Days passed and Kenny counted them down with glee.
Each hour that fell brought him closer to his full potential, to his destiny.
He
was in the break room at work eating a bologna sandwich and playing a game on
his phone that required the matching of like-colored jewels to score points.
Kenny liked seeing the shapes and colors line up. He liked seeing order triumph
over chaos.
“Kenny,
Kenny look!”
Kenny
looked up to see a few of his coworkers gawking at the television screen
mounted in the corner. One of his colleagues, Vern; a fat man with only a thin wisp
of hair smattered over his noggin was hollering his name.
“Are
you seeing this? This nutjob who just got upgraded last week is going on a
rampage downtown!”
On
the screen he saw a woman with robotic legs repeatedly kicking an ATM. One
kick, two and then three, before she had punched through the ATMs exterior and
knocked it from its base. The machine toppled over and crashed to the ground
with a thud as its display went dim. The fair-haired woman had a dark green
blouse and was red with anger. She had on a tight black skirt that seemed to
accentuate the robotic contours of her legs. Peeking out from the skirt were
two shiny steel “feet” covered in flimsy matching green pumps. If you listened
closely, and could separate the sounds around her you could hear the electronic
whir of gears and mechanisms
operating within her legs.
“Insufficient
funds! I’ll show you insufficient funds! You piece of shit!”
In
front of the bank, police parted the crowd the woman had attracted and leveled
their service weapons. “Stand down ma’am.”
The
woman paid no attention and front kicked the bank’s brick wall with her robotic
left foot. As she pulled it away the gears in her leg whined, but the brick
bore a noticeable mark as chunks of rubble fell to the sidewalk.
“Ma’am we need you to calm down!” an officer
yelled.
The
woman turned now, finally facing the officers. “Calm down! Don’t you tell me to
calm down! You’re just afraid of me!” She walked towards the police, in spite
of the fact that their guns were trained on her. As she did this her left foot
rolled under her. Machinery somewhere inside snapped, but the woman kept
coming, only this time with a severe limp. “No, not afraid of what I am, but
afraid of what you aren’t.
Another
warning from the police, “Ma’am if you do not yield we will open fire.”
The
woman didn’t slow in the least.
“Ma’am
this is your final warning!” On the screen the camera’s view pivoted from the
police to the woman and quickly back again. Shots rang out as the muzzles of
the officer’s weapons lit up.
The
camera feed was terminated and the view was back to the station’s newsroom
where a blushing reporter nervously searched for words. “Ladies and gentlemen
as you can see this upgraded individual has seemingly…umm…she has been…umm…halted
by law enforcement. We will continue to collaborate with authorities to
determine if her…umm…mental faculties were at all affected by her upgrade.”
“Did
you see her eyes?” one of the women in front of Kenny asked the room.
Vern
called out, “Definitely bat-shit. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts
like a lot.”
“That’s
some scary stuff right there man,” offered an older gentleman sitting at the
table opposite Kenny.
“Kenny
did I see one of those Astir pamphlets on your desk the other day?” Vern asked,
and suddenly the entire room’s eyes were on Kenny.
Kenny,
finally managing to take his eyes from the screen, didn’t seem to notice a
large blob of partially chewed bologna leaving his mouth to fall on the table
before him.
*
* *
A
few hours later, Kenny found himself in a bar near work, in a half-assed
attempt to relax. The establishment was decorated in the late 70’s and hadn’t seen
much in the way of upgrades since then. High back leather-bound bar stools
matched the padded leather elbow guard that ran along the bar. Plastic plants
and dull orange paint were smattered in every conceivable part of the room.
Kenny thought the barroom’s look matched its smell; that of self-loathing.
As
Kenny drank he continued to mull over one idea. He had found it strange that
between he and his co-workers had viewed the news broadcast as if they were
watching two completely different programs.
Even
as Kenny took a long pull on the beer before him, the news replayed the
incident with the woman and the ATM. Following the tape a newscaster addressed
the viewers. With a critical look straight into camera the newscaster spoke
solemnly. “It seems regarding recipients of Astir upgrades it is not a matter
of if they will descend into rage and
violence, but when.”
“Insane,
right? If you woulda asked me 20 years ago whether or not I would ever live to
see the day when people were walking around with Terminator legs, I woulda said
‘hell no’.” A few stools down from Kenny, the man who had spoke the unsolicited
statement did so over an empty rocks glass, and was now looking expectantly to
Kenny for commentary.
Kenny
took a breath, his eyes flicked from the television set mounted above the bar
to the man a few feet from him. “Have you ever seen Godzilla?”
The
man nodded and simultaneously shook his empty glass at the bartender.
“You
know how the people in those movies are always running around, frantically
screaming as they stare up at the monster?” Kenny asked.
Again,
the man nodded.
“So
you can understand what it’s like to be vulnerable, to feel afraid. Something
you’ve never seen before just set your whole world view on fire. Something powerful,
something you have no control over. But tell me friend, how would you feel if
you were Godzilla?”
Kenny
took more than a tiny bit of pleasure from the dumbfounded look on the man’s
face, and then rose to leave. He set a few dollars down on the bar, leaving his
half finished beer to sweat along with the man.
THE END?
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