SciFi and Fantasy Stories: Bolt's World

Tommy staggers upright. He steadies himself against a wall - his legs feel like putty. He must have hit his head - it reels as he gets up, and it’s throbbing sharply. He can’t see. His right eye is bleary, no vision in his left - it must be damaged. Weary, shaking, he lifts a hand to feel it. It seems intact - there’s the sighter, the zoom, the curved metal casing protecting the optic fibres. Wires. He flicks the tiny catch. Yes, something flickers - POWER LOW. It just needs charging. Thank God. He doesn’t want to stumble around with half-vision for too long. Now he only needs to find a charge-chip. Lucky his right eye’s natural - many had both replaced with the new model. Bolt’s new model. Tommy had seen them, going about their daily lives with their new-improved eyesight. He thought they looked like robots, or giant insects. So he’d held out.

* * *

“But my eye’s fine,” he’d told Bolt, glancing suspiciously at the prototype Bolt had produced. “Why would I want that one?”

    This was way back - back in the days when Bolt was still underground. Artificial enhancements had not caught on just yet, but they were legal. The only one of Bolt’s hobbies that was, though. Maybe that’s why it was the most successful.

    Bolt had sighed - Tommy always seemed to make him sigh, for one reason or another. This time it was in exasperation.

    “Haven’t you listened to one word I’ve said? Look at it, Tommy! Night vision, infra-red, zoom, X-ray vision.” He winked slyly. Tommy said nothing. “Aw, come on! Tommy, my man! Look, it’s light years better than that jelly you’ve got at the moment!”

    And Tommy had given in, let Bolt insert his new eye - only one, mind you - because Bolt was his friend. He’d trusted Bolt.

* * *

Tommy rubs the grit out of his right eye - his real eye - and looks around. He freezes. His eyes scan left and right, up and down. The street is a mess. In fact, it can hardly be called a street any more - only a few buildings left standing, and even they are on the verge of collapse. Rubble is piled up on the road. Cars are upturned or buried. One streetlamp still glows, but it is bent over almost in half. As Tommy watches, its light flickers out. He is still staring about in disbelief, disorientated. How did it get like this? So fast? He doesn’t know how long he’s been unconscious. How long would it take to destroy a city? How the hell would he know? And why is he asking himself such dumbass questions?

    He tries to get a grip on himself. So… Where is he? On the sidewalk, or what’s left of it. He always preferred to walk, not use that hot-shot new system that fired you around in little glass tubes like human bullets. He looks up at the tubing, the glass highways overhead. No one will be using those any more. They’ve all been broken, snapped, smashed, despite the numerous reassurances that they are virtually everything-proof. Virtually. Now all that’s left are the jagged ends gaping, like open wounds. Or broken wiring. So. He’s established that he was lying on the sidewalk. Great. He must have been knocked out by a flying brick or something. Lucky a building didn’t fall on him. He can see some of the unlucky ones from here. No one else though. No one alive. What does he feel, he asks himself. Angry? No. Guilty? Not really. Tired and dizzy and just plain sick? Hell, yeah.

* * *

It was Tommy’s newly-acquired eye that got Bolt noticed in the first place. Tommy’s boss had noticed it when he got back to work. Tommy was a repairman - an engineer, he liked to say - of just about anything, but he knew he’d never have Bolt’s gift for creating stuff out of junk. Bolt had never had any training, but somehow he could just shove together a few scraps of wire and metal plating and knock up some new invention - like the eye, one of his early projects.

    “Where’d you get it?” Tommy’s boss had asked him, gesturing to his new optic. “Any good?”

    “Off a friend,” he’d replied. “And yeah, very.”

    “Off a friend, eh?” Carl had slapped his beer gut gently, considering. Tap, tap, tap. Blob, blob, blob. “Cheap then, was it?”

    “Yeah.” Free. Bolt was always generous.

    “What’s it do?”

    Tommy hadn’t been bothered enough to go into an in-depth technical explanation with the man. “Oh, loads of stuff,” he’d said vaguely, but couldn’t resist adding, “X-ray vision.”

