It was days later – when Meth Head and Artemis were closing in towards Valiant and rescue – that the accident consumed them. They had hitched a ride with Janine, a saleswoman of dietary supplements, energy shakes, luck and good luck potions, the boot and the back seat of her car itself piled high with such produce, numerous samples and printed brochures for the same. Meth Head took the front seat and Artemis the back, leaning her head against the wavering stack of LifeShake, WeightLoser and the strawberry Bling Drink that everyone was obsessed about at that time.

Somewhere on the edges of P_______ they 1st had the news on radio that there was some kind of terrible leak in progess nearby at a chemical works in Bophal. Wasn’t that in India? Meth Head wanted to know. And was it like a different leak than the one that happened there already back in 1984? Janine said no it was probly the same 1 happening again, tho somehow displaced in time and space to the NW coast of Endland and apparently part of some general pattern emerging in those dayze that accidents and disasters from the like former colonial context were happening again though somehow relocated, in Endland and elsewhere.

As an explanation it sounded like some kind of tabloid-flavour ‘psychic history’  ‘what goes around comes around’ garbage and tbh Meth Head dint really believe her what Janine was saying. It was indisputable tho that you really had to keep your wits about you in Endland at that time and strive to make yr decisions based on all the info available concerning what was real and not real. So for politeness and safety, as a cautious just in case, Meth Head asked Janine to turned the radio on and they listened for updates a while. By then it was too late though. The Bophal gas cloud was rolling towards them. Composed mainly of materials denser than air, it stayed close to the ground and spread in the southeasterly direction just like the last one had all them years b4, affecting the nearby communities as well as surrounding roads/infrastructure. The initial effects of exposure were coughing, severe eye irritation and a feeling of suffocation, burning in the respiratory tract, breathlessness, stomach pains and vomiting. People awakened by these symptoms (or those what were already awake) fled away from the plant but those who ran inhaled more than those who had a vehicle in which is was still possible to ride. Primary causes of deaths were choking, reflexogenic circulatory collapse and pulmonary oedema and autopsies (afterwards) revealed changes not only in the lungs but also cerebral oedema, tubular necrosis of the kidneys, fatty degeneration of the liver and necrotising enteritis.

Meth Head and Artemis basically made a series of wrong decisions:

- getting out of the car to see what was happening

- walking towards cloud of gas

- turning and running (see above)