Sean

Paradox -- Part 1

Hiram Raines opened his eyes once again on the faded ceiling tiles of his ancient flat, taking in the rends and folds of various length and thickness that wound their way across them. It took only a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the semidarkness of his bedroom, and only when they did did he allow himself to breathe a sigh. It was the same sigh he breathed countless mornings before, and the same sigh he would undoubtedly breathe on countless more. It was not a sigh of discontent as the casual observer might be led to believe by the greying of the plaster on the walls and the decayed state of the hardwood flooring which creaked and groaned as his feet pressed against it when he stood out of bed, nor was it a sigh of contentedness. This was a purely apathetic sigh, and after the last echoes of it had escaped his nostrils, he began to dress himself. As was his custom and the custom of the times, Hiram wore a plain white Oxford dress shirt, with trousers colored a monotone gray to match the necktie he was now tightening around his collar.

After this was said and done, Hiram Raines strode out of the confines of his bedroom and into the parlor, taking his time as he went and taking special care to avoid the rusted nail that poked jaggedly from one of the floorboards, as he did every morning. His breakfast was the same as always, black coffee and a bran muffin which he swallowed down with neither appreciation nor revulsion. As he ate, he turned the television affixed to the wall to the Government Channel with the aid of the multifunctional metallic device (of his own design) which a doctor surgically embedded into his wrist when he broke it five years ago.

Today was a big day, at least according to the talking heads on the Government Channel. Lord President Philporre Potts was giving his State of the Union address to the whole of the United Federation and it simply wouldn't have been patriotic to not have at least caught a glimpse of it. As Hiram fixed his icy gaze on the heavyset man now speaking at the podium, he realized just how old he was, despite the vigor and charisma with which he spoke. Philporre Potts must have been at least as old as the Old Man, probably a few years more. Despite his age though, his mind was always working, always on the verge of some new discovery to reshape the Federation at its core or at some enlightened resolution to whatever conflict was facing the presidency at that moment. He was giving one such tidbit of information at that moment, something about the recent outbreak of Cholerex plaguing the city of Denver. Hiram didn't really care to listen.

After several minutes more he tapped a select portion of his implant to turn off the television, and once he had discarded the remnants of his muffin and returned his coffee cup to its place in the worm-eaten cupboard above the stove he donned his navy colored coat and turned to look out of his bay window. It simply existed there to the left of the dining table, looking out on the desolate wasteland that lied outside the apartment. Hiram often found it ironic to have a bay window in an apartment building as dilapidated as this and to have it looking out only on the half empty parking lot and refuse-strewn lawn that lay beyond. Perhaps it had shown something nicer once.

He would have enjoyed spending a little while longer looking out on this featureless abyss, pondering why such a peephole existed here in of all places, but he decided it was about time to be getting on his way. It had been several days since Hiram had driven up to the Old Man's to work as his laboratory assistant, and despite the nasty debate that had ensued on his last visit Hiram felt he needed the presence of another human being on occasion, even that of a curmudgeon like the Old Man. Stepping out of his building and into the bleak grayness that he knew as morning, he clambered into his broken down old pickup truck, fired up the ignition, and started off down the empty street he took every day he went in to work.

It was times like these, when he was alone and without any of the noisy distractions that became part of his daily routine, that he could best feel the continual ache of his bionically "enhanced" wrist as the waves of electricity that cycled through his implant came into the briefest contact with his nerve cells, sending little pinpricks of pain up his spinal column every few seconds. He, of course, had improved upon the working prototype that now lay embedded in his arm, but that was just months before MagnaTech, the worldwide scientific vassal that bought out his old research lab and of which Philporre Potts had previously been chairman, had gained all the rights to his invention. Now Hiram had neither the concern nor the capital to have the implant replaced with a more modern version. He had come to accept the pain (as he did most things) as simply part of life, just like he did when he was laid off from the research lab and when he lost the rights to the Raines Bionic Enhancement Procedure. He saw advertisements for it on all the Medical Channels, as if he needed still more reminders of how his life once was.

TO BE CONTINUED