Challenges: SciFi Short Stories

Death's Cloak

I enter a dark cubic room, cold neon lights emitting from the corner, walls covered with sound absorber tiles, two chairs on transparent tarpaulin, one guy already sitting on the right one gives me a nod. He seems to have a better understanding of the situation than me.

Two men enter and close the door behind me.

"I am Mr Toncent. I will be your judge for the final exam. You know Mr Jarold?" he says while pointing his fingers to the one who welcomed me at the reception, before pointing the empty chair "Sit down, please."

As I sit on the chair and plastic sound get eaten by the walls, Mr Jarold hands over a cup from the coffee store facing the building.

"Apple Cardamom Marula Elderberry?" – asks Mr Toncent as he takes a sip, Mr Jarold answers with a nod.

"De – li – ci – ous." he sings happily before switching his attention to me "Monsieur, you may think this is the first time we see each other but, it isn't. You applied for a highly confidential job for the safety and the security of our citizen, and this is now..." he looks at Mr Jarold who present him a holographic display made out drone flies coming from his watch strap, he reads it and look back at me "the tenth times. You succeed all the tests along with your partner" – he points his finger to the man sitting at my right.

"How?" asked him.

"In short, we hypnotized you to create a split personality. Every Monday you came here looking for a job and we woke up the dormant you. Quite an easy feat with nowadays undisclosed technology, the kind that will never be public. No clever government will open to the fact that any of their citizens can be rigged on a whim." – He waves his hands on his watch. A faint sound resonates in the room.

A surge of emotion engulfs my consciousness, the life of another me unfolds before my eyes, realities converge and everything starts to make sense.

"Your last mission is to alter the beverage that Mr Jarold brought." – He grabs a gun out of fin air, aims the man sitting near me and shoots. His brain splatters on the tarpaulin and my face. I twitch nervously. He now aims the gun at me, I can see from inside the barrel a blaze growing out, devouring my sight, stretching to every corner as the world fades to dark ended by a hollow sound and bells ringing, the ringing exacerbates itself becoming more and more stressful.

"Station Olympus, Next Station Barbatus, imminent take-off" – As the speed of sound, I wake up and jump off the transport; quickly apologizing to the people I shoved; land on my knees; I look at my watch; the interview is in one hour. As I regain consciousness I wonder if this is all just a simulation built from my last hour.

On the floating platform, dominating the view, I can see the building splitting the horizon. A Never ending flow of buses reaches the platform, raining down rivers of people to the city. When I arrive in the city I notice the man who was sitting next to me in the dark room. He looks lively but not as excited as me by the simulation. He walks away frenetically. With my past experience unlocked from the hypnosis I hack his holographic suit and discover a cloaked figure walking next to him, hands him over a "death needle", the kind of undisclosed lethal stuff. Something was not right so as I sped up the pace to confront both of them a person bumped violently on me, I could only hear her voice apologizing and see her large hoody branded with the name of the last band in rage. Once I stood up the cloaked man had disappeared with the woman, only the now dangerously armed man is rushing to the dark alleys. I engage into the pursuit. A few turns later he senses my presence and speed up. To prevent any ruckus we cloak ourselves by repeatedly timingly tweaking our holographic suit, invisible to naked, from main streets among citizens to dark alleys among garbage, like two intertwined gusts of wind.

Suddenly the man stops near the exit of the dark alley separating the coffee shops facing the building. He cocks the needle and aims towards the crowd. I grab one of the robots cleaner in the alley and spin it like a discus throw. It ends up on his flank, breaking some bones, stopping him shortly. I quickly catch-up, hustle him, the needle fires towards the wall. I hear people scream then cheers, it seems like nobody has been hurt on the other side. The man comes back at me, but trips and suffocates. Before me the girl with the hoody is uncloaking, pinning down the man who struggles in fear while his body slowly disappears. Her visage is imperceptible, like a small black hole, no lights or shapes escape from hers. She draws a gun and aims it at me. I panic and try to move but my feet disappeared.

"One hour passed, time to close the timelines" – was her last words.

When I opened my eyes, I was sitting on the chair in the dark room, no hole on my face only my neighbour's lukewarm brain and the smell of dry blood.

Mr Jarold stands against the door. Mr. Toncent looks at mesmerized, slowly raises his cup and takes a sip.

"An unfriendly taste and a dead man. I would advise you to explain yourself before..." someone pushes abruptly the door, shoves Mr Jarold and moves in. The two men respectfully nod at the woman.

"He is one of us now, and you should thank him Mr Toncent! He saved your timeline." – She smiles at me, everyone is smiling and I am smiling... but I can't feel my visage nor the lights, only the time flowing.