2084 - Present Day:

SOLA Megalopolis

Stifled sharp breaths tightly reverberated among the bunker walls. A young man sat alone, steeped in the penetrating dampness of the room. Pain burrowed beneath his skin. It reached, throbbing, probing, from the raw nerve endings of his flesh down into his deepest parts. It racked his mind with an overwhelming surge of unending alertness and the weight of exhaustion to accompany it.

He held his breath a moment to listen for the threat of movement beyond the bunker door. Among that dread silence, an oppressive fear constricted itself tighter within him. It had descended upon him in the darkness of the room, called by his guilt, compounded by his pain.

A sheet was draped loosely over his bare back. The slimy concrete beneath him was frigid. His breath billowed out in the chill air as a white mist as he continued its ragged flow.

The darkness of the bunker was pierced only by a trio of red LEDs on the door. The young man looked at them, comforted in the knowledge that its lock was still engaged. Layers of grime on the ceiling, walls, and floor reflected the dim crimson glow of those lights. Moisture seeped through cracks in the concrete, leaving mottled trails and pools of green, black, and brown. The young man imagined it seeping towards him. The tiny bunker filling up over hundreds of years with him still locked inside.

Burning tears begin to edge their way from his drying eyes once again. He moved to bury his face into his forearm, but it met only the bitter cold of metal. He quickly drew back, realizing yet again with a slow descent in the pit of his stomach that this body was no longer his. Not the way it once was.

Where once was flesh, now so much metal.

The surgery was involuntary, rushed, and it ended prematurely. They had taken his arms, replacing them with the cold steel that seared him with every touch. They had replaced his spine with a new one, jutting from his back like a chrome chain split through his inflamed skin. Chip ports had been drilled into his skull. Nodes were implanted into the temporal, occipital, parietal, and frontal lobes of his brain. A mesh now lined a portion of the cerebellum, which branched off into a series of smaller components. His eyes had also been taken from him, replaced with the cool glassy feel of cybernetic optics. These were only some of the changes.

The operation had reached deeply into his body. The only augmentations he’d noticed so far were those of his spine, skull, and arms. The rest were masked by the pain of an incomplete surgery, and the malfunction of the cybernetics itself.

At eighteen years of age, he was now old enough to get cybernetic implants. It was a right of passage in many ways. However, for most people, it was elective. Not like this.

He had spent his life in East Coast luxury, never wanting for much. He got to eat fresh food, untainted by ash or contamination. He had the best furniture, entertainment, and care. Yet, despite the trappings of privilege, he had somehow learned humility. Maybe it was the distance of his father and his yearning to be seen as good and worthy. Or maybe it was instilled in him by his caretakers, unconsciously giving him glimpses of life on the other side of the tracks. Either way, he had developed an understanding that what is gained can be lost.

In the excess of protection, he knew little of the world. What he did know of it was tainted, sanitized by a corporate academic perspective. He was taught nothing of his father’s work, company, or business at all, learning only about nonsense analytics and accounting. What he craved was to know more about the world outside his home.

Although other caretakers had been tempted to indulge his curiosity, only one had let him watch television. Andrea knew his desire to learn about the lives that others lived. She would indulge him when he asked questions. She was the closest thing to a real friend that he’d ever known, but even that was short lived.

One night, she sat down with him to watch Armored Expedite, but was soon brought to a tremble of uncontrollable tears. The show was a glorified display of “real events” in SOLA. Dramatized reenactments of true stories were spliced with actual footage of the Armored Expedite team, moving high value people from one place to another throughout the dangers of the city districts. The moment that had broken her involved a man who had attacked the cab. He had succeeded in blowing out the left tires of the vehicle, causing it to careen into an iron post. The attacker came into clear view.

Her voice had caught in her throat when his image became clear on the screen. Shortly afterward, his head was reduced to pulp by a shotgun blast from the armored vehicle’s driver. The footage had been cleaned up quite well, and it was slowed down for effect. She saw everything in detail. For a show that was a continual display of real and dramatized violence, this was not anything out of the ordinary. Yet there was Andrea, hand over mouth, shaking in silent horror.

At that time, the young man had turned the television off, and sat with her. They never turned it on again. In the weeks to follow, she’d become more quiet. Then eventually, she stopped coming at all.

The young man thought about this moment with Andrea often. Thinking about it at this moment, he wondered about his own humanity and these new parts that replaced those which had been stolen from him.

He imagined her face. Her lips saying his name. He couldn’t read them. He couldn’t imagine what she was saying. What was his name? He couldn’t remember it. A cold chill settled within his metal spine. Another throb of intense pain forced its way into his brain. Then he couldn’t remember Andrea either.