    Carl’s piggy eyes widened. “Where can I get one?” he had asked.

* * *

Tommy searches through the wreckage, almost frantically. He knows he won’t get anywhere with only one functioning eye. He needs a charge-chip. At first he thought he’d go back to Bolt’s lab, but after one look at the swaying building he decided against it. So now he’s climbing into the wreckage of a car in the middle of the broken road. There are two people in there, both dead. Tommy can’t help noticing that one has a Bolt-designed artificial arm. It’s still clutching the steering wheel, sparking weakly. Tommy leans over the dead driver to reach the charge-chip for the cigarette lighter, turning his face away so he won’t have to look at the body. He gets his fingers round the chip, twists. A click, and it’s free. He slides his upper body carefully out of the car - he doesn’t want to touch the corpse. Guilt springs up out of nowhere - he tries to fight it back. This is all Bolt’s fault, not his. But he’d helped… No, they hadn’t meant it. You couldn’t blame him or Bolt. They hadn’t known… It had all gone wrong.

* * *

The artificial arms had come later, when Bolt had managed to set up his own workshop at last. His eyes had sold well, but the arms sold better. Within a week, Bolt had gotten hundreds of orders for these new limbs that could lift a ton, punch through walls, even fire stun bullets. A novelty, maybe, but a popular one. Bolt had a small manufacture line running non-stop, but he still could not meet demands as fast as they appeared. So he set up a new workshop, a bigger one, in a more impressive part of the city. He hired more workers, bought new equipment, and pretty soon his anthro-mechanisms were being produced and sold at an almost frightening rate.

    “Pretty impressive for a gutter kid, don’t you think?” Bolt always used to say, his eyes bright as he stared out at his factory floor.

    “Yeah,” Tommy would agree. “Pretty impressive.”

    And it was. Tommy had met Bolt years and years ago, when he’d been in high school. Bolt hadn’t been in school, of course, but he’d been Tommy’s supplier of drugs. Oh, yes, Tommy had gone for them in the old days, all right. The old days - funny how he was calling them that. It wasn’t that long ago. At that time, Bolt had just been a criminal - a dealer, a pickpocket, a joy-rider. But all the time, he’d been making things, little things in his spare time. Tommy had stayed friends with him since. He’d gone off drugs, and anyway, Bolt didn’t supply them any more. The black market for those kind of substances had grown more and more outrageous, and the vivid descriptions Tommy had heard of the new kinds of drugs had actually scared him, not excited him. So he’d stopped. It wasn’t that hard any more. In the olden days - the real olden days - drug addictions had been next to impossible to get rid of. Now, a quick jab and you were over it.

* * *

Tommy points the charge-chip at his Bolt-eye, presses the activation pad. The light flashes on, and its green pulsing tells him that the charge is being transferred. He sits on a portion of intact curb, waiting. It takes a minute, but finally the little beep sounds. He chucks the chip away, and flicks the catch on his eye. Light and colour flood in on his left side. There we go. Now he’s ready. He’s decided what he’s going to do. He’s going to find Bolt. He’ll know what to do. If he’s alive, that is.

    Tommy stands up, and walks unsteadily down the street, picking his way through the shards of broken glass. He still feels a bit dizzy - a brick in the head is no laughing matter. Gazing around at the destruction, he wonders again how long he was out, how long it took for a city to end up like this. No long, he thinks. Not bloody long. And how is he supposed to find Bolt, anyway? There’s so much rubble, he could be on the other side of the street and Tommy would still miss him. Or he could be on the other side of town by now, fleeing the chaos. Yeah, right. If there’s any chaos, Bolt will be right in the middle of it.

    For the first time, Tommy registers a noise. It’s been there all the time, but he didn’t think about it at first. It sounds like waves breaking on a beach. It’s them, thinks Tommy, and that’s where Bolt will be, trying to set it right. Relief floods through him - he knows where he’s heading, at least.

