A bend in space-time (Season 2) - The Umbrella Academy

Chapter 11: The machinery of the universe

Chronological markers: this scene fits like a deleted scene from The Umbrella Academy, saison 2, episode 1, around 34:50 (in the early evening, after Five visits Diego in the psychiatric hospital, and before he finds Luther at Jack Ruby's bar).

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November 15, 1963 - 07:07 pm

The light that filters through the store's smoked window is dull, this evening, and my eyes wander over the arched, inverted letters that spell out the name Merelec. On the sign announcing that the store is closed. On the pile of component boxes and the accumulation of TV sets awaiting to be repaired. In my hand, the soldering iron hasn't moved for a minute now, and I finally turn it off. My head rests on the table in the crook of my arm. I'm tired. Exhausted. And I know it's probably the same for Lloyd, who has even more TV sets lined up to be fixed, at the Dallas Centre store right now. I don't know if we'll get it all done in time for Kennedy's 'coming' on November 22. And we'll have literally seen each other three hours, since he returned from Houston.

I sigh. I haven't heard from Klaus since we hung up amidst a troubled silence on Monday. He didn't say anything about it, but I sensed he was fighting the urge to jump into the Dodge Polara and drive all the way here. If he really fancied it, it would take him a good twenty-five hours of driving, interspersed with stops, to get to Dallas. About three days, assuming he didn't kill himself. I sigh again. I don't even have the strength to think about it.

As my eyes close, the circuit board gradually merges into a dreamlike star map, with the bright spots of soldering no longer making sense to my exhausted mind. I no longer have any energy to flow through the copper wires, not even enough to keep me awake. Capacitors and resistors seem to dance around me as if the universe itself were nothing more than a machinery. And I fall asleep - right where I am - the acrid smell of resin and white-hot metal dancing around me.

*Crack!*

How long have I already slept, when this space-time anomaly rips the fabric of my sleep? I don't know, just as I don't know whether I'm dreaming or not. I don't want it. Not right now. I need to sleep, and not yet another restless dream in which Five's pointy face stares back at me over the lined-up cathode-ray lamps. I turn my head and bury it in my arms, as if desperately trying to protect myself from him, once again.

"Go away," I tell him through my numbness, to where sleep and consciousness intertwine.

I've tried to do this time and time again, and I've always failed. The dreams I have about Five are always far too vivid and realistic for me to keep them away, or even to distinguish them from reality. I know that - this time - I won't succeed either. I can even feel the air he moves as he leans against the nearest cardboard boxes.

"You'd better ask me how I found you."

I remain silent. Since those dreams began on my first day here in 1961, this is the first time one of my visions of Five is speaking to me. I think I must be getting worse and worse, but in the end, this isn't so surprising. And anyway, as in the days when Five was for real in front of me, he seems prone to doing both questions and answers.

"I'm still trying to figure out by what quantic wonder I was given to see through your eyes".

I frown against my wide-knit sweater. And slowly, painfully, I finally turn my head and contemplate what torture my subconscious is to inflict on me this time.

He stands there just as he used to: in his rumpled Umbrella Academy uniform, with his high socks and... the bowling shoes we hadn't had time to take off before escaping, in 2019. Really, my brain is getting better at making me hallucinate. I inhale deeply, forcing myself to sit upright in my chair, as if my head weighed even heavier than before I fell asleep. And I stand still, staring at him with a jaded expression.