Living on Colonized Time

Colonialism is undoubtedly one of the most malicious and pervasive of mankind’s designs. A landmark development in the 1400s, colonialism allowed European empires to invade and exploit foreign lands under the thin guise of discovery and divine purpose. However, the imperialistic practices of colonialism were actually fueled primarily by a desire to bolster the economy of the metropole, or motherland.

This was done primarily by abusing the resources of the new lands accessed by the colonies, kidnapping natives and selling them into slavery, and, for the first few centuries, restricting the mercantile practices of their colonies. For the colonizing nations, the practice proved to be extremely successful. It increased their reach and influence across the globe, improved and diversified their economies, and fed into their self-attributed identities as chosen servants of the divine.

But all of the positives for the metropoles were accompanied by opposite impacts on the exploited native populaces. Detribalization, the introduction of rampant foreign diseases that destroyed populations, and the killing of innumerable innocents are all consequences of colonization that have impacts still felt centuries later.

Perhaps the most evident impact of colonization that still remains is the erasure of cultures and ways of living. The cultures of numerous indigenous groups have been lost and will likely never be recovered.

Thankfully, colonization is now recognized for being the universal negative that it was. This has allowed humanity as a whole to start working toward healing from the wounds it has caused. The return of colonization also seems highly unlikely, as new lands can only be found on other interstellar bodies, which, so far, are not home to any indigenous peoples.

However, it remains to be seen whether or not rabbits exist on other planets. And if there are rabbits there, what color would they be? Perhaps purple?

#

I sigh at the final paragraph before highlighting it for edits and sending it back to my supervisor - who I’ve never met. My chair creaks as I lean back in it and close my eyes. They tingle from having my workstation project optics in them for too long.

At this point, I have been working on this assignment for five years. It requires me to read articles generated by deep learning AI to catch any mistakes before they are published. When I first started working, it was interesting to see the programs learn and adapt to my edits, but I don’t think they really do anymore.

The change started just six months ago when the quality of work that I was reviewing took a sudden dive. Just before that dive, the AI was practically perfect. Their grammar was pristine and they never went off-topic or rambled too long on a single point. Since the change, every article has blatant problems that are completely off-topic, like the one that just made me too fed up to keep working today.

The errors are obvious plants, likely spliced in by a second AI just to give me work to do. Simple, useless work that is only designed to let me clock hours so that the company can receive its federal grants for keeping me employed. The vast majority of jobs are like that, now that automation has made most forms of labor irrelevant except for those with special skills like doctors and lawyers.

So, I’m stuck. Stuck pretending to work to keep my benefits and meager pay that is raised at a rate identical to that of inflation once per month. Stuck living as an investment for the company that owns me. Stuck existing in a country that refuses to acknowledge the reduced need for labor so that its upper-crust citizens that invested in shortcuts against the nation’s unemployment rate don’t need a bailout.

I rise from the chair at my workstation that sits below the only window in my apartment. It is set on the room’s southern wall, facing the blank concrete wall of the next building over. If I’m lucky, it sometimes rains hard enough to patter against the window like it did in my bedroom growing up.

The walk across my apartment takes only a few strides, at the end of which sits a toilet and sink crowded into one corner. Lifting the lid on the toilet causes my ocular implant to sync with it and start playing a video. I pull my pajama pants down and sit on the toilet seat. A shiver crawls over me from my skin meeting the cold.

“Welcome to Bread News, where we keep you in the loop so that you never waste a second,” the video begins as a video feed dominates my vision. The narrator sits in the center of the frame looking back at me. His short black hair is greased down with so much product that it shines in the studio lights. The skin on his face is too stiff when he talks, looking like a corpse being puppeteered from somewhere out of frame. He wears a graphic tee with a logo on it referencing a well-known movie from thirty years ago with a baggy black blazer over it.

There is no escape from Bread News. Bread News is always there, so I let out a sigh and rest my chin on my hand in defeat.

“First up, let’s take a look at the hottest new streaming hit, ‘cus it’s binging time,” the episode continues. As he talks I can’t look away from a spot of skin between his eyebrows. It looks like it’s always pulling in the opposite direction of the skin covering the rest of his forehead. “You better get ready to talk to all of your friends about this new series because it is filled with hot moments. But don’t worry; we watched it so that you don’t have to.”

