After he got up I asked how he was feeling. “Terrible,” he said, “hurt my wrist.” Then he ran up to the car which had pulled aside a few feet ahead on Curtner.
I was ambivalent about getting more involved because, although the driver was at fault, it was the bicyclist who ran into the car.
I glanced round the bus.
Though the windows were closed, and soon muffed, the bus was full of light. It was cruel light.
I shrank from the faces and forms by which I was surrounded. They were all fixed faces, full not of possibilities but of impossibilities, some gaunt, some bloated, some glaring with idiotic ferocity, some drowned beyond recovery in dreams; but all, in one way or another, distorted and faded.
One had a feeling that they might fall to pieces at any moment if the light grew much stronger. Then-there was a mirror on the end wall of the bus – I caught sight of my own.
And still the light grew.
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
The Hitchhiker series by Douglas Adams follows the adventures of the last surviving man, Arthur Dent, after the demolition of the Earth by a Vogon constructor fleet to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
Arthur Dent is rescued from destruction on Earth by escaping, ironically, on a passing Vogon spacecraft with Ford Prefect, a human-like alien writer for the namesake electronic travel guide.
He explores the galaxy with Prefect and eventually encounters another human, Trillian, a beautiful woman who had also escaped Earth in the nick of time.
Other characters include the two-headed President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and a depressed and paranoid android robot, Marvin.
Update April 22, 2023: Back to Bizarro Land, again. I had been told to exercise (not walk in dark until I dropped); more precisely: do yoga. continue