The sound is overwhelming. A rushing, bleeding, infuriating sound; pounded it's way through Scott's head. Then the light. The blinding, mesmerizing, burning light.
Then silence.
Then, it all comes rushing in to focus. Scott is standing in the middle of a large room, massive really. One wall is completely glass, but all that can be seen on the other side is the perfect vista of the perect manicured lawn, with a blue sky with a few scattered puffy white clouds watching over it, protecting it, nurturing it, making it grow softly and silently, and ever so slightly.
Scott is completely disoriented as he spins, figuratively and literally. He is searching for meaning, for understanding. These new images, are fighting at his cerebral cortex, mashing his brain with sights, sounds, and feelings. Most are like the sights and sounds you barely remember. The feeling of walking in to a room you remember, yet something is completely different about it, but you don't know what that difference is washes over him.
Behind him row upon row of sparsely populated benches. To his left a bank of sparsely populated escalators rise to the second floor. The second floor was crammed with those annoying rope lines that pen people in like cattle, shuffling towards some final destination that one assumes will be better than that of the average cow. At the end of the rope line stand signs for three different gates. No outward signs of what the gates lead to can be discerned frrom where Scott stands.
This is when Scott notices the other people. Really notices them. They all seem lost, seem to be searching. They are almost all looking around for something, and waiting for someone to explain why they are there.
There is a crackling sound, followed by a series of soft tones. The loudspeaker comes alive, and Scott realises it is probably the only thing in the building that is.
"Please check your boarding passes and proceed directly to your assigned gate. If you do not have a boarding pass, please proceed to a ticket agent to discuss travel arrangements. Remain calm."
It is a female voice, and it seems reassuring in a businesslike fashion. No emotion, but not mechanical, just matter of fact and soft and gentle.
Scotss begins to look in his pockets, he realises he is wearing a pair of blue jeans and a white cotton shirt. This is not the outfit he left home in. There is nothing in his pockets.
What the hell is going on? He says to himself in a paniced tone. Apparently he missed the part about remaining calm. He is not calm, he is in fact as far from calm as one can get.
Scott notices a young woman, slightly rounded, with horribly sad eyes staring at her wrists. In the next aisle of seats there is an old man napping who posses the most mottled, parched, cracked, pale skin Scott has ever seen. A few benches down he notices a man in the uniform of a construction worker who is most likely trying to figure out why there isn't a hammer embedded in his skull.
This is when what little heart Scott has is broken in two. He sees, and hears a little baby, no more than a year old. The baby is sitting all by itse;f, crying, searching for mom.
A man in a strange powder blue uniform with the word staff on one breast, and Chuck on the other walks up to the baby, picks it up, and begins to try and soothe it as he walks towards the escalators.
As realisation dawns, so too does panic. Not the same panic he had before, but a new one. Scott has no boarding pass. Scott is dead, and he isn't going anywhere.
Those same soft series of tones precurse the same message. Scott absently wonders why everyone in the room can understand english, when clearly a few of them are not from America. Surely the man in the Toga with the brown skin was not just on Main St. in Lawrence Kansas mere minutes ago. An what about the Japenese man arguing with the woman at the information booth.
WAIT! The information booth! That is where the answers will come from, that is where information surely must be distributed to the masses. Why would you call it an information booth if you didn't have insight in to what was going on?
Slowly, and unsteadily, Scott begins to try and move. His rubber legs give out and he crashes to the ground. That is when he finally notices his head isn't on straight. Not in that, hey, I am completely messed up cause I am dead and yet here I am in some strange airport or bus terminal or whatever the hell it is kind of way; but rather, in that, hey my neck is broken and my head is flopping to the side sort of way.
"Careful there buddy, you gonna need to wait a minute or two to get your death legs under ya'" The voice is that of a Brooklyn man, the body it belongs to is also encased in the same uniform as Chuck. This one is named Jack. "Got your boarding pass, brother?"
For a few long moments, Scott was speechless. When he finally catches his voice it is cracked, parched, like a man who hasn't had anything to drink for the last three days of desert walking. "Uhmmmm, n, n, no."
"Ok then pal, ya need to talk to one of them agents over there," Jack says, pointing to a row of small office doors. "Just wait outside of em, and someone will call you in."
It takes Scott several minutes of effort to rise to his feet, all the while trying to drown out the sobs of the recently departed, his own mind spiraling madly with the revelation.
He stands in line for what seems like an eternity to you and I, but he will learn the true definition even as we watch.
A gaunt, tall pale man with a british accent beckons him in to his office by calling Scott`s name.
Scott enters the room against his better judgement. He peers around, noticing every detail. The faux wood finish paneling, the large stained brown bookcases, the oak desk with family photos on it. There is a laptop of all things resting comfortable to one side of the brown and green desk blotter.
"Welcome Mr. Reynolds, allow me to pull up your credit file." The man pauses his speech while he types a few commands in to the computer, then makes a few oh's and ah's. "Well Mr. Reynolds, this is going to be an interesting trip for you I think."
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