The skin seems like it’s staring back at me. The man’s face is straining to maintain his smile while he talks about some shitty reboot of an old sitcom. He is going through all of the big plot points as if he were reading an outline, only giving the bare minimum background to make it comprehensible. While he talks scenes play out in short bursts that last no more than a handful of seconds. It’s just long enough to keep someone from realizing that they don’t like it.

As he’s talking about the surprise twist of the main character being a clone of the woman he loved, I begin to wonder what the rebellious patch of skin could mean. Is his face so filled with chemicals and stimulants to tighten up his appearance that that one piece has been fossilized? Or is it merely a bug in the real-time rendering of a 3D model?
The video continues to prattle as my attention snaps back to it. “And that’s everything you need to know about Down Days. We binged it so you don’t have to, but that doesn’t mean you can’t join the discussion!”

I finish up on the toilet and wave my hand in front of the scanner built into the plastic face of the toilet paper holder. A short jingle plays, its chiptune notes being crunched into static-laced parodies of themselves by the plastic box’s shitty speakers. It’s accompanied by a bobbing hologram of the company’s logo that sputters in and out. No way in hell am I paying to get the thing fixed. The song takes ten seconds to play out before finishing with the company’s slogan delivered by a holographic princess: “Remember that when it comes to your bum, you can’t do better than Earth’s Sum.”
With that, I’m free to grab the three squares of toilet paper that are dispensed. I sit through the entire process two more times to get enough to wipe myself. After I’m done, a holographic hoop appears within the bowl of the toilet and starts bouncing between its rim. Getting the toilet paper in the ring when I throw it in rewards ten points. The lifetime score being projected at the top of the toilet reads 20. I drop the toilet paper and miss the ring completely.

“Oh no! You’ll do better next time champ!” the toilet says, accompanied by the whining sounds of a melancholy violin. The song cuts off mid-note to play a loud gulp. “Analyzing solid waste sample.”

At the sink I turn on the hot water, causing another video from Bread News to force an open window on my optical implant.

“Welcome to Bread News, where we keep you in the loop so that you never waste a second,” the smug presenter returns to tyrannize my vision. Christ, that stupid graphic tee. “This news is just breaking, so remember to check back in for the newest update within the hour.”

“Analyzing fecal sample,” the toilet reminds me.

“In Minnesota, there was a mass shooting at the Robert Iger Elementary School in St. Paul. The shooter, who authorities have dubbed “Maroon Crusader” after a mask he wore while committing the shooting, entered the school with two automatic weapons and opened fire on a crowd of children while they waited in line for their lunch.”

I grope for the towel thrown across the back of the toilet next to the sink with one hand, unable to see it through the Bread News feed. As I reach the towel a short animation of a cat cringing plays over the man. I still can’t decide if I think he is real or not.

“Police have yet to release the final number, but it is believed that the shooter killed at least two dozen children standing in the line and injured another dozen. Shortly after opening fire a nearby teacher that was armed with a handgun through the state’s ‘Armed with Education’ program that started last month, engaged the shooter. She was shot and killed.”
I finish drying my hands as the toilet makes a grinding sound from its analyzing process. After I deliver a quick kick to its side the noise stops.

“Sample analysis complete. You did great!” the toilet reported dutifully. “Adjusting daily rations accordingly for better nutritional balance. This analysis was sponsored by your friends at the Appalachia Corporation.”

“Luckily, one of the nearby children picked up the handgun dropped by the teacher and was able to shoot the gunman. The gun used was Bransen Arms’ iconic XRT-556, and the company has started calling for firearm training to be part of the national curriculum to improve the safety in our schools. This episode is also sponsored by Bransen Arms, who wants us to remind you all that the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy, or child, with a gun.”
I bash my knee on the corner of my workstation while trying to squeeze between it and the edge of my armchair. I fall to the ground on my hands and knees and curse as the Bread News feed disappears. I know better than to try and walk through my apartment when I can’t see. Dammit.

