The Rise of the Cyborgs

Chapter 1: The girl on the bridge

 Note this is a darker mature prequel to Cyborg's pet. Yeah, it's closer to Stranger things/Hunger games/1984/The Handmaidens Tale in tone ( i.e bleak, utterly dystopian). As it says on the cover it's mature for a reason. Photo:the boy.  Video:opening  mood music.

Forgotten Word: Apricity (n.) The warmth of the sun in winter.

Meta's POV. Ravensgate bridge

I don't have long. I can feel my mind shutting down like rooms in a large old house being closed for the final winter. Doors, one by one, clicking firmly shut. So forgive me if I go astray. My story of the events needs writing. I don't have the capacity, as I once did to write a vivid picture. My words are now embers in the soft red fire of my mind. Forgive me.

It started on a bridge. A huge rusting monument to what was. It had survived the cyberwar.

I remember a young girl standing looking desperately down to the wide river below. I was sitting on the railing. Touching one of the pillars for balance. I watched the water pass under, building up the courage to jump. For a moment I didn't know if I was on a pillar in a flowing river. Or a concrete ship cutting its way through a great sea to another land.

The girl, the me, shivered on the ledge of the Ravensgate bridge. I don't know why or how I had found what the local kids called the leap ledge. I just knew I was sitting on it. I looked down. The full moon reflected in the water below. The silver serpent flowed below me. Just as it had done before me and just as it would do after. I was standing with black torrents of mascara running down my face like a winter storm. The inky drops fell to join the black oil of the river below. It was midnight.

At that point I didn't want to die, I just wanted the pain to stop. I brushed the collar of my sleeve over my running nose and sniffed. I wondered if I should leave a note? I had my sketchbook. What would I say? What if they found a mistake in my writing? This triggered me off and I began to cry uncontrollably again. I was miserable. Tomorrow was the test. They would finally find me out. My life was over anyway. Why prolong the inevitable? On my neck and back, my birthmark was burning.

I heard a pickup slow down. The bridge was mostly empty this time of night. I heard the truck stop but I didn't look. Oddly the only thought in my mind was how much I would hurt them if they watched a girl jump to her death. That could scar someone for life. It was the night before the test. Lots of 17-year-olds like me were upset and nervous tonight. The only difference between them and me was I knew what the GovSys neurological test would find.

"Hey," said a voice behind me "you going to be long?"

I looked around. He wound the window down. Framed in the window, was what I would draw if the Art teacher said 'sketch devilishly handsome'. He was as the girls in my school would say 'swoon-worthy'. He looked a little older than me but not by much, a year maybe. His face was every inch the man. Large hands grabbed the steering wheel. They were attached to seriously strong arms. He had the kind of face which in his later years he would look have photographs of himself wistfully. 'Those were the days' he would say looking at his younger self. That groomed jawline. That flawless symmetry something both desirable, upright and righteous. Older he would have a beautiful wife, who would bask in the envy of her friends.

"Fuck off," I said, "can't you tell this is serious?"

"Sure," he said, " so am I."

He just sat in the driver's seat doing nothing.

"Look I'm just stopping on the way home. I don't need a Samaritan" I said, "so why don't you just fuck off ?".

"Why? Are you going to be long?" he said his accent was foreign. Scottish I think.