Enhanced

Enhanced

In life, knowing where you are is easy but knowing who you are is harder. At least in her experience. This time she had it backwards. She knew her name, Aura, and that was it. A kind of numbness filled her, blunting the edges of her perceptions, but she also felt a sense of urgency. She needed to figure this out. She looked around and frowned, blinking in surprise. She was standing by a sprawling fog covered lake. Not completely covered. Uneven, like a layer of icing spread over too much cake. Thick in places, but thinner in others, so the surface of the water peeked out every so often to reflect the moonlight. Her eye twitched, and she reached a hand up to touch it, frowning. That was odd. There were no lakes anywhere near where she lived. There used to be a couple of manmade ones in her province, back when it had been a state, but there were none there now.

Aura turned in circles to get oriented, and when she did, it just made things worse. She looked down at the mud and her bare feet in confusion, shivering in the wind creeping up over her limbs. It was too cold, why? She peered down incredulously at her pebbled nipples and then at the scar on her stomach as a rushing sound filled her ears. What in the world?… Before she’d had time to do more than register her nudity, a low ominous rumble started deep below her normal range of hearing and ratcheted up to a roar that shook the ground and everything in sight, herself included. The water rolled and lapped at the mud sucking on her toes and she fell, her face pressing into the ooze. It coated her cheek and threatened to go up her nose when she inhaled. She trembled recognizing that underneath the numbness fear crouched waiting like a starving beast who’d just sighted fresh prey. It gripped her, stealing her breath with every moment the world pitched. Urgency griped her tighter, she knew she needed to get past this, get out of here so she struggled harder. She didn’t want to choke on the cold, wet earth or the tossing waves that threatened to spill out of their confines and sweep her in. It took three tries. On the third she pushed free of the sucking mud, letting out a strangled half shout of elation.

And woke up.

Aura looked around, swiping at her blurry eyes and the bit of water on her face from the overturned glass beside her. The shaking was still going on, though not as violently as in her dream. The dull roar remained too. She blinked several times to clear her vision and then looked around, taking stock of her surroundings. The roar had a rhythm. A rumbling two beat thud she realized as a train’s engine. Not the modern commuter train she normally rode, an old-fashioned one like the one she’d ridden as a child on vacation with her parents. The kind that only existed as novelties in parks for those who had enough credits to travel. Relics of a long past age. Before the world Zeroed out, before the Slide.

Her eye twitched and her stomach rolled as the fear from her dream gripped her fast again. A train, she was on a train. Running a tongue over her dry lips, she looked at the spilled water and saw a steel bottle on its side next to the cup with its cheery blue water-drop engraving. She righted the cup and lifted the bottle to shake it feeling the familiar weight of the liquid slosh inside. She removed the lid with shaking fingers and poured a scant amount into the glass, unable to wait before lifting it to her lips and taking a sip of the cool water within. Dry mouth soothed, she set down the cup and replaced the lid on the bottle, then looked around for something to use to clean up the spilled water while taking in her surroundings.

The train car was like the model of the first-class compartment she remembered from her childhood trip. A pair of thickly padded seats were on one side of the cabin. It looked like real leather, a duplicate for the ones she’d seen before. The other where she sat held a berth and a small table mounted to the wall under the window. Her shoes were on the floor by the chair. There wasn’t anything else visible other than the doors she knew led to a washroom and the other an exit. Aura pulled her shirt from her pants and used the edge to soak up the spilled water. Then she used the wet end to wipe her face and hands. The low rumble of the train and the rocking of the car were still making her sick. She’d never been one to like to go fast. Even the commuter train she used to get to work made her nauseous. But her job was too far to walk. That’s why she’d been saving for her Augments.

Aura stood and went to look out into the hallway, pulling the door open a bit as the car rocked violently. Speed. The train was going fast. Too fast. Not that she knew how fast this kind of train could or should go. But it was definitely too fast for her rolling stomach. She should probably see if she could find a Sedtab. All of this would be a thing of the past soon. She’d saved enough to have it done finally, her augments. She was getting the full complement too. Her friends had tried to convince her to just get her stomach issues taken care of, but the other options were too good to pass up and she doubted she’d get the nerve to go through the procedure more than once. The stories she’d heard… Aura shook her head and staggered back to the bench, scooping up her shoes as she went so she could slip them on. She would find a dispenser and get the tabs.

Aura went down the hallway, timing her steps so she could walk without bumping into the wall of the cabin with every lurching movement.

“Ticket.”

The voice came from behind her, and she turned, seeing a tall man in a deep purple uniform. Her eye twitched again but she smiled, trying to seem normal. Purple was her favorite color.

“Citizen, I require your ticket.”

Aura blinked at him, rocking with the movement of the train, and realized she didn’t know where her ticket was. She felt in her pockets. Empty. What had she done with it when she got on?

When she got on? How did she get here?

