1 Wake and Scavenge

Vladimir woke well before sunrise, the nights wind was still sharp, working its way in through his old worn clothing.

He sat out front of the cabin of a rusty abandoned ATV he called home.

Before him lay stretched out miles of abandoned machines, wrecks of metal.

A feeling of nauseousness grew and filled Vladimir as he contemplated the pointlessness of his existence.

"F@%k this world!!" Vladimir shouted out to the world.

This was a part of Vladimir's daily routine. Now, he stood upon his hill and urinated over todays chosen metal wreck, farting whilst yawning.

With that the young boy filed the negativity away in the back of his head and began his preparations for the day.

He donned his only and treasured pair of patchy coveralls, then shook a stone free from his boots, knelt and tied them. Finally, he strapped on his sustenance for the day, a camel-pak backpack filled with a watered-down Gatorade like liquid.

Vladimir had irked out a living scavenging for fasteners among the ruined machines. Screws, bolts, nuts, magnets, which he handed into the Overseers in exchange for food, water and this Gatorade like substance.

This was his life..

Sometime ago in the distant past, society had decided that advances in electronic technology alone was not enough.

They were no longer satisfied with increasing the memory, the processing speeds, capabilities of phones, computers, TVs, wearable tech..

Their focus now fell upon the enhancement of the human body.

After many, many years success was reached - and then these advances were implemented..

At first only a select few were enhanced – and they were observed by society. The most powerful governments noted the advantages to be gained by their use. They chose to first enhance their leaders, elite military units and certain elements of the police force. Inevitably this technology reached the very wealthy.

Then those governments which had enhancements decided to enhance their scientists and technologists – knowing that of their best minds were made even better their countries to leap ahead.

A divide had begun to grow between the enhanced and normal society.

As the public noticed they were being lift out of these enhancements, disquiet grew.

In an attempt to qualm the disquiet of the unenhanced, enhancement lotteries were televised

with the winners welcomed into the enhanced ranks with fanfare.

As the world watched they noticed that they were not going to share the advances enjoyed. They were not fooled by the lotteries or the promises..

Insurrection grew, rebellion rose, anti-enhancers came with ideologies and supporting masses, they all rose and fell again eventually powerless against the enhanced.

Soon a 100 years had passed… two distinct societies now existed, one enhanced with vastly greater capabilities, enhanced intelligence, memory, strength, health monitoring capabilities, self-healing, non-vocal high-speed thought-based communications, and with it the ability to learn skills, languages at astonishing rates.

And the un-enhanced…

Vladimir was one of the un-enhanced. Living in a semi lawless society he had been taken from his family. Who he couldn't remember and forced to work in a Sector – scavenging among metal wrecks for the Over Seers.

When Vladimir arrived at the wreck he had chosen the prior day, he drew out his tools and began to remove fastenings, sweating away, working with his set of tools.

The longer Vladimir worked scavenging fasteners – bolts, screws, brackets, magnets, the more he became more aware of the structure of the machines. How they were put together and how they would operate and move as a whole.

As usual, today Vladimir was working with Recoil a young girl of his age. She hated being touched, even a tap on the shoulder and she would recoil. Thus, she had gained her nick-name. Recoil and Vladimir worked together well and so they stayed a team working quietly side by side each day.

That day, after working for a while they stopped for a mid-morning break. Vladimir sipped the electrolyte substance from his Camelbak and looked down the path from the machine they were working on. An Overseer was peering in and out of machines and had spotted them. He was walking up the hill toward them. Quickly Vladimir kicked a metal can by his foot saying oiii! Recoil.!

She looked over at him and he warned her "O.S. coming up the hill towards us for a check!".

She shrugged he shoulders at him and sat with waiting for the encounter.

In a few moments the O.S. had joined them.

"Show me what you've scavenged now"! he ordered. He was covered in sweat and had a broken front tooth.

He leered at Recoil, "A pretty young one!" he said, and licked his lips.

First, he checked thru Vladimir's bag of fastenings, seeing there was nothing forbidden or of value or he gestured with his thumb to Vladimir and said. "Get out here." Vladimir moved away just enough so that he was hidden but could see what was happening.

The sweaty O.S. moved towards Recoil, looked down at her bag of fastenings, let me see your identity card he said. Then as she drew her identity card which hung within the neck out of her coveralls, he made his move. Forcing her up against the machine he reached down the front of her coveralls and said. "I'll get it for you."

Sweat was dripping off his grimy face.

"Help" Recoil screamed. "Vladimir… help!! "He's grabbing my boobs!!

Vladimir came sprinting around the corner, like a hero.

The O.S held Recoil firmly against the machine as she wailed, and swore at Vladimir,

"If you get lost, I will let you live... don't try and spoil my fun, boy."

Vladimir took a swing at the O.S! Thrusting out a weak jab, but the huge O.S. swatted him away like a fly. "Now, your dead boy, he snarled!" Then the O.S drew back his fist….

Suddenly there was the sound of metal driving into flesh. Recoil had climbed up behind the O.S and struck the side of his neck with her wrench. There was split in his neck and blood was pouring out.

The O.S's knees bent and he dropped to his knees as if bowing to Vladimir with his head bent at a weird angle.

"Hahaha.. nice hit!" Vladimir laughed. "Thank heavens," he said to Recoil, as she scampered down of the wreck.

Recoil was laughing, though as she dropped the wrench she had tears in her eyes.

Meanwhile the O.S had fallen to his knees and blood continuously flowed through his fingers as he panted and eyes grew dim.

"What are we going to do Vladimir? Are we stuffed now?" she asked.

Vladimir looked at her for a moment worried, then naively said "Don't worry, we did no wrong."

"Let's shove his body under a wreck and then collapse it. Then we'll clean up the blood."

"If we work together fast and do this correctly, keep both our mouths shut, we should be ok!", he said, hoping he was true.

Then finally Vladimir tried to hug her, reassure her, but she recoiled eyes wide.

Together they found a wreck which looked like a good spot to hide the body, dragged his body to it and collapsed it atop the body.

Vladimir was watching Recoil, worried. She looked alright, cleaning away the blood, she wasn't crying, and appeared focused.

When everything was cleared up they tried to appear as normal as possible – so they continued working.