Pangaea Effect

Sevastopol

The transport gave sudden lurches as it rode coarsely above the unpaved desert. The blinders thrashed about, igniting the dark room with painful beams of light, then returning the room to pitch blackness, then igniting the room again. The light's sharp, fire-like precision would land itself on two other men, what I had now come to consider as my "cellmates". The first, unnaturally thin, with a wolf-like and unkept beard, almost resembling that of a field of grass. He was olive-skinned, and had been missing an eye, but never made an attempt to cover the empty, skin-coated crater of a socket. A foreman's bandana loosely blanketed his bearded, discolored face, as he miraculously slept through the unbearable ride. The other, slightly fatter and lighter-skinned, sat adjacent to me. With an edged, but friendly face, yet with sharp, piercing eyes, grey and translucent as if they were blind. He possessed a beard, but suppressed to the far corners of his jawline, with a slim streak riding along the middle of his chin. Thin grooves ran down the sides of his left cheek, the borders jutting in and out like mountains trying to reach for the tips of the skies, but unable to- blocked by an impassable firmament. These were scars that suggested past conflict and years of grief gone by.

"No, not Argentine, your accent is too slurred for an Argentine", the man's stark, brown beard, despite being trimmed so closely to his face, moved like a paintbrush while he spoke.

"I wouldn't even be able to pass for an Argentine?", I replied. I was tired. My eyes were blood-shot. my whole body had longed for the pleasant embrace of sleep, but the fair maiden of the night had not been as forgiving. Filling my mind with stress and panic, rather than my desired rest and dreams. I gave up trying to find slumber hours ago.

"You could pass for a Eurasian, you certainly look like one. Although your accent might suggest something more along Las Américas, maybe more north of the border, you know? United Republic?."

"UNAR? You can't be serious, carnal? I've been working on my accent for a year and a half", I replied, with the stale humour of any sleep-deprived insomniac. "I don't sound that much like an Anglò, do I?"

"If you ask me, I can't really say for certain", he concluded, "Personally, I've never seen that many. It's quite near well impossible to cross that damn border- north side or south." The blinders flickering again, the piercing rays of the sun's fire filling in the trenches of the man's scars. Scars of what should seem like loss but only resonating in victory.

Nicolao.  Nicolao was the bearded man's name. Nicolao means victory.

The man continued, "But, one can certainly be glad that that's the case. Ever heard of Augments?"

"Mechanical prosthetics, what about them?" I responded.

"Personally, just the thought alone that humans would try to hack off their limbs and merge their fleshy bodies with chunks of metal and computerized parts makes the hair on my arm stand on end. Metal-men, look just like us and could snap us in half like a turnip."

"That's what bothers you the most?" I replied, perplexed. The extensiveness of human augmentation in the United Republic did create a strange sense unnervingness, to an extent, but I could not comprehend Nicolao's deep-rooted hatred for simple metal prostheses either.

"It's not just that, it's the idea of plugging everyone into one central system, one big, monolithic mainframe. Imagine that kind of control, imagine the corruption. Do you really want someone- some people peeking in on your motives, watching your actions, controlling your movements, all at the press of a button?"

"Sounds very nihilistic. Surely, not everyone in cabinet wants to peer into the minds of their citizens."

"It's called being careful, preparing for the worst. It may seem paranoid, but it'll save your ass someday, I guarantee it."

"Well", Nicolao continued, "I already introduced myself, tell me a bit about you. What's the Hegemony like? Is it really the 'Land of stars and spaceships' that everyone keeps perpetuating?"