Fiction Story #5 ("Just A Walk In The Park")

1/5/11

Just a Walk in the Park

It seemed like years since I had died the first time. People always say “time heals all wounds,” but that Hallmark sentimentality, while certainly appropriate to a greeting card, is simply not a philosophy to build a life around. I remember that first one so clearly that sometimes I can’t think of anything else – like the clarity of a xenon bulb burning right through my eyelids. I still wake up some nights drenched in sweat, reliving that end in a detailed nightmare. The wounds have healed – but the body remembers anyway.

This one doesn’t look to be shaping up to be any better. I could be wrong. A simple error of judgment on my part – but it’s terribly hard to think coherently with the barrel of a plasma rifle in your mouth. However, as long as I’m being honest, it beats some of the other ways I’ve died.

The soldier holding the plastic grip of the rifle is nervous, sweating buckets. His right index finger is inside the trigger guard, exactly how they tell you not to do it in basic training. So he’s standing above me, the rifle in my face, ready to send a bolt of ionized, magnetically shielded plasma right through my skull – and he’s the one shaking.

Thankfully, there’s no one else here to witness this little farce or else the official cause of death on the Official Coroner’s Report might read: Embarrassment.

==

It was bad the first time. The worst combination of painful and slow. And I remember every second. To be fair, the scientists responsible, they didn’t know I was still alive. I couldn’t scream or tell them to stop or even move a muscle. A shot in the chest with a good neuro-paralysis rifle bolt will do that. So, these highly trained, medical-minded researchers dissected me and poked and prodded inside me until it wore off, which was, ironically, only a few seconds before I was actually really dead.

The first time I had it explained to me exactly who and what I was, I passed out cold. Then they explained it to me again. The second time, I had to be restrained, which, speaking modestly, was no easy task. I’m built like a fighter. Which, I suppose, made sense in an odd sort of way. It was a strange concept, to be a copy of someone else. How was that even possible? I remembered my childhood. I remembered my family. All implanted to make the process easier, they said.

The doctors had asked me to come all the way down to the seventh floor that day. Odd, since, in my entire lifetime, I had never been below the 42nd floor, nor above the 56th. So, the whole ride down I’m thinking, what an adventure this is, how great this is. Yeah, well, what the hell did I know?

I mean, I pretty much had free reign within those floors. Every worker, every technician, every engineer and every scientist knew me on sight. They all knew me by name and I knew most of them by theirs. Later, when I hacked into the mainframe computer’s databanks and learned about the way most humans lived, I started to wonder why there was no mention of living in sealed buildings for their entire lifespan. But I just figured that’s the way it was – didn’t need mentioning. Or maybe I was taught to accept it. Either way, I had an inherent curiosity that would make any cat proud.

(To be continued...)