As I pick myself up from the floor the world begins to rumble. The dishes in my cupboards clink and rattle against one another. My workstation grates across the floor with a shrill screech. The rumbling grows as I make my way to my feet.
There is no window to see it, but the source of the disturbance comes from the mag-rail that passes just a yard away from the only wall of my apartment that faces the outside world. Mag-trains pass on the rail every twenty minutes with vicious punctuality; electronics, raw minerals, and stowaway fugitives are crammed within its distended body.
Half of the lights in my apartment go out as the mag-train passes directly next to my wall and a fuse is shaken loose. Dust sprinkles from the drywall above me, accompanied by my sparse few decorations falling down or tipping over. I can hear nothing but the thunderous rumbling of it as it passes. My eyes are clenched tight and my hands press over my ears. I can feel my teeth dancing to the mag-train’s beat in my gums, threatening to wriggle free.

The quakes dissipate as the mag-train passes, but the sounds it made still reverberate through my skull. The notes of its low growl ricochet off the inner walls of my head, slicing through my neural pathways with each pass. It haunts like radiation; it corrupts like cancer; it marches on.

I hate that damn mag-train and its nonstop schedule that has laid siege to my life for years. Back on my feet, I finish the brief walk to my small kitchenette, managing to avoid the clustered furniture I pass along the way.

“Good evening, Catryn,” the meal dispenser welcomes me. “You still have one hour and forty-three minutes until your next scheduled meal. Do you find yourself requiring a snack?”

“Yes,” I grumble, knowing full well that I only want to eat out of boredom. It is one of the few comforts to be found in my apartment.

“Is it for another individual? The readings I’m collecting from your ocular implant don’t suggest that you are hungry. Remember what us here at Appalachia always say: ‘We’ll take care of you so that you don’t have to!’”

“Override.”

“Adjusting dietary regulations based on recent fecal analysis.” A silent moment flitters by as the dispenser makes invisible calculations. “Adjustments complete. Dispensing.”

A tumbling jingle plays from cheap speakers that whirl through a tight procession of notes. The door on the dispenser’s front slides open, allowing a small conveyor belt to roll forward, carrying a metal cup. The cup is filled with a dull orange smoothie, a cocktail of vitamins, ice, and artificial flavorings.

“Dispension complete. Please enjoy your carrot cake nutrition shake. Your favorite.” The dispenser’s voice stutters and changes pitch as it states the concoction’s name. I fucking hate carrot cake.

The cup feels oddly warm in my hand from the dispenser’s handling. Thermal sensors embedded in the body of the cup kick in, cooling it to preserve the smoothie’s integrity; my throat tightens in reticence when I look at the familiar orange mush.

I know there is no other choice, so I lazily saunter to my small couch. I fall into its waiting embrace, the back of my head bouncing off the front of my workstation that is pressed against the couch from behind.

“Fuck!”

Rubbing the back of my head does little to mute the throbbing pain, but I do it anyway. I rotate in my seat so that I can lie down along the length of the couch. There I lay for the rest of my afternoon, evening, and night. I watch a handful of Bread News summaries of new shows and films, masturbate to an old recording of myself and an ex-girlfriend, and slurp on the sickly paste produced by my dispenser. And the mag-rail runs by my apartment again, and again, and again.

#

A light song plays from speakers spread throughout my apartment as the lights ascend to wake me up. I’m still on the couch with my shirt clinging to me from sweat. There’s a throbbing in my neck and shoulder blade from being compressed against the furniture’s metal frame.

With two fingers I drag crusts out of my eyes and slowly make my way up to sitting. My ocular implant displays a notification that goes alongside the alarm music, informing me that I’m scheduled to go see my family because all of our schedules had an opening. I clear the notification with a groan and the music cuts off with it.

After forcing down a breakfast smoothie I stumble over to my bathroom nook. My proximity activates the mirror’s morning routine and it projects information regarding the day’s forecast, morning news, and recommendations for my outfit and makeup on its surface through my ocular implant.

I ignore most of the white noise information being displayed and open the styling recommendations. It leads me through assembling an outfit from the clothes in my dresser that I’ve gotten around to registering with the system.

