Today I woke up…
In the future!!!
In the future!!!
I don’t really know how to describe the beginning of my day. I remember lying, in a sack of some sort. I couldn’t move my arms or legs, but somehow that didn’t worry me. And I wasn’t breathing, well not like you would call breathing. I was suspended in a pod of some kind, ingesting some sort of gel into my lungs. It was such a suffocating feeling, but I felt relaxed, like being in the womb.
A buzzing ignited and static screamed through my head. A heady chemical rush plowed through my veins and wrenched me from my sleep. The organic canvas below me split and I tumbled to the floor. Before I knew it, I was standing, ready for whatever the future bore.
The floor shifted and I was carried into some sort of subsonic chamber, the vibrations making my back teeth rattle in their sockets. I tried to stand, but the force of the sound was like a stack of quilts, soaked in karo syrup, fastening my limbs sturdily to the grating I was lying on. I squeezed my eyes shut as I prayed for the sound to end. If this was what the future was like, I hoped I could survive.
“Stand at attention, Seeker”
A tinny voice was blasting directly into my ears, almost deafening me. I sprang upright in a bolt, looking to find the source of the sound, there was none. In front of my field of vision, a picture sprang up. It floated above my surroundings, chasing me wherever my eyes lit.
“Your contract for today is just one man, Tyler Frankel, a level 2 thought transgressor” the voice in my ear resounded. I was confused, but I got the idea, as the voice went on, that I was expected to deal with some sort of fugitive, this Tyler Frankel. I had no idea what to make of it, or what this man had even done to deserve what the voice was calling being “anatomized.”
I was dressed by the machine and was out the tube in no time, some kind of device in my right hand. Again, floating in my field of vision was a map of the city I was roaming. From time to time, advertisements for different products would float past my vision, advertising products that would alter DNA to make your children tall, or give you bigger muscles and some pack tendencies. I had trouble distinguishing the adverts from real life.
A flashing diamond pulsed on my lower left side; I swung to find its source. It was pulsing faster and brighter now. I looked, and my vision narrowed on an arcology to my left. Abruptly, scans of the building’s hallways started flooding into the periphery of my consciousness. It seemed like I could “feel” where Tyler was inside the building.
Shouldering my way through the bio-scans on the fire door, I hit the lift with a speed I felt had to be enhanced by some sort of chemicals. I could feel bloodlust mounting in the back of my throat like some primal anaphylaxis. It was sealing off my more “human” feeling and allowing me to target my prey.
I burst from the lift, the diamond icon screaming in my field of view. Immediately I smashed into my target, Tyler Frankel, papers exploding into the air around him like a confetti parade cannon.
I felt a grin creeping across my drawn lips. “Tyler Frankel, you are marked for anatomization by the Council on Dissonance.”
Tyler dropped to his knees, pleading. His hands were in front of his face “I… I never meant to hurt anyone,” he said, “I only thought…”
“Exactly” I said, my finger tightened on the trigger…
