Aim Lawrence flicked his eyes from one traveller to the next, studying their vacant expressions, trying to categorize each person to their group, memorising their behaviour as the train rocked and jolted from side to side. all of you, wake up he whispered to himself, but he almost hoped someone would hear him.
The lights blanked out, almost total darkness fell on the coach and its passengers, all that could be seen were silhouettes and shadows. no one really acknoloedged the lack of light, a few people shuffled in their seats, a few coughed, but nothing more, after all it happended all the time, that was the beauty of it. Nothing to worry about... poor fools he thought don't worry you'll all know soon enough.
The lights outside flashed past the windows with a steady rythmn, suddenly a blue spark flashed and illuminated the carriage, in the cold blue light, Aim closed his eyes and sighed.
Today was like any other day, completly different from the rest, if anyone ever tried to make out that life was dull, then they were hugely mistaken, thanks to time, eveyday is always different. In peoples small little worlds things may get repeatative, but across the whole huge scale of it all, life, is so complex and chaotic that nothing could ever be the same twice.
Rebecca sighed, well at least that was thought she was trying to hold on to; trying to keep the idea that the human race actually was something to be proud of was a problem of hers. The reason for the problem, was her perspective, it was far too limited, and she knew it.
What are we aiming for? what is the point, if we are all alone, when does it end and why.
She reached the top of the escalator and walked off in to the hub-bub of commuters and travellers all trying to reach their destinations across the floor of london waterloo. Her depressed thoughts receeded back to her subconcious as she navagated her way through the wandering chaos of people. Her brain switched over to what she was going to cook for tea, and what might be on TV that was worth watching as she lost herself in the journey home. She was unaware at the time quite how much of a purpose her life would take on in the next 24 hours.
In the tube carriage, the internal lights flickered back on, bleaching every reachable surface with a dirty yellow, the scene took on a familiar gritty look, differing from the cold darkness that had only moments before hid all the marks of age and dis-repair.
Aim opened his eyes again, taking in the same bored faces, the same protective stances, the same well designed adverts willing you to forget yourself and accept exactly what you are told.
He smiled, the more information i gather, the easier this will be - at that moment a balding man sitting opposite learned forward and said what looked like words. The man gestured towards his wrist with a pointed hand, and moved his lips in a way that could easily be confused for a gold fish. Aim couldn't hear a word, his background cancelling headphones blocked all sound vibration that was not eminating from either of the built in speakers.
The headphones accomplished this by having a microphone built on the opposite side of the speaker, the microphone took in the outside noise, inverted the sound, and then played the sound to the listener, as the waves overlapped, they cancelled each other out, blanking the unwanted noise. Unfortunately they didn't block the sound vibrations travelling through his body, and so the only way to be as safe as possible was to interfere with any external vibrations by using the headphones to also play a constant white noise.
Aim knew what the man had asked, he also knew that the man didn't need to know the time, he knew that the man knew he knew, but what he didn't know was Aim was going to ignore him. After a second request, a women to the left answered, along with giving Aim a conserned frown and a shake of the head.
It was a trick, i'm not stupid... he never removed his headphone when outside. They were his protection, he didn't need guns and armour, his enemy didn't use the kind of weapon that would nessesitate such measures. No, they were much more tricky than that... his enemy were invisible, ghosts, they were figments of imagination only because they had that kind of control. They could make you believe what ever they wanted, send you mad with confusion.
He knew they existed, but they didn't know about him yet, at the moment he was just a misfit, someone who wasn't taking to their methods of control, nothing to worry about, just a problem that would be quashed eventually. But Aim had no intentions of sitting arround waiting for them to invent a way round his defense. He had a plan and he was soon to put it into full effect, soon these people would know the deception, and something that Aim could not accomplish by himself would become a reality... the defeat of the enemy - and all it took was for them to know they existed.
As with any conspiracy, more often than not all the conspirers had to achieve was removing the enemies credibility, madness was usually a good card to play. This would normally be most peoples initial assumption anyway, when facing a rather unbelievable situation. The problem facing Aim was that the truth of the current situation was so unbelievable; that people would tune out even before he'd reached the end of his very first centence.
That was when he saw her, she was staring directly at him, her eyes lifeless and grey. Her expression was difficult to place, it had the elements of distaste but with a strong hint of interest. Aim froze up for a second, his brain locked, all he could do was stare back at her, his thoughts blank. Then he realised, immediatly, he reached into his jacket pocket; feeling around for the object he knew to be there. Grasping the three spherical shapes joined side by side he suddenly coughed. Lurching forward slightly in his chair his hand flew up to cover his mouth, in a seeming display of manners.
With the object hidden within his mouth he bit down on the structure, activating the mechanism within the larger of the spheres. a gas started to seep slowly from the device, he moved the tiny object to the side of his mouth and proceeded to breathe normally.
The girl didn't seem to have noticed his improvised movements. She was still staring as if to bore a hole through his head. His thoughts started to filter back into his head, think, i'm not going to fail now forcing his mind to work, he turned his vision from her and mimicked the lines of faces that surrounded him, bored and coercible.
They can't know about me yet... this must be just procedure... checking up on an annomily. That must be it.
The gas he had released into his system was a neural stimulant, designed to keep certain parts of the brain active, similar to that of a caffiene hit, but stronger and with more of a purpose. It was his only line of defence if they tried to target him specifically not for much longer though he thought soon i'll have a proper defence.
She must have been following for a while. Many people would just assume the girl was either interested in him or not realising where she was staring. Aim knew the previous never happened, not for him, and the later only really occured when "they" were in control.
Curiosity was nawing at his thoughts, he really wanted to see if she was still staring, but he didn't dare to draw attention to himself. True, the natural body language for the sitautation would probably be to glance back and see, but he was surprised at how blatent the attempt was. She was obviously trying very hard to access his mind, and so it was very probable that she was convicing people not to look in her direction. He needed to obey her instructions as much as he could guess. To be flagged early as a danger would be disasterous for his plan.
Suddenly, as a stark contrast from the dark tube tunnel, light shot in through the windows behind him, signs and adverts flew past the windows opposite, at first they were unreadable - but the train began to slow and soon the station name was visible. embankment. his stop. The his window pulled to a holt on an advert for a mobile phone. His mind imagined the products tag line being replaced. "we need to know where you are and what you're saying, please help us"
He stood up and headed for the doors, he managed to catch a glimpse towards his "tail". He breathed a sigh of relief, she was no longer looking, her face had reverted to that same vacant expression as everybody else. I'm obviously not that interesting, shame he stole a slight grin as the doors slide open with a hiss of hydrolics and mechanical clicks. "Please mind the gap" Don't worry i will, between me and you.
Rebbeca made her way up the short thin flight of steps, her shoes resounding on the part metal part rubber steps, half way up she made a grasp for the side rail as the bus lurched forward. Everytime, patience is a virtue... damn it.
She reached the top and made her way to her seat as the bus wove its route through the evening london traffic. It was weird, but she always tried to sit in the same place, if that wasn't possible she'd try and sit as close as possible. She had marked it down, originally, to her just being strange. But once she'd thought about it she started noticing familiar faces all sitting in "their" seats. Intrigued, and being the type of person who had to know why, she researched the reason on the internet and learned a great deal about human habits, the human as an animal, instincts and body language.
Removing and folding her coat, she sat down and made herself comfortable. leaning against the window, she watched as her breath misted against the cold glass, frosting her view of the passing world. The street lights became a blur as her eyes defocused and stared into space. It was definately november weather, dull, dark and miserable, exactly how she felt. Talk about pathectic falacy
t.b.c