* * *

The Megaman3000 project was not common knowledge. Perhaps that should have told Tommy something at the time, but he’d been too distracted to actually sit down and think about why Bolt might want to keep it a secret. He had just assumed that Bolt wanted to surprise his worldwide customers, and left it at that. If he’d had thought about it, he’d have realised that that wasn’t Bolt’s style. No - Bolt would have wanted a slow, expectant build-up, small nuggets of golden information leaked to the media at appropriate intervals, just to keep the interest up, then a massive unveiling of his new invention when the hype was tuned precisely to the highest pitch. But he hadn’t thought about it, and there it was.

    He maybe should have suspected something the very morning that Bolt revealed the project to him. Maybe. Maybe he ought to stop torturing himself about it. Yes.

    Bolt had burst into his room that morning, bright and early, wide awake, ready for anything. Tommy was buried in his bed, feeling exactly the opposite.

    “Rise and shine!” Bolt had announced, then, when Tommy only grunted and turned to face the wall, he’d come over and forcibly yanked Tommy’s sheet out of his arms, so Tommy could only squirm around in the cold air, protesting feebly, wearing only a pair of crumpled boxers. “You,” Bolt had told him loftily, “are a state.”

    “Piss off,” Tommy told him.

    Bolt only tutted under his breath - something that only made Tommy more annoyed - and continued to stand by his bed, arms crossed in front of him, foot tapping impatiently, looking down at Tommy. Eventually, Tommy got up and dressed, if only to get away from Bolt’s scrutinising stare.

    “All right,” he said. “I’m up. What do you want?” He didn’t feel very inclined to be polite this early in the morning. Anyway, it wasn’t as though Bolt had been particularly polite to him.

    But Bolt’s feathers could never be ruffled. “I wanna show you something,” he said, and Tommy heard the suppressed excitement in his voice. Despite himself, he was intrigued.

    “Show me what?”

    “Wait and see.”

    “You bastard.”

* * *

After picking his way along the deserted streets for about an hour, heading towards the faint noise of destruction, Tommy realises that his X-ray vision might be useful for something more than examining women’s undergarments. He slaps himself sharply for being such an idiot, then finds the right switch, and turns it on. Now he can see through the dilapidated walls to either side of him into the interiors of the ruined buildings. The range is only about ten metres, but it’s better then nothing. If he’d looking for Bolt, best to look thoroughly.

    Another hour slides past, and he’s getting tired. Not tired, shaky - his head still isn’t right. It shouldn’t take him this long to walk to the city centre - he thinks that’s where the noise is coming from - but he’s being slow. Slow and steady. Wins the race? Who said there’s a race? If there was, he started way after the others had finished.

    Suddenly, a figure lurches out of a nearby building. It is a woman, and she’s crying. There’s blood on her. A lot of blood. She looks up at Tommy, and he sees the damaged side of her face - a bloody mess. She staggers towards him, and he stands frozen, not knowing what to do. But before she reaches him, blood loss catches up with her, and she falls forwards, sprawling at Tommy’s feet. He steps over her, keeps walking. He doesn’t bother to check her pulse - she’s dead all right. He ought to feel guilty now, he knows, but there’s nothing, just a big empty space. He is numb.

* * *

When Tommy first looked at the plans for the Megaman3000, he thought Bolt had cracked. That’s it, he thought, he’s lost it. He said so to Bolt, but his friend only laughed delightedly and launched into a detailed explanation of how the thing would work. It would be the greatest technological advancement in our age, Bolt had said, a whole body of his Bolt-parts, so Megamen would be super-strong, super-fast, super-everything in fact.

    “Can they fly?” asked Tommy dryly.

    The sarcasm seemed lost on Bolt. “Not yet,” he said, still enthused in his careful drawings and notes. “But I should be able to make modifications when we’ve got the prototype built.”

    “Are you sure it’s a good idea, making super-indestructable people?” Tommy had asked. “I mean, won’t they be dangerous? If one evil lunatic gets hold of one - phwoarrrrooom! Bye bye city.”