The question swirled around her head as she stared dumbly at the man. A Syn male, so not a biological man. An engineered man. No less human than she, according to the laws and the activists. And her for that matter. Every Syn she’d met had only differed from Bios in that they were much better looking. Taller, better shaped, and sporting features so perfect they couldn’t be anything but engineered. She tried to smile, taking a step backward.

“I don’t know where it is. I just woke up and…”

“Is it in your cabin? Ah then, Go retrieve it. I can get yours when I come back through.” The man nodded and moved off, occasionally calling out ‘tickets’ as he walked. She felt the pull of gravity on her limbs as the train pitched to one side and then rocked back into place on the tracks, wondering how he moved without issue. The train was definitely moving faster. Was it going too fast? She didn’t know.

Aura stumbled on, looking through the window to the next car and at the people sitting there. Perhaps they could tell her something. Moving with the grace of a drunken bull, she reached the connecting door and leaned against it for several moments until she could work the latch and push it open. The car held three people. A man, a woman, and a child. She tried to smile. She’d never been comfortable around children.

“Excuse me I…” she began, and the child pointed at her.

“Oooh mommy, her head is funny!” The little boy’s eyes widened as he stared.

“That’s not polite,” the mother replied, and gave Aura a hard look. Aura’s eye twitched again.

“But mommy it’s leaking!” The boy was bouncing in his seat as he pointed. Aura looked at him and shook her head.

“Excuse me, where is this train going?” Aura tried again, and the woman pinched her lips shut and frowned.

“It goes someplace different for each of us. You should know, you’re here, aren’t you?” The man in the next row said. Aura moved to sit across from him rubbing her hands on her chilled arms. It was so cold in here. Between the cold and the motion, she couldn’t get her bearings. If she could just figure out…

“Oh good! We’re going faster! It’s always worse when it takes a long time to get where you’re going don’t you think?” the man interrupted her ruminations and she frowned wondering what he meant.

“I guess. Except I am not sure why I’m here or where here is,” she said, and he laughed. The sound of it filled the car, and the boy joined in. The mother shook her head sadly and tsked before falling silent.

“You’re on the train of course, and it’s marvelous. I am not sure anyone has ever taken a train there before. This mode of transportation is better suited to shipping goods. But we want what we want, and you wanted to ride the train.” He nodded as he said this and the train lurched on tracks before leaping forward, picking up speed again. Aura turned her head and looked out the window. Before the scenery passed in a blur of shapes and colors, moving too fast for her to do more than guess what they were. Now the blur was a blinding light that pulsed in time with the churning engine speeding them forward so fast it pressed her painfully back into the seat and her skin felt tight.

“Tickets! Ah! There you are. I’ll take your ticket now.” The purple clad steward walked gracefully up to stand where they sat. Everyone turned to look at her expectantly. Aura struggled against the force of the constant acceleration. If it would just pick a speed and stay there, she’d be fine. Her heart raced as she struggled to turn her head and look at the steward.

“I haven’t been back to look for it I…” she began, and the Syn reached down and yanked her from her seat.

“Find it. You must find it at once or pay the price.” He dragged her behind him back toward her cabin. Why wasn’t he affected by the speed? Her vision blurred, and she stumbled, her limbs heavy as she followed him moving against the g force of the constantly accelerating train.

“Aren’t we going too fast?” she asked, knowing she would throw up in another minute. It was amazing she hadn’t done so already.

“We’re not going fast enough! We can’t go as fast as we need to until you find it.”

Aura gritted her teeth stifling her bile. If finding the ticket meant they went faster, she wanted no part of it. Especially since she didn’t even know where they were going and how she got here.

“What if I can’t find it? I don’t even remember getting on.”

“You’ll find it. No one gets it right without one. Find it OR ELSE.” He shouted the last words shoving her back into the cabin and slamming the door behind her. Aura fell to the floor and lay there pressed flat by the force of the speed and gravity. Her body wanted to tremble and her eye twitched spasmodically, almost in tandem with the rapid churning of the train’s engines. After several long moments she heaved to her feet, her stomach settling a bit, and she frowned. That was odd. They were going so fast. Any other time she’d have her head in a toilet somewhere staring at blue goo and the chunks of whatever she’d eaten that day. Nothing about this made sense. Aura looked around; the room had a hazy quality. Almost as if the speed of the train were changing the way she saw everything, even things that were “still” as the furnishings bolted to the floor were.

The small table by the window drew her attention. It glowed. Her eye twitched hard enough that it sent a shaft of pain through her head, and she moaned. She was forgetting something. The ticket. No. Not just the ticket. But that seemed the most urgent thing. She took three sluggish steps toward the glowing table and saw sitting where she’d left the cup a slim identicard instead. Smiling she let out a sigh. Of course the ticket would be on her identicard. This is the 24th century not the 19th. You have to scan your card for everything if you don’t have augments. Augments. How lovely it will be to press her finger to a scanner for access. Life streamlined and simplified. The way they lived in the towers, or the real cities high in the mountains where the air was pure, and nature wasn’t something you saw on a wildlife documentary stream.

