Jones St., Chapter 2: Pages 21-23
Page 21, 5 Panels- Tara's Bedroom/Parking Lot, Bookstore/Jones St. Lit Crawl, Las Vegas NV
Panel 1-2: Action shot of the young man taking a few steps away from the bookcase. He's holding the back of the book with his left hand, and flipping through the pages with his right one. His eyes quickly skim through the text till arriving at the point that he left off in the last tie he read, which he finds in Panel 2.
TARA [muttering, Panel 1]: Tatatata....ah! TARA [reading thought bubble; Panel 2]: "What does it matter who is Past or Future, if we are both alive, for what follows will follow..."
Panel 3: We move to a wider shot of Tara walking from right to left in front of his bed, intently reading the book which shifts the color of his half-full energy bar toward a lighter calming blue. You can see a fuller display of the bedroom in the background that we had seen in bits and pieces in the past few pages.
TARA [Cont., reading thought bubble]: "Tomorrow or in ten thousand years?"
Panel 4: Cut to a shot of Melanie in the parking lot minutes after we last left her. She's opening the driver's side door to her car, which is visible around the left side of the panel view, and is bending down to sit. You can see on her face the same level of anger and frustration that she displayed earlier.
TARA [caption]: "How do you know that those temples are not the temples of your own civilization one hundred centuries from now tumbled and broken?"
Panel 5: We move to a shot of her car moments later as it pulls out of the spot between a Jeep and a Chevy. The layout of the panel is such that we see the tops of a whole host of other cars that happen to be in the same lot adjacent to the Lit Crawl area, along with the glare of street lights visible in two points to the right of the panel view.
TARA [Cont. caption]: "You do not know. Then don't ask."
Page 22, 5 Panels- Street/Front of Melanie's Apartment Complex, Las Vegas NV
Panel 1-5: A five-part series of panels that follows her car traveling back home in the warm of the Spring Vegas evening via a Google Maps-like display that occupies the whole of the page. Panel 1 shows her pulling out of the parking lot and back out onto the street in the little gap of pavement that is available to her at that point in time. Panel 2 shows minutes later the hood of her car as it merges onto the freeway. Panel 3 finds Melanie's ride standing out in the midst of the illuminated traffic on the freeway a short while after that. Panel 4 we see the car turn off at the exit which leads to her apartment (which shows up in a dot just above the panel). And in Panel 5 we see it going down a road illuminated with street lights and the glow of headlights.
TARA [caption, Panel 1]: "But the night is very short." TARA [caption, Panel 2]: "There goes the festival fires in the sky..." TARA [caption, Panel 3]: "...and the birds." TARA [caption, Panel 4]: "Tomas put out his hand. The Martian did likewise in imitation." TARA [caption, Panel 5]: "Their hands did not touch; they melted through each other."
Page 23, 7 Panels- Melanie's Apartment Complex/Tara's Bedroom, Las Vegas NV
Panel 1-2: A two-part set of panels that moves back to the same gate into her apartment complex that signifies the end of her journey; we had last seen at the start of the first chapter. In Panel 1, we see the car from the rear idle in front of the keypad security system; Melanie's arm poking out of the driver's side area to type the code in. In Panel 2, the gate opens up and we see the young woman's arm descend back inside the car.
TARA [caption, Panel 1]: "Will we meet again?" TARA [caption, Panel 2]: "Who knows? Perhaps some other night."
Panel 3: Cut to an interior shot of Tara's bedroom a second later as the TV continues on, playing in the background as it had before. He's seen standing to the left of his mattress, looking up toward the ceiling with a note of inspiration over what just flashed into his head; his hands just beginning to close the book. It coincides with a slight smile that comes over the right side of his face at the same time.
TARA [inspired]: Ohhh, I got it!
Panel 4: We move back to the bed where Tara has taken to sitting down once again, typing up his idea into the unseen Word document; the half-smile now to a much wider ear-to-ear type smile. You can see the book resting next to him to the right of the panel view complete with the top of the bookmark used to mark his place.
Panel 5-6: A two-part set of panels that focuses on the same setting and layout as the previous one minutes later. In Panel 5, Tara looks up and toward the left at the sound of an alarm coming from off-panel. In Panel 6, a few beats afterward, we see him with the remote in his right hand. Just above it, you can see the sound of a click of the remote.
TARA [Panel 5]: Ah, it's 11:50... CAPTION: [Panel 6]: Bed Time 11:50 P.M.
Panel 7: Full black panel that shows...nothing, just as if we're looking at a TV screen that has been turned off.
TARA [in white letters, in the center of the panel view]: Till next time!
END OF CHAPTER 2