly. Flanking him were a set of twins on the left, and bundle of rags on the right. I assumed that there was a body in it, but no appendages were to be found. And between the rag mass and the second twin, there was heaven.
Heaven, as I'll call it for now, was rising up and brushing off his pale hands on black jeans, combat boots stamping slightly to knock out the cold. A dirty orange shirt under a biker style leather jacket set off against his pale face, raven hair spilling over his eyes, which were equally lined in black. His lips pulled back to reveal a grin, and two rows of astonishingly pearly teeth. They clashed with the motif of the entire place. Such was Hayes.
I could feel my chaperone bowing behind me, and I watched as the brilliantly pale man in front of me laughed. His laugh matched his teeth. Bright, and out of place.
"I an' I found him, suh," stated the man behind me in a clear voice. "An' I an' I spectin deh ree-wards." He drew out the word, making my skin crawl.
The Adonis in Black stepped forward and produced a bare hand, which I shook hesitantly. "Darren Hayes," he said quietly. "And you must be Daniel Jones. Or do you go by your number?" His voice was lightly and airily accented, and made me almost forget my surroundings He didn't wait for a reply to his question before continuing. "You've met Rol, I assume." Then he pointed to the fire pit, and the crowd surrounding it. "That's Ben, Thing 1 and Thing 2, and somewhere in that pile is Koss."
He drew me aside from the group, putting both hands on my shoulders. He looked me square in the eye, the smile fading from his lips.
"Welcome to the revolution, Daniel."
continued in part two...