While I’m digging out the clothes from the depths of my dresser, another mag-train roars past my apartment, causing everything in it to violently shake. My knuckles scrape on the side of the drawer my hands were in and I am instantly filled with white-hot anger. The cup holding the remainder of my breakfast smoothie tips over, spilling it to the floor. It will have to wait; I don’t have time to clean it now.

Back at the mirror, it projects the suggested make-up look onto my reflection, allowing me to color it in on myself in real time. Messages of approval and praise flash on the periphery as I do so, telling me that I’m beautiful, that I look just like my favorite actress, and telling me to always be true to myself.

Throughout the entire process, I pause intermittently to let a mag-train rattle by. Once, I don’t react fast enough and end up with a smear of brown across my temple. But, when I’m done, I’m able to replicate the mirror’s recommendations accurately enough.

I leave my apartment and enter into the chill day outside. The mag-rail above rattles with another train passing by, bloated with manufacturing materials and the newest consumer detritus. Its passing causes small shavings of rust to rain down above me as I clamber into a taxi shuttle. Once inside, I punch my parents’ address into the terminal in front of me and it begins navigating the city’s clogged streets.

“This ride is brought to you by Bread News!” a nasal voice ambushes me. It tells me all about the relationship statuses of the people featured on the newest reality show. It’s my first time hearing of the show, but my interest is piqued nonetheless.

I bring up a browser window with my implant and search for the show’s name: “Cherry POP!”. The show takes a dozen sexy twenty-something-year-old virgins and dumps them all on one floor of a luxury hotel where they can only leave their rooms at designated times to go on dates or attend social outings and challenges. While in their rooms, each contestant is randomly visited by a handful of possible dates that wear mascot costumes. Inside those costumes, they have a computer that modulates their voice to sound like a strange robot.

Each episode of the show the contestants vote off one of their romance options as they get to learn more about them. Contestants can also get voted off somehow, but that bit doesn’t interest me so I hardly even skim over its paragraphs in the summary. Instead, I read about the real twist of the show. At the end of the show, the contestants choose one of their romance options to lose their virginity to, which is recorded in their luxury hotel rooms and sold for a premium to fans.

However, one of each contestant’s romance options is related to them in some way. If they end up with their relative at the end the contestants instead have to either lose their virginity to someone related to them or wear a chastity belt until they are married.

I flag the show so that Bread News will work summaries of it into my rotation.

By now the shuttle has reached my parents’ house and I realize that the rate meter has been running while it has sat in the street in front of the building. I curse as I pay and jump out.

A misting rain started during my ride, accompanied by a sheet of smog that makes it difficult to see the front door of my parent’s assigned home. I walk up to the door. The rain stings and leaves light red marks where it makes contact with my skin.

When I reach the door, the hobbled forms of my parents answer and smile when they see me. We exchange short hugs and greetings before I’m shepherded into the sitting room.

It’s a decent house, but I think that they deserve better for their retirement. Both of my parents were employed by Earth’s Sum and worked hard enough to retire a decade early at 130 years old. Retiring early demoted their assigned retirement home from the tier five that they deserved to a tier four, but even forty years later they promise that they don’t regret the decision.

Despite this, I can’t help but think that if they had a tier five house I wouldn’t be squished into a small armchair in their sitting room with one elbow resting on a nearby table and the other on the shelf built into the body of a floor lamp. There also is the issue of how close they are to a mag-train rail, which causes the entire building to shake and almost knocks my mother over while she carefully enters the room with a tray of ice waters.

“Oh, silly me. I know better than to walk around when it’s quarter past,” she says, her voice sweet as ever.

“Let me help you, Mom.” I get up and take the glasses from her so that she can sit down. “You know, you shouldn’t even have to deal with that. Earth’s Sum owes you a much better retirement home than this one.”

“Oh, don’t be greedy,” my father grumbles and clears his throat. “You know, most people don’t even get retirement houses from their work anymore. Most just get apartments and you really shouldn’t ask for so much. Just think, with the money that the company saved by giving us this house they can do a lot of great work! Much better than your mother and I likely could.”