She picked up the identicard and underneath it a gleam of something red caught her eye. It was a ticket. Like the one she took a picture of on that childhood trip. She hadn’t gotten to touch it then, but she could now. She picked up the smooth red card and swayed in place as the train sped on. The side she could see was blank, so she turned it over and saw tiny letters and a series of numbers. Holding it close to her face she made out the word. ALL. Aura frowned. Shouldn’t it have a destination? The name of the train? The time it left? Even her commuter pass had the length of time and region listed so that when she scanned her identicard they knew she was in the right place. The train jumped forward again, and she fell back onto the berth clutching the ticket in her fist as the train began to shudder and shake. She’d only travelled at such a high speed once before, when as a teen she’d gone with her astronomy class to the Astronomical Studies center on the moon. The rocket they’d ridden for the short flight there had burst from the LEO landing platform like a bullet from a gun. She’d passed out instead of vomited, a good thing since they don’t bother with gravity generators on short range vessels. When she’d awoken they were landing on the moon and her classmates had made sleeping beauty jokes for weeks. She forced her eyes open as the door opened to the hallway with a loud screeching clatter. The purple clad superman walked in as if gliding, the speed and shaking so beneath him that they obviously didn’t exist. Maybe syns had super powers? This one would definitely fill out some spandex. The thought made her titter hysterically as he smiled and leaned down to pluck the red ticket from her hand.

“Excellent! Oh! Well this won’t do at all. We definitely need to pick up the pace. Time is almost up.” He was almost muttering to himself as he turned to leave before Aura could make her lips form the question foremost on her mind. She’d ceased wondering where they were going she just wanted to know why.

Why?

The word swirled around her head as the light of the passing landscape ceased pulsing and became a steady blinding blaze that seared her retinas if she looked out the window. She couldn’t move her head, her limbs or anything but her eyes and even that hurt as the train picked up speed.

The door slid open again and it was the trio from the other car. They filed in and crowded by her berth staring down at her. Their faces were little more than blurs and the boy spoke again.

“They plugged the leak mama. Is it cause she found her ticket.”

“Shhh. That’s rude, you must be quiet so she can accept.”

“Accept. Let go child accept.” The man said his smile widening until his lips stretched off the sides of his face and his head began to contort.

“Accept!” the woman said and then her head contorted as well, and her neck elongated so she loomed over Aura.

“You will be ok! If not, we can reclaim you. So you see, you have a place no matter what!” the boy said as he too began to stretch and grow.

“You have a place!” the man echoed. And Aura opened her mouth to scream as she heard the steward blow a whistle. She hadn’t even known he carried one until this moment when he walked into the open doorway and pulled it from beneath his collar. It was on a long gold chain and she followed his movements with her eyes as he let out a long loud toot.

“End of the line! Out of track! End of the Line!” he said afterward and Aura moved her mouth wanting to scream. If they went off the rails at this speed they’d all die. Why didn’t these people understand that?

“Yay! The end!” the boy said and Aura found her voice again.

“We’re going to crash! What’s wrong with you all? We are going to crash! We’re going too fast! If we don’t slow down we’re going to die!”

They leaned over her and grinned, their faces a nightmare of stretched skin and shining white teeth.

“We have to crash so we can die!”

“We have to die so we can live!”

“We have to break to be born again!” Their voices joined hers as she screamed help! Over and over until she felt a hand reach out hand press on her shoulder.

“It’s almost over. Relax” A soft voice said and she tried to focus on that. It felt calm. A soothing wash of stillness and life that filled her senses and blocked out the sound of the racing train.

“Yay! The crash!”

“The crash!”

“THE CRASH!”

The trio echoed and the train jolted as if hitting a wall. Aura felt her body and mind seize and she shook with the impact of it.

“The CRASH!” the boy’s voice came again and then another followed it.

“CLEAR!”

Aura felt her body seize again and the pain seemed to center on her chest. She tried and failed to take a breath. Then tried again. This time she managed it and she heard the voice come again.

“Ramp it. Ok hit me. Clear!”

Aura felt her body seize and then a line of drool escaped the corner of her mouth and her chest felt as if someone had beaten her with a bat.

“No!” she tried to say and she heard someone let out a cheer. Then everything went dark.

Aura opened her eyes two hours later. She hurt everywhere but her senses were dancing. The room was bright and alive with color. More color than she could remember having seen in her life. She could hear a quiet hum that she identified as the sound of the tiny refrigerator under the nurse’s station desk down the hall. The room smelled of antiseptic, blood, the soap she’d used in her shower and fried chicken. The last smell made her wrinkle her nose and a man came into her line of vision. She lay cocooned in blankets on an OAD-bed in a dimly lit room.

“You did it Aura. You may look like a mummy with all those bandages but you’re alive and they say everything went fine. How do you feel?” She looked up and recognized her brother’s face and smiled.

“Enhanced.”