Human Element

by AJ Powers

  After closing the hatch door to make sure a floor mat would completely conceal it, Hadas opened it again just enough to slither inside. Her descent was far more graceful than Aaran’s, and the smirk on her face as she reached the bottom was just short of gloating. Once she passed Aaran, she turned on her own flashlight to investigate the catacombs of dated furniture, theater props, and broken sound systems. She swept the muzzle of her rifle in front of her, tearing down a rather sizeable sheet of cobwebs hanging from the floor joists above while she inspected the whole space.

  There were no windows either. A fact that was both comforting and terrifying to Aaran.

  “So, have you ever been shot while wearing one of these?” Aaran asked, referring to the lightweight, bulletproof vest.

  “Nope.”

  “Do you know what calibers it’s rated to stop?”

  Hadas sighed. “Yup.”

  Aaran felt the chill in the air and not just from the damp basement they were walking through. “Well, it seems like it’s pretty high-quality stuff.”

  Hadas rolled her eyes. She knew what he was doing and wanted nothing to do with it.

  “Thanks for giving me one, by the way. I hope we’re never in another situation where we might need to test them out, but in case we are, it will—”

  “We?” Hadas cut him off, turning around to look him in the eye, her expression riddled with distain. “Listen, buddy, there is no we. There is me, and there is you. Once things calm down out there, I’m leaving. And I fully expect you to travel in the exact opposite direction as me. Got it?” she spat at him before turning back around.

  “Ohhhkay,” Aaran replied, keeping further commentary to himself.

  Near the far end of the basement was a row of stacked boxes, each stack nearly reaching the unfinished ceiling above. Aaran shined his light on one of the boxes and saw WINTER COATS scribbled on the side. The others were similarly marked with various clothing articles, and one box was labeled BLANKETS. Aaran grabbed the blanket box and set it down at his feet. Using his pocket knife, he cut through the packing tape before pulling the flaps open. The contents inside were indeed blankets. Aaran appreciated the warm materials to create makeshift beds for the duration of their layover.

  Hadas continued to venture around the basement before coming back to the boxes with two folding chairs. Aaran was taken aback by the kind gesture, until she sat down in the first chair and used the second to prop up her legs. Slightly irritated, Aaran fetched two chairs of his own. He set them up a few feet away from her and got as comfortable as he could on the hard, metal seats. Since he was finally able to come down from the adrenaline-fueled wakeup call from a few hours earlier, Aaran grew tired and started to drift to sleep.

  A passing convoy of trucks chased his sleep away.

  Having just fallen asleep herself, Hadas growled through a sigh as the rumbles of the trucks’ engines hummed through the basement, causing the old subfloor above to rattle. The grating sound coerced a shudder from Hadas as she reflexively pressed on the earbud.

  A few minutes went by and nobody had kicked down the doors, so Hadas swung her legs off the chair and reached down into her backpack. She pulled out a box of raisins and tossed them into her mouth, one by one. The silence was awkward, if not downright uncomfortable, but Aaran had no desire to initiate a conversation. Hadas had not exactly been subtle with how she felt about him, and Aaran had no plans to tug at that thread anymore. However, feeling almost physically ill from the silence and the enclosed space, he turned on his lantern and set it on a box before searching for some breakfast of his own. Making sure to grab his food, and not the things he had packed up at her place, Aaran retrieved a bag of chips and pulled at the sides in a feeble attempt to open it quietly.

  “Great!” Hadas chimed in with a cynical glare, “They’re going to find and kill us, all because you can’t open a bag of Doritos quietly.”

  “You think you can do better?”

  Hadas got out of her chair and walked over, taking the bag out of his hands. With little effort, she opened the bag, all the while barely making a sound.

  Well, that backfired, Aaran thought.

  Hadas turned around and walked back to her chair—the bag still in her hand.

  “Please, by all means, have some,” he grumbled.

  She sat down and looked over at him, staring him in the eyes while she stuck the nacho-cheese-flavored triangle into her mouth. “Don’t mind if I do,” she said as she chewed.