It’s an argument that we’ve had countless times, so I drop the subject altogether. Instead, I bring up Down Days and we all share our own reiteration of Bread News’ summary as well as our opinions on it. From there we move onto a few other shows that we all “binged,” each of us playing our own roles in an exceptionally meta stage play of modern culture.
Less than an hour later, knocks on the door interrupt us and my parents jump up like clockwork to go answer it together. I already know that it’ss my sister, so I stay seated on the small armchair that I have slowly pressed a relief of myself into. She comes in a few minutes later, bringing a warm dish of food with her.

“Hey sis,” she says when she sees me.

“What’d you bring this time?” I say after delivering a quick nod.

“Shrimp alfredo.”

I try to act as though that isn’t impressive - as if I have any clue of what that could taste like. As if I didn’t only eat a heavily regulated diet of smoothies day in and day out. She knows the truth but is too polite to say so. Another mag-train zooms past nearby and I wonder what is on that one. Petrol? Action figures? Hunting rifles?

“Sorry I’m late,” she says to the room. “Are we ready to eat?”

We corral ourselves into the cramped dining room. A shoddy plastic table nearly fills it, leaving only a ring of narrow space open around its perimeter. At the table’s center, a gaudy logo for the Appalachia Corporation is emblazoned. It was a gift from my sister after she won it at an office party and had no use for it.

My sister and I sit down first while my parents disappear into the kitchen to microwave the rest of the food to accompany the dish brought by my sister. She breaks the silence first by saying “So, how’s work been?”

This question signals the start of our ritualistic dance whenever we are left alone with one another. It is a choreographed exercise of feigned interest, disregarding known tensions, and recurrent excuses. The dance is performative, executed out of pretense and an effort to placate our parents in the other room.

But for some reason, today the dance is broken. Rather than brushing off it when I ask her about her work, she answers genuinely.

“Well, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell anyone yet, but I think I’m going to get promoted.” She smiles abashedly. “I interviewed for it yesterday and I think I really smashed it.”

“That’s great,” I lie. “What’s the promotion?”

“It’s for a position managing the Life Potential Assessment results. Obviously, it would come with a bump to my living allotments and company coupons, but it would also be really great to work with kids, I think. Being able to find someone with some actual potential and make sure that they do some real work seems really rewarding.”

She doesn’t mean to take a small stab at my own results from the Life Potential Assessment, but intentions don’t matter. All kids take the test their senior year of high school and mine damned me to be living in my garbage apartment and working a job of nothing but busywork. It cuts deep.

My sister realizes what happened, but her pained expression in response does little to soften the blow. She is barely saved by our parents coming back into the dining room, carrying the heated-up meals with mitt-covered hands.
“I hope you girls are ready to eat!” Mom announces excitedly, placing the dishes around the shrimp alfredo at the center of the table.

They both sit down with grunts while my dad asks, “So what’s new with you two?”

I say what I usually say, which is nothing. Then, my sister tells them about her probable promotion, and the resulting conversation dominates the remainder of the night. Even when my parents bring up their assigned vacation package in the coming months the dialogue quickly gravitates back to my sister’s promotion.

Knowing that I should be happy for my sister does little to help get me through the situation. I feel buried in my sister’s wake. The outpouring of respect and admiration reserved for someone working at the top of our societal food chain drowns me out until I become lost just beyond the periphery of the situation.

Hidden in the conversation’s purlieu I sink into a familiar cycle. I wish that I had known the importance of the Life Potential Assessment when I took it as a teenager. That I had known how brushing it off would entomb me in my current life of corporate-directed activities, priorities, and ideas.

Now, that reality fuels my jealousy for the freedom afforded my sister. The freedom to make her own food. The freedom to manage her own schedule. The freedom to work in a career with actual substance and purpose.

All of that comes from her sponsorship by the Appalachia Corporation, which has decided she is worthy of being allowed to live. From a single test when she was a teenager, the trajectory for her entire life was determined, and freedom allotted. At that moment she was placed on a tier of society that I will never be able to reach. I’m eternally lesser than her, all because of the whims of a corporate amalgamation.

