139 Years to the End of the World

Cyborg People, Part Two

When I was a kid, my parents would take me to ride the trains for the simple joy of riding it. I would run up and down the cabin, for reasons that only my younger mind could comprehend. Though if I had to guess, I would say the bliss of having fun without borders were as welcoming as ice cream on a hot day. The tracks were empty now. With the tunnels cleared, I was pushed into station alone. With only a torch to guide my way, I climbed onto the station platform. A thick layer of dust had coagulated into a black smirk on my hands and I wiped them against my pants.

The walls of the station were filled with graffiti. Apparently, despite the dystopian would outside and the sensory field borders, or the passage of time, teenagers were still teenagers. Sprayed over every single available space were words like 'SILK' and 'GOOSE' and other phrases that were nonsensical to me, most of which I took as the equivalent of 'cool'. A single graffiti however, was plastered over every other, but split separately so they covered all three major walls. The number '139'. Probably a sign for a gang or something similar.

I headed towards the exit, where the once automated access gates were now defunct, rusting slowly with time. I had to manually push the rotary bars, which proved little challenge, despite the spine shrivelling screech from the rust.

"Oh..." I let out as I neared the closed shutters of the main hall. Even though I had not physically felt anything in weeks, I could sort of sense a tingle, perhaps psychological, down the length of my arm, and I knew that the sensory field was marked by the same shutters.

I approached the gates, and saw one had bright white light shining through the bottom, likely unlocked and served as the entrance for the aspiring graffiti artists. Using my robot arm, I easily lifted the shutter over my head and stepped out into a brightly lit...

"Park?" I said out loud, the shutter crashing shut behind me as I let go of my grip.

Park goers turned to the sound of the crash, which meant that all eyes were now on me. So much for stealth.

There was clear blue sky, with a few fluffs of clouds and the bright white light of the sun shining down on me. Lush green trees populated the grounds with not a building in sight, even after the horizon. There was a playground to the far east where children swung on swings and slid down slides. Families had picnics on small mounts of hills and joggers ran the paved tracks. In the middle of everything was a pond, where elderly threw crumbs of bread to feed the fishes.

"What?" I voiced in confusion. I had expected to be in one of the underground tunnels. The world overhead, flooded with Mist, was supposed to be uninhabitable. "I must be dreaming." I wished I could pinch myself to test it.

"Excuse me, sir!" I turned to two officers, dressed in police-blue uniforms, walking towards me, hands on the tasers at their hips. Immediately, I could tell that both their left eyes were cybernetic implants, the crystal clear darkness and shifting lenses giving them away. "What were you doing in there?" they asked. That's right, they. I am addressing them as a single being, because I can.

"I'm uh..." I turned back to look at the shutters where the sign 'SENSORY BORDER: NO TRESPASSING' was plastered across it. "I was...doing...the..." I tried to think on my feet, but the otherworldly sight of a park had broken my concentration.

"I'm sorry sir, but we will have to take you in for questioning."

I could hear my heart beating against my chest. Getting caught at that point would be detrimental, not just for me, but for the people who followed me here. Amelia, John, Lindsey, all of them would be put at risk. Yet, the more I thought about it, the less my mind wanted to work.

"He's with me." I turned to the voice. A woman, dressed in a long sleeved dark green shirt, blue jeans, brown work boots, with medium length, frilly blonde hair, walked up to us. Her face was lean and sharp, her maroon eyes rugged and steeled.