  Aaran’s shoulders slumped in defeat. He got out of his chair and walked over to Hadas, stealing a handful of his own food from her before sitting back down. He crammed a chip into his mouth and munched loudly.

  “Are you naturally this loud, or are you just trying to annoy me?” she asked.

  Without breaking eye contact, Aaran opened his mouth and stuffed multiple chips inside before he crunched down, making sure to keep his mouth open as wide as possible when he chewed. “Are you naturally this big of a bitch? Or are you just trying to annoy me?”

  Aaran was confident he was about to melt from her fiery stare, but out of nowhere, Hadas flashed a smile—not the response Aaran had been expecting.

  “Man, it’s been forever since I’ve had these. Forgot how addicting they are,” she said casually, as if Aaran hadn’t just insulted her.

  Aaran thought the abrupt change in attitude was strange, but wasn’t about to question it. “Too busy making bulletproof vests to eat junk food?”

  The look on Hadas’s face told Aaran that his joke had been a swing and a miss. “My parents, especially my mom, were pretty health-conscious. Lots of protein and vegetables for lunch and dinner. Fruit was about the only “dessert” we had in the house. On special occasions, my mom would make us sufganiyots and—”

  “Sufgan-a-what?”

  “Sufganiyots. It’s like a jelly doughnut.”

  “Then why not just call it a jelly doughnut?”

  “Anyway…Old habits die hard. Even after the ‘robot’ apocalypse came, I usually find myself reaching for proteins and dehydrated fruits instead of garbage like this,” she said, looking down at the chips sitting in her lap. She stared at the foil package for a moment before reaching inside and grabbing more. She looked back at Aaran and shrugged. “But, life’s too short not to enjoy some junk food every now and then,” she added and popped another chip into her mouth.

  Aaran smiled. He much preferred this Hadas over the cold, uninviting one biting his head off just a few minutes ago. He just hoped that one didn’t come back anytime soon.

  “So,” she said as she put the bag of chips on the floor and leaned back into her chair. With at least a day or two to kill, Hadas decided it was time to get to know the guy she had just rescued from certain death. “I told you my story last night, what’s yours?”

  “Uhm…My story?” Aaran asked, an unbearable pain in his eyes.

  Chapter 10

  Aaran tried to blot out the memories that viciously forced their way into his mind of that fateful morning nearly a year ago. A morning that had changed his life forever. A morning that had taken him to the edge of despair.

  He’d never had to voluntarily recall the awful memories. In the days since the purge, Aaran had only met a handful of other people, and nobody had asked about the past, lest they be obligated to reminisce about their own sorrows. Hadas was the first person to ask, and he really wished she hadn’t.

  Pain, anger, and grief distorted his features as he stared right through her. Though she had been through her own hell since the purge, something about Aaran’s expression told her that a much darker story resided in Aaran’s past. A pang of guilt struck Hadas for tearing open such a deep wound.

  “Know what? Never mind. I don’t really feel like hearing it,” she said somewhat callously, trying to hide her guilt while sparing Aaran the torment of reliving the moment. Hadas reached down to pick up the chips but refrained, forcing her hand to find a bottle of water instead. She twisted the lid off and took sev
eral large gulps. Smacking her lips together, she let out a sigh of relief as she pulled the bottle away. She glanced over at Aaran whose head was lowered, his eyes locked to the grimy concrete floor. Her attempt to deflect the guilt she was feeling proved to be ineffective. She took in a breath to say something—though she wasn’t sure what—when Aaran finally spoke.

  “I had been out hunting in the woods behind my house. It was about two weeks after the takeover, maybe three—honestly, I can’t even remember at this point,” he said with a slight shrug. His voice was frail and broken. “We didn’t have much food in the cupboards to begin with, so once grocery shopping became a hazardous pastime, we burned through what little food we had pretty quickly.

  “We cleaned out two of the neighboring houses, but that was only because we knew for sure that neither house was connected to the Nebula. My dad refused to let me explore any others until he got better and could come with me.”

  “Got better?”