The rest of the afternoon flows through me like a tide. I eat food without tasting it, chime in on conversations without understanding them, and let time pass without meaning. My mind floats away from the room to marinate in my embarrassment and emotional collapse.

In my stupor, the afternoon passes by in a smear of sensory inputs. I don’t come to until I’m in front of my apartment door, where I register my surroundings for the first time in hours. A Bread News broadcast welcomes me to the prison that is my home as I collapse on the couch in tears. Sleep takes me before the video is done catching me up on this season of Cherry POP!.

This marks the beginning of a stupor that consumes me for days. I haunt my apartment as a memory of myself. Hours pass without activity or recognition. Bread News plagues me with a near-constant bombardment of ignored content summaries, reports of multiple shootings every day, and algorithm-defined attempts to sell me things. None of it registers as more than white noise.

My work falls to the wayside as well. At first, I open up my daily assignments and leave them open for hours before re-submitting them without even looking at their titles. When I receive no acknowledgment and my coupons are dispensed unimpeded I don’t even keep up that farce. Instead, I open and submit them before they finish loading. It goes unnoticed.
Days become defined by whether anger or hopelessness is more prevalent. Some days I lash out and smash my possessions, snarling like a beast as they explode on the floor of my apartment. Other days I don’t leave the couch, pissing in bottles and passing the day by repeatedly masturbating to the pictures and videos of my ex-girlfriend that my ocular implant recommends to me when it senses my hormones spike with bored eroticism. It passes the time.
Throughout it all I don’t feel as if I truly exist. I am merely an asset for the Appalachia Corporation. I am an element that needs management. My satisfaction, my emotions, even my humanity are irrelevant as long as I can be categorized and contained.

Every day my drowning is underscored by the constant bombardments at the hands of passing mag-trains and Bread News broadcasts. Bread News is my only communication with the outside world as I miss my allotted bonding periods with my family. They don’t reach out when I’m absent as there is no way for them to do so without the algorithm scheduling it. It will undoubtedly catch on and do so eventually, but for now they can only find peace in the knowledge that I’m not dead. Appalachia would alert them if I was.

Most days the passing lights of a mag-train are the only light in my apartment as they race by. They arrive with unnerving regularity, always twenty minutes apart. My entire apartment violently shakes with each one. I stop cleaning up the rubble that falls from the ceiling, the shards of fallen glasses and plates that cover the floor, or, eventually, the glass of my one window that a particularly large mag-train shatters.

The regularity of the destructive mag-trains eventually captivates my ire, refocusing it from myself to the hulking monstrosities of steel and corporate branding. I fantasize about being large enough to grab one of them. In the dreams, they are living creatures, a face to the soulless corporation that rules my hollow life. The mag-train squirms and cries to escape me, but my grip is too steely and I squeeze around its throat until it gasps for air and its final throes cease.
I know the fantasy is as absurd as it is satisfying, but it plants a seed in my mind that germinates. Taking control of my life is an impossibility, as is striking back at the Appalachia Corporation in a way that matters. They are a body that weathers entire wars at a time, making meaningful change by my hands seem impossible.

But the mag-trains come to present an opportunity to satisfy both needs simultaneously. I cannot control my life, but controlling the neverending flow of mag-trains is plausible. Any harm I inflict upon a massive corporate body would be fleeting at best, but I could have a measurable impact on the particular railway that torments me.

The idea becomes an obsession. I fixate on it throughout the days that pass me by, nurturing and iterating on it until it grows an identity. When I wake up it is the first thing in my mind, and I fall to sleep with images of its completion floating in front of my mind’s eye. Even the passing mag-trains themselves become pleasant in how they remind me of my machinations.

A week goes by before I am ready to put my plan in motion. Over that time I manipulate the algorithm that controls my daily shipments from the Appalachia Corporation by making targeted statements and web searches for issues and the tools or equipment to fix them. Once I get the equipment necessary, I do the same for various household cleaners that can be distilled into their various components. Finally, with my sister’s birthday approaching, I leverage her higher standing to get chemistry equipment that is normally illegal for me to purchase under the guise of it being a present for her.