    Bolt had fixed him with a withering stare, and said, “Look, Tommy, don’t worry so much. They’re gonna be controlled, all right? There’s gonna be a device to tell them what to do - a remote control, if you like.”

    “Still, an evil lunatic could use one of them, right?”

    Bolt sighed. “Their sale will be carefully controlled, all right, Tommy? Jee-zus! Don’t make such a fuss! Now listen to this…” And he was off again, explaining all about the Megaman’s built in brain that would respond only to the controlling device, which would be the centre for the whole thing’s movement and sound patterns. Bolt finishes his excited talk with: “They’re going to be amazing, don’t you think?”

    And, despite himself, Tommy had been drawn to agree.

    So that was it. Tommy was now an official member of the Megaman3000 creative team. And that was a pretty exclusive thing to be part of - there were only five people overall: three bio-techno-anthro-everythingo-engineers, Tommy and, of course, Bolt himself.

    It had taken a long time for the first one to be built, what with Bolt being busy with his now-famous company, so that he had little enough spare time to devote to the Megaman. However, every spare minute he had, he was down in the workshop with Tommy and the three engineers, all working their (Bolt-designed) Sox off to get this project running. And Tommy had been swept along with the rest, brimming with enthusiasm once his first doubts had been put down.

    And then they had finished.

    The five of them had stood there, gazing up at their creation, the remote control clutched in Bolt’s shaking hand. “Now,” he said weakly, “We try it…”

    And it had worked. Perfectly. Not a flaw in Bolt’s design. So they had made duplicates. These hadn’t taken as long as the first, of course, so that pretty soon they had a whole squad, still secret from the outside world. During the time the others were being made, Bolt amused himself with modifying the existing one, though Tommy wasn’t sure he made any useful improvements. He had been too caught up in the new squad being manufactured in front of his eyes, that he hadn’t noticed one, extremely significant change Bolt made in the design of the first.

* * *

Tommy reaches the central square of the city as dusk starts to descend. It’s quite dark, so at first he cannot make out what is happening in the large open space in front of him. Then he switches his night-vision on, and it all springs into focus. Dreadful focus.

    In the middle of the square is a crowd of frightened people, hundreds of them, all crammed together like sardines in a tin. Surrounding them, on every side, are the Megamen. Huge, gleaming structures of metal and wiring, flashing lights and gizmos. And they’re holding the crowd in. Tommy watches in dumb terror as a man tries to break free from the clump, makes a bid for freedom, and is stepped on by a Megaman. Yes, they’re big enough. Three metres high, every one. Then Tommy’s eyes are drawn to a figure, standing silently on a pile of rubble overlooking the violent scene. There is no mistaking the tall, thin, black body, the jaw-length black hair stirring in the slight breeze. It’s Bolt. And in his hand, he is holding something. Something small and rectangular. The controlling device.

    Tommy lets out a cry, his shock forcing it out of him. Then he runs, scrambling up the pile of bricks, cars and mortar. His hands are lacerated on sharp corners as he climbs, but he does not care. He keeps going up, until he is standing, panting, beside Bolt.

    Bolt looks at him. A surprised but cheerful smile spreads across his face. “Oh, hi, Tommy,” he says brightly. “I wondered where you’d got to.”

* * *

He’d thought that Bolt was as shocked as the rest of them when the Megamen went mad. He’d assumed. But now he came to think about it, he hadn’t seen Bolt in the crazy moments when the Megamen started smashing their way out of the lab. He hadn’t seen him as he’d run out of the doors, the only one left alive - the other three had been the rogue Megamen’s first targets. He hadn’t seen Bolt outside in the street as he sprinted down it. Then a sudden burst of light had sprung across his vision, and he’d fallen into blackness.

    He just hadn’t thought about where Bolt might be, hadn’t considered that it was his fault the Megamen had gone on their spree of destruction. When he’d wondered what would happen if the Megamen got into the hands of an evil lunatic, he hadn’t included Bolt.

    He should have, it seemed.