I'd been sitting with Perkins in this fortress for weeks. One room in particular was spectacular. Just absolutely magnificent. It was probably about 10,000 square feet. A giant 48x27 foot image was cast on the wall by the projector. The vaulted ceiling was probably sixty feet above us. The walls were plain, off-white drywall, with the exception of the west wall, which was a monstrous, double-paned glass occlusion tilted slightly inward. Throughout the couple of weeks we spent there, the view was magnificent, especially at sunrise. The sun peeked over the modest hills and fuzzy trees a mile away, dominating the room and making a mockery of the fluorescent light hung from the ceiling. It wasn't exactly a technological marvel, but almost any other man or woman from any other time would have been awestruck. As it happened, the year was 2007, and we were upset that the glare rendered us unable to play PS2 during daylight hours.
Chess was no longer played because it was no longer necessary. For some reason, Perkins and I sat around and talked, despite the three years we'd spent together with hardly anything else to do but talk. We fully spent one particular night debating over whether there would ever be a PS3. It'd been four years since The Event, but we still couldn't shake popular culture, still grasping at it like a phantom umbilical cord.
I'll back up a bit, I'm sorry.
Perkins and I were led out of our cells, unsightly and haggard. We'd stopped caring about that sort of thing a while ago, but Wes certainly didn't. They did call him "General" but it was mostly ceremonial. When we first reacquainted ourselves with him, he presented himself in sweatpants and a Buffalo Bills T-shirt.
He was certainly less at ease than we were, if that was even possible. The look on his face was a mixture of amusement, bewilderment, and guilt that could only be concocted by the coinciding of an ambigious new world order, an awkward long-lost friendship, and a horrible stench. We didn't see much of Wes, only told that he was "needed elsewhere".
The train ride was a long one.