139 Years to the End of the World

Cyborg People, Part One

The makeshift train-gon, that's the name I've decided for this train-wagon hybrid monstrosity, finally came to a stop at the end of the tracks. The tunnel had collapsed before us, just a stone's throw away from the old Roagnark underground train station, which according to my grandchildren, had been defunct since the war started. Black rings around the ceiling showed the explosion used to close off the path, an intentional blockade made by The Forum inside.

I dismounted from the handcar just as the rebels got out of their wagons and my own party climbed out of the cart behind, stretching their aching backs as they did so.

Jason approached me first, asking, "Where are we?"

"Roagnark," I replied.

"Impossible," he looked to his watch. "We're six hours ahead of schedule," he looked at me with shifted eyes.

A time traveller came while everyone was sleeping, put the train-gon into a time bubble, and zoomed us here at twice the speed of time. Was what I wanted to say. It would have been an infinitely more interesting story than me, raising my prosthetic and saying, "Robot arm. Super fast. Doesn't get tired." I realized how badly I wanted to make a masturbation joke with those lines.

"Huh..." He stepped towards me, face coming closer than I was comfortable with. His stare was intense, like that down a barrel of a gun. "Guess you are a cyborg," he said the word with the same underlying hatred as a racist would say nigger, but never admitting that they were racists. "We'll start digging a way through. Once that's done, you're going in and do what we promised."

"And what's to stop me from running away once I'm inside?"

I already knew the answer, even before he looked over to my grandchildren. A part of me was just optimistically hopeful that he'd have forgotten. "So long as you do this for us. Nothing will happen to them. I guarantee it."

I wondered if I punched him with my metal arm, would his head snap off. My first violent thought in over a decade was that of murder. "And how am I supposed to get in?" I asked instead.

From his coat pocket, he took out a metal orb no bigger than an apple, with a base that was grounded and buffed flat. "There's a sensor wall surrounding the entire developed border of the city. There's an old border right at the entrance of this old train station. Just go up there, place this orb down at the centre of the entrance, and it'll allow us a two meters gap to move in from. But it has to be placed from the other side for it to work."

"That's it?" I asked, suspicious of how easy the job seemed.

"That's it," he replied. "But of course, I told your grandchildren something different. That the machine needs to be placed near to the generators in the middle district of the sector. That should give you plenty of time to find us the warehouse with the E.M.P bomb."

I took the device from him. It made a low humming noise, and I could see my hand vibrating slightly from whatever machinery that was working within it. I wondered how it was powered, and for how long it would last. Perhaps it was one of those perpetual motion devices.

"Me and my men are going to dig you a path. Shouldn't take long." He waved the rebels over. A pair of them pulled out a jackhammer-like machine from the wagon, though with infinitely more complex moving parts, wiring strung in and out like veins. "You might want to spend what time you have left with your family."

His back turned to me as he walked away towards his men. I stared as he turned out of sight and behind the wagon, wary of how nice he acted to me with his last sentence, despite the threat of having hostages and possible murder of my family line.