I have to bypass the identity locks on the chemistry apparatus by using trace hairs from a sweater I borrow from my sister, but it is easy enough to do so. Then, I use the equipment to form a highly explosive compound from the cleaning supplies, using the descriptions from old novels and movies as a guide. I have to actually watch and read them as I find the Bread News summaries insufficient. I’ve never found much enjoyment in the media summaries for movies and non-reality shows, but this process brought an entirely new layer to it that I loved. I even consume some content that is unneeded for my plan. It takes some risky experimentation to get the formula down just right, but I manage to do so.
In between all of this, I often spend hours sitting in front of the broken window with my eyes closed. There I listen to the thundering of the passing mag-trains and visualize what will happen. The planting of the charge, the spark of the mag-train’s passing igniting it, and the carnage that follows. When I stand up my pants are lined with dried trails of blood from the glass on the floor cutting into my legs, but I hardly notice.

Finally, the day comes. I wake up early with my bomb stuffed into the deep pocket of my jacket. The polluted air of the city stings the rims of my nostrils as I breathe it in, but the burning rain that usually falls is mercifully absent.
Finding an optimal place on the mag-rail is easy enough, and I’m able to reach it by climbing up the side of a nearby building’s fire escape. From there, it is less than an arm’s length away, allowing me to secure the bomb to the underside of the rail with industrial tape and glue. I run the fuse to the top of the rail and attach it there so that there is minimal chance of the sparks missing it.

Then I only have to wait. I pick a spot at the end of the block where there is a metal bench covered in rivets and protrusions to protect it from being used as a bed by the homeless. However, they also usually make it nearly unusable as a seat. However, at this moment I don’t care enough to notice as my eyes are glued to the rail where I know that my bomb lies in wait.

I don’t have to wait long; the mag-trains always arrive on schedule. First, I can hear the clattering mass racing down the mag-rail in the distance. It shudders and thunders as it races toward its own destruction.

When it comes into view, I barely catch it rounding the corner of the claustrophobic street, sailing a mere meter over the roofs of parked cars below. The sparks that rain down from where it meets the rail illuminate the dim morning. It flies past me with a roar and for a moment I fear that the fuse won’t catch or the chemicals won’t interact how I expect them to. What can you really learn from movies and old books anyway?

The moment hangs there as the mag-train passes where the bomb should detonate. I lean forward in my seat with anticipation. The rail’s rattling and noises of the world around me become muted as I hyper-fixate on where I know the bomb sits. I must have done something wr-

All at once, the mag-train is decimated as a fiery plume blasts out from the mag-rail in all directions. The light blinds me momentarily while the thunder that follows it throws me from the bench to the pavement below. I lay there, too stunned to move.

When I open my eyes, there is an intense heat that threatens to cook me alive. The street around me glows vibrant shades of orange and yellow from the conflagration down the block. I am able to rise shakily to my feet. Warm blood trickles down my cheeks from inside my ears and scrapes on my head.

The street is filled with rubble. Some of the cars of the mag-train have been embedded in the surrounding buildings, jutting out of them like mechanical tumors. They undoubtedly hit various apartments and living spaces, but I pay that no mind, just as I don’t regard the cars beneath the rail that have been crushed by the resulting detritus.

The mag-rail above the street has been shorn wonderfully. A massive gap separates its two limbs which each splinter off into thin tendrils like an unwound rope. They grope in the air for a connection only to find themselves hovering in a void.
People slowly meander into the scene. Many nurse their injuries as they try to get away to a safe distance, while others have already started looting through the mag-train for whatever valuables it was carting away. Small bits of paper slowly fall to the ground like the most beautiful rain I have ever witnessed. They burn slowly, many of them little more than embers. I catch a larger one as it falls near me and inspect it. The mag-train must have been transporting a large order of children’s books.

The scene is beautiful; I am filled with joy and pride. It is something that I did. A mark on the world all my own, and nothing can take that away from me. Even as armored police arrive and I tell them exactly what happened, I have a beaming smile on my face and I am arrested and shoved into the back of a dingy car, but I still watch the scene disappear through the back window. I want to commit it to memory. To remember what I was able to do. To remember the best moment of my life.