  “He was on his way home from work when everything went down. Once he witnessed a group of Sentinels gunning down a bunch of people trying to flee, he blew through every stop sign and red light between him and home. His car got shot up pretty bad in the process, and he caught two bullets to the leg.”

  “Damn…” Hadas said sympathetically.

  “I was the oldest, so I went out hunting to try and bring back some food. I woke up before dawn, grabbed my Dad’s .30-06, and walked into the woods behind my house…” Aaran trailed off for a moment, lost in thought as he brought the moment back to the forefront of his mind. “I can remember thinking to myself as I was hopping over an icy stream, This can’t be real, it’s got to be a dream. I’ll wake up any minute. Somedays, I still think that. Or, at least, I hope for it.”

  “Yeah,” Hadas said with a lowered voice, “me, too.”

  “Anyway, I was about a half mile or so away from the house. I had just spotted some pretty fresh tracks when I heard a muffled gunshot come from behind me. Then I heard another. And then, I heard what sounded like a machinegun.”

  Aaran didn’t need to continue for Hadas to know where this story went, but he carried on anyway.

  “I ran as fast as I could. I dropped the rifle at some point along the way and reached for my pistol. I didn’t know what was going on. Or even who was involved. But the sinking feeling in my stomach was preparing me for the worst.” Aaran hung his head as a single tear escaped his closed eyes. He sighed deeply before looking at Hadas again. “There was nothing I could do,” he said, almost as if he was pleading with her to understand. “They were already dead by the time I got home.”

  Hadas bit her lip and forced back tears of her own, listening to the tragedy unfold.

  “I didn’t see them when I first walked inside. I thought, maybe they were okay. Maybe they were safely hiding. But then, I found them inside my parent’s bedroom. My entire family was on the floor, their bodies full of bullet holes and the carpet soaked with their blood.” Aaran swiped at his face with the back of his hand. His eyes were reddened and screamed of agony. “My dad’s body was closest to the door, the shotgun he’d used to fight back still in his hand…” Aaran’s body trembled, and he struggled to control his breathing. Hadas was helpless, and all she could do was watch as he relived the painful moment detail by gruesome detail. “Henry was on the floor just behind my dad, and his…” Aaran struggled to suppress the sobs building in his chest, “his BB gun was on the floor next to his body. Behind him, my mother was still clinging to Samantha and Amelia. They were twins, and just three years old…”

  Hadas’s hand flew to her mouth, and she gasped in horror. Despite her proud and controlled demeanor, tears began to flow down her cheeks. Having been an only child, she couldn’t really put herself in Aaran’s shoes, and she thanked God for that. But the story itself was gnashing at her insides; it was enough to nearly break her.

  “There were a lot of thoughts going through my head when I stood in the bedroom at that moment, but the only one I could seem to hear clearly was telling me to put the end of this Glock in my mouth and pull the trigger,” he said, tapping on his holstered sidearm.

  “What made you decide not to?” Hadas asked, finding that she was relieved he hadn’t.

  Aaran shook his head, his stare as hollow as the man he’d killed yesterday morning. “I don’t know.”

  She let out a grief-stricken sigh and looked at Aaran, a sincere look of sorrow in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Aaran.” It was all she could say. Though she knew the pain of losing both parents, she had at least been spared from having to witness their demise. And while she struggled with not knowing just what had happened to them, she much preferred a lack of closure to having to live with the haunting imagery Aaran had just painted. And though she was certain her parents were dead, she could cling to a thread of hope that maybe, just maybe, she would still see them again someday. It wasn’t much, but it was a hope that Aaran couldn’t have.

  A few minutes of silence passed as they each, in their own way, reflected on the words Aaran had just shared. Hadas took several gulps of water, downing the rest of her bottle before gently setting the plastic container on top of a nearby box. Finding herself more curious about Aaran’s past, but wanting to steer the conversation toward something less bleak, she asked, “So, why didn’t you guys ever get the Neuroweb?”

