Duality;Solaris Vol. 1

Chapter 1: The Encounter

(Last Reminder: This Book will treat you as an Active Participant. Answers will clearly be given in time of Vol 1, but you CAN figure things out sooner the more you engage. Hope you all enjoy, & have fun!)

It's seven past five, and it's been just like any other Thursday.

Amongst the busy roads and well traveled sidewalks, the office workers make their mass exodus from the 'dungeons that haunt their dreams'— and onto these packed city streets. While most get to enjoy their allotted freedom, not all 9-to-5'ers receive the same luxury. Those poor, and pathetic, few are kept late in order to cover someone's ass, albeit their own or another's. Yet, that's not always the case. There is always one or two that wait for the rush to finish, that are lackadaisical in their speed and unconcerned with their time at the end of the day. There is always a straggler.

A straggler can be found in every workplace, either be it welcome or endurable. Most fit for the typical mold of social invisibility, yet some businesses are not so lucky. Albeit layers of minimalism, the lesser examples of such tend to take more prominence in their notable isolation. However, of those thorny few, an odder anomaly can exist. A hypocrisy of sorts, a responsible straggler. A straggler of such a kind can only appear once a position high enough in command is gained, yet a straggler that finishes a workday for another that may be below them on the professional hierarchy simultaneously. A person of two-faces, one of selfless acts for selfish means; the social masquerade.

Like clockwork, the straggler appears apart from all that pay attention. Alone and cold in their leave.

It's forty-seven past five.

Coming from out of the modest office building on Melville Avenue, a lone straggler strolls out from the stairway entrance and onto the sidewalk beneath. Ears encapsulated by the static flare produced from their flimsy headphones, he paid zero mind to any of the moderate few that he cut through down the sidewalk.

A heated breeze lightly pushes back against his body as the inner-city weather throws it's late-summer tantrum— typical this time of year. While usually a delight for the straggler, the combined weight of his messenger bag and steel briefcase were not as forgiving to nature's tepid nudges.

From a busier-than-usual workday and said additional weight he's incurred, the preferred roundabout stroll isn't in the cards today. Ultimately—and far more reasonably—the shorter path home couldn't be mentally argued against any longer.

Traveling down left of Melville Ave, he had chosen to walk against the tiny forces of nature that glut this side of the sidewalk. Thus, most of this remaining 9-to-5 traffic are passed by quickly, with little-to-none of it gaining an inking of attention from him. Some of those alone while others in duos, the straggler plays oblivious to any of their existences as he bumps past any that do not move out of his in time.

Getting scowls and scorn directed his way, the pace continues on at a consistent nonchalant speed as the former office straggler remains submerged within his own little, musical world. All located within such an impractical cassette tape player, the worn Walkman remains just as unconcerned of this outside world as the man that carries it— for better or worse. Yet, unbeknownst to them, his headphones might've worked a bit too well.

                                 •••••••

Elsewhere, scrapings of dirty tennis shoes drag along with it large huffs of a fretful exhaustion. This symphony echoes spread throughout a series of sun-drenched alleyways nearby. The shoes, slapping minuscule puddles of late morning rain water, fell silent in comparison to what the wearer could hear. Choosing the twists and turns at random, the seeming corridors of alleyways reign unrelenting to those that pass through. Slinging wildly, a boy, no older than that of a late teen, tightly grasps a steel briefcase close to his thigh. While the sun decorates all of these spaces between the grounded buildings, they let little out in the way of view for the outside congestion of the world surrounding them. Ears stringing slim streams of blood, those cartilage appendages only matched by the hectic collisions between the shoes— and the ground. An end comes in sight for the boy as the alleyways have had their fun. Sounds of unimaginable silence, the well-dressed boy's focus seems to have paid off: making it to the end of this long alleyway stretch. Yet, the alleyway's interests are not so easily saturated, it seems— other interests have joined them in their 'fun'. Before reentering the congestion of an evening society, those frantic eyes dart back and forth from the empty alley to the populated street in inane confusion. Unsure of much at this point, the teenage boy pivots to the mildly filled sidewalk behind and continues the maddening dash.