By Luca Nobleman

“Wake up!” a man barks through a respirator mask as he raps his baton across the window my head rests against.

I stretch open my drugged eyelids and meet an unrecognizable world. I’m waking up to falling ash and a crimson sky.

“It’s the apocalypse,” an eerie voice greets my ears. I crane my stiff neck to meet the dark eyes of a female correctional officer in a similar mask. She helps me to my shackled feet, and I stumble down the aisle toward the exit.

How do I know her?

“What happened?” I ask, fatigue dripping from every syllable.

“Nuclear fallout. Machines will soon rule this land,” she whispers.

Blurred memories grind against the trenches of my depleted mind as it attempts to feed me clues to my current predicament. But I’m at a loss. I can’t even remember who I am.

We check out as I step off the prison bus. A pen scratches my name off a list: Antonis Cicero.

Doesn’t ring a bell.

I inhale a breath of “fresh” air, but fetid chemicals sear every receptor in my respiratory tract. This breath feels like my first, like that of a heavenly creature skipping earth and birthing directly into hell. With no regard for my humanity, another guard slaps a mask unceremoniously over my lower face.

I cough, and a dreadful cacophony of vibrating mucous membranes pounds the mask. The taste of filtered air bites my tongue as I blink away tears.

I lift a weak forearm and wipe my brow. Sweat intermixed with rust cakes my pale skin. They’ve hidden me from the sun for heaven knows how long.

A plump man barks orders, pulling back his mask, revealing an unkempt mustache. He spits a filmy tobacco wad, then straps his mask back on. From his breast pocket, he removes a remote. His eyes grin as he points it at me and presses a series of buttons.

A whirring of gears triggers inside my head, like the hum of a stubborn fan cooling a circuit board.

Inside my head?

A warble initiates, followed by pings, and my mind kickstarts a montage, flashing before my psyche in fast-forward. Drills grinding their awful teeth. Bones cracking beneath the pressure of heinous tools. White coats and echoing whispers.

I stumble to my knees. Excruciating jolts of electricity course through my being, like lightning erupting through every nerve in my body.

A digital buzz winds down as pounding ignites in my forehead like gunfire trapped behind my skull.

I break through the pain. “Where am I?”

“United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility, aka ADX Florence,” an armed guard says as he pushes me forward. “Or Supermax, as we like to call it.”

“Your home, hellhound,” the mustached man’s mask-distorted drawl says, “and I’m your papa, Warden O’Connor.”

“What have you done to me?” The words barely escape my cracked lips.

“Oh, the docs at Langley didn’t want you trying to escape again,” he says. “I don’t know what or who you are, but they’re definitely scared of you.”

He leans down and rests his hands on his knees. “But I ain’t. This is my house. And you’ll do what I say.” He jiggles the remote. “This doodad here controls your mind and body, Mr. Johnny Mnemonic.”

“Sir, I wouldn’t get too close.” An armed guard grips the warden’s shoulder. “He’s radioactive.”

“Is that so?” The warden steps back and presses another button.

As I convulse painfully, the female guard—with a disregard for the radioactivity I must contain—grabs my wrist to lift me while simultaneously jabbing something into my exposed wrist. If it weren’t for my neurons currently exploding, I would yelp, but I can only explain what follows as solace from my pain.

“Here’s relief, old friend,” she says.

A sedative? No.

A sudden rush of memories threatens to bash through my brain. Soldiers’ feet shuffling across bloodied gravel as the vestiges of war echo in the clanking shields and spears. Another memory of typewriters clacking beneath the billowing smoke of a bunker, hushed voices warning of Nazi blitzkrieg. The last memory breaking through the barrier installed in my mind is that of human-shaped machines decimating well-dressed politicians—the funeral of a United States president gone horribly wrong.

And then, I remember who I once was. Who I am.

Once, I was General of the Fourth Battalion of Baldwin the Second, loyalist to the legion of the Latin Empire and Pope Gregory the Ninth.

Now, I am Death’s right hand.

“Radioactive?” I say sneering, then spit. “If only it were that simple. I am immortal—bound by the Aeon that flows through my bones.”

The warden frowns. “What?”

I glance back at the female guard, and her dark eyes flash. She is like me, Death’s left hand. We are bound to our master, Ba Djehuti—the first immortal.

A digital voice speaks inside my head and announces my current mental state: “All systems go.”

I smile.

The shackles binding my wrists release as my old friend removes a key from my waistband. She whispers, “Welcome to the new age.”

A sudden energy deep within my bones reverberates, and my once-weak muscles thrum with vibrant power.

The warden cocks his head. “What the…” He presses the button multiple times, but I feel no pain.

The woman steps forward. “His system’s blown.”

And before the other armed guards realize what’s happening, she jumps through the air, unsheathing two long knives, and surgically disarms the two closest guards.

The Warden scrambles for his gun, but I innately respond by kicking the man in the neck, feeling his vertebrae snap against my foot.

Machine gun fire erupts.

I spin, readying myself for an onslaught of armed guards, but instead, my eyes meet the woman standing alone among twenty bodies.

She removes her mask and grins beneath tousled black hair. “Welcome back, Cicero. Our master is waiting.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Luca Nobleman writes stories about robots who deny they’re machines, humans who behave suspiciously like machines, and cyborgs falling somewhere in between. He claims this has nothing to do with the fact that he makes people part-robot for a living. His wife and four children remain unconvinced. You can usually find him writing more Dreaming Machines novels, painting, playing Magic The Gathering and board games with his kids, or wishing he was part machine.

---

More Stories | Instagram