M: Read the previous episode here

The train lurched to a halt in Gloucester, and the figure glided over to the door. Using both vitriol-stained hands, it managed to lift the handle and swing the door onto the platform.

"Come on, then. There's something we both need to see."

/u/bloodycontrary stepped up to the door, and had to grip the frame to resist the vertigo.

What he saw was not pretty.

The sky was a sullen purple excited only by the occasional burst of artificial orange, as if lit by artillery. Buildings had their roofs ripped off. The tar-stained walls missing breaks and entirely devoid of windows. A fierce, hot and dry wind whipped the platform, kicking up dust and shreds of paper as though to stoke a reminder of a civilisation now passed.

The figure stood there, his robe completely at rest, beckoning the unsteady man in the doorway forward.

His hand slipped off the frame of the door.

On the platform, among civilisation's detritus, he fell into a dream.

For what felt like hours they fell, together, the figure perfectly serene, arms crossed, as they fell into a purple-tinged blackness.

Finally they landed, on an abandoned street showing the same signs of distress as Gloucester.

The station named their location as Cambridge.

"What's happened?" /u/bloodycontrary blurted out.

The figure bowed its head. "What do you think's happened? Actually, no, I'll ask you again later. People are still living here. Let's walk around."

The two picked their way between abandoned cars, litter and unmilked cats, until they saw a street just as untidy as the others but with glass in the windows and people shuffling nervously along the pavement.

Every single person was coughing and wheezing, from 16 year olds to 50 year olds, although none older than this could be seen anywhere.

/u/bloodycontrary called out to one stranger.

"What happened here, friend?" /u/bloodycontrary said, waving his arm at the street and the curious smoking stick in the stranger's hand.

The stranger narrows his eyes. "Don't you dare say I'm in sin!" he wheezed, coughing into his hand and wiping black and red snot on his sleeve. "Only the STATE can deceive me!" He took a big drag of what was evidently a cigarette, which had looked more like a colourful cigar or small firework, and which gave off a putrid and almost pestilent fragrance. "The STATE mustn't tell me what to do with myself, ever, and nor will you!" He coughed again, and hacked up an almost-solid lump of phlegm the size of a walnut, which he let dribble onto the pavement. "If I'm going to be deceived, it'll be on my terms. I can stop if I want." That seemed to end the conversation has he marched off, stopping every few paces to spit another lump from his throat.

The figure spoke for the first time since the station.

"You see how he believes only the state can deceive him? He's incapable of recognising the deception anybody gives him, so long as he has a feeling of control. But is it control?" The figure spread its sleeves wide and sighed. "There's a reason he can't walk more than a few metres, and why he's comfortably the oldest person in this city."

"Now," the figure said, "let's go somewhere else."

/u/bloodycontrary fell down with the figure again, this time down a shorter rabbit hole. He landed this time in a small suburban park. The grass was no comfort, however; it was crispy and sharp, and he stood up so quickly he felt faint.

"Welcome to Manchester," the figure said.

On the southern horizon he could make out the broken silhouette of the Beetham Tower. To his horror, the top half seemed to have fallen off. The rest of the city centre was plainly on fire, a particularly acrid fire that blotted out what had to be the winter sun.

"Oh my fuck," /u/bloodycontrary gasped. "What's caused this?"

"Let's find out," replied the figure, and the two set off across the dead grass toward what in the distant past must have been a leafy and comfortable neighbourhood. The houses, sitting now apparently unoccupied, were comfortable and the gardens large. The air of abandonment wasn't as strong as around Cambridge railway station - some gardens were less overgrown with dead plant life than others - but the aura of emptiness was pervasive.

In the middle of the street stood a hulking monolith; a horrible contrast with the distant splendour of the leafy street.

“It’s a water tank,” /u/bloodycontrary said grimly, “with a cannon.”

Beyond the tank were the unmissable signs of struggle. Broken fences. Ruined walls. Items of clothing left on the ground. Helmets. Tear gas cannisters.

A remote boom rent the air. Even the figure seemed to jump.

“The old - well, middle-aged - man we met in Cambridge said only the state shouldn’t be trusted. Turns out, it was the state telling him that. He embraced it. The people here? They resisted it.” The figure floated past the tank and bent over, wheezing slightly, as he reached for an altogether more sinister tool: some kind of rifle.

“You see,” the figure said, “when the state said people should live life as they choose, it was being arbitrary. It didn’t attempt cohesion. Sure, you could smoke yourself to death even if alternatives were available and evidence showed mitigating harm was preferable,” the figure then delivered a well-placed cough to clear its throat, “but could you protest?”

“I assume not,” /u/bloodycontrary said through gritted teeth.

“They could at first,” resumed the figure. “But not for long. Power begets power, begets power, begets power. Home Secretaries and Governments realised over the years that they could arm the police and paint protesters as the malcontent, the unwashed, the undeserving. By giving with one hand, they could take with the other. Half the population - the half that lent them votes - was satisfied with deception by other means. The other half was not. And they were crushed.

“And the other hand was, as you can see, made of iron.

“It starts with giving the police access to water cannons. Then tear gas. Then rubber bullets. Then you redefine who’s a protester and who’s a rioter. Then? Then the Government can do what it wants.”

/u/bloodycontrary stared at the figure. “But this hasn’t happened, has it?”

The figure coughed again. “Not yet.

“But it won’t take too many Libertarian Party governments to seal your fate.”

The air swirled again, and the houses blurred from view. The scene spun before their eyes, and they were in the whirlpool again, transporting them to their next destination. Images flashed before their eyes, of explosions, of men and women giving speeches, of statues and of tears, until they finally landed.

Back on the platform in Gloucester.

“We have more still to do,” the figure said as he drifted down the platform.

STAY TUNED FOR PART 4 OMG