  Aaran thought about the question for a moment before shrugging. “Honestly, I don’t really know. I mean, when it first came out, it was way too rich for our blood, and I figured that’s why my dad never entertained the idea. But even after it was deemed a ‘human right’ and the hardware and procedure became free, he still refused.”

  “So, he just wouldn’t…let you? Some sort of religious thing?”

  “Not really. Do you remember Senator Parker? My dad looked to him as a moral compass in DC, and when Parker opposed something, my dad usually did too. That was his excuse. But really, I think it was because he was just old school when it came to technology. The mechanic shop he worked for specialized in classic cars from before the turn of the century. He hated working on anything newer, and couldn’t work on anything integrated with Nebula technology. He preferred finding and fixing up older cars, appliances, and even electronics, rather than buying anything new. He just didn’t like the newer technology, so I’ve always assumed that’s why he said no.” Aaran’s voice grew stronger the longer he spoke. He chuckled poignantly as he thought about the implants. “He and I got into some pretty heated arguments about his firm stance on the matter. At times, I convinced myself he was, by far, the worst father in the world for it…And yet, because of that decision, I’m still here today.” Aaran took a swig of water before asking, “So, what about you?”

  “My parents were skeptical for security reasons. With the things they saw and the information they had, neither one felt comfortable connecting their brain to some giant computer farm sitting at some black site location.” She leaned back in her chair and tried to get comfortable. “The secrecy surrounding the Nebula made them pretty paranoid.”

  Aaran tilted his head, a puzzled expression morphed across his face.

  “What do you know about the Nebula?” Hadas asked.

  “Not much, really. Just mostly what I saw on TV and displays at the mall.”

  “Well, allow me to give you the CliffsNotes. The prototype Neuroweb was created in a glorified basement by two brothers about ten years ago. It didn’t take long before medical universities around the world were throwing money at them to continue development. Before long, they had like twenty million in capital.

  “Fast-forward five years and the brothers got a contract from the Pentagon for half a million units and some proprietary software designed in collaboration with Rayden Systems. With all the money from that contract, they started working on the consumer version that would change the way we look at technology forever. Billions of satisfied customers later, boom!” Hadas snapped her fingers, “the Feds swooped in, ‘bought’ them out, and took co
ntrol.”

  Aaran rubbed the back of his neck while he looked around the room. “How come I never heard anything about that? I mean, I never really paid much attention to the news, but it seems like something like that would have made quite a few waves.”

  “Well, if Big Brother doesn’t want his dirty laundry aired, do you think the news media is going to be reaching for the hamper?”

  Aaran shrugged.

  Hadas continued, “The government took over, but the original company, NanoRight, didn’t miss a beat. They were still the face for everything related to the Neuroweb and Nebula. Hell, according to a family friend—which was the only reason my dad found out about it—most of the employees in the company didn’t even know about the ‘acquisition’.” Hadas stopped for a minute to sneak one last handful of chips. “My dad joked that the federal government would have had to bust their asses to pull something like that off without people noticing.”

  Aaran chuckled at the comment. He was no stranger to hearing the musings of his own father’s views on the efficiency of the federal government, or the lack thereof. Though the information Hadas was sharing was new to him, and he could no more confirm it than deny it, it didn’t seem all that far-fetched, the more he thought about it.

  “I guess if people knew the federal government was involved, it might’ve scared them out of getting the implant, huh?” Aaran started laughing. “I mean, God only knows what kind of invasive things they would do with that kind of pow…”

  Aaran trailed off as Hadas raised an eyebrow. She nodded her head slowly, “Exactly.”

  “So, you think the government is behind all of…this?” he said, gesturing around him.

  Hadas gave Aaran a thumbs-up. “It’s nice to see your horse finally crossing the finish line,” she said, cracking a sarcastic smile.

  It’s not that the theory hadn’t crossed his mind before, but Aaran had never really gotten behind it. The government was a lot of things, but never in a million years would he have thought they were behind this mess. However, if what Hadas had told him about their hostile, yet largely unknown, takeover was true, it made a bit more sense. But still… “I dunno…” he said, casting doubt on her theory.