The Wired Man

7

Looking at this now, I can't tell you why I valued my life so much. It wasn't anything beyond mundane, but I guess it was mine. Change wasn't something I was good at. What I was good at was manipulating the system to get what I wanted, and once that system rejected me, I had nowhere to go. I was lost, and I needed answers. The only person I knew that had anything close to that was my brother, Terrance. I decided to go and visit him in prison after what I considered at the time to be the worst week of my life. I could not have been more wrong.

—TWM

Personal Entry: The Wired Man

I looked out at the landscape whizzing by as the repulsor car sped me toward the prison. It had been a week since my brother screwed up his life and mine along with it. A week of nothing but links to my mom and watching my feed to see if I could finally wake up from this nightmare. I couldn't. I was stuck, and each day brought on a new level of realization. I wasn't going anywhere.

I peered out the windshield. Outside the city, there was nothing but vast fields of grass, crisscrossed with pre-integration county roads. There used to be trees, shrubs, forests, deer - hell even bear - but during the integration, all that changed. The insurgency used to occupy the entire city and used it as their base of operations, but when the loyalists arrived, they began burning anything taller than a fence post. Homes were hiding spots, and woods were secret bases, so it all got torched.

"Sweetie," my mom said from across the link.

"Yes, Mom?"

"Are you on your way to see Terry?"

The homogeneous greenery blurred past the driver's side window and I tried to figure out what I was going to say to my brother. I wanted to scream at him and explain how it was all his goddamn fault, but I knew that wouldn't get me anywhere. He always was a sensitive little bastard.

"Sadly, yes."

"Good. He seemed a bit depressed yesterday, and he perked up a bit when I said you might be coming."

"I bet he did." I crouched back into the bucket seat and jammed my shirt back down below my seat belt.

"It's not like he did it on purpose."

"Oh yeah, I'm sure he tripped on a shotgun lying right next to Shauna's head while she was taking a nap in the middle of the living room."

"He's your brother. At least hear what he has to say."

There wasn't anything my brother could say that would ease my frustration, but she was right; I had to hear the story. Part of me also thought that seeing him in prison might put things in perspective. Another part of me also wanted to see him suffer. "I'm just frustrated," I said.

"I know. It's been hard on all of us, but you have to stay strong for your brother. He needs you."

The car pulled off the speedway and signaled for the switch to manual control.

"All right I'll give him five minutes, but he better have a damn good explanation." I took the steering wheel and guided the car onto the exit. "Love you, Mom. Talk to you later."

"Love you, too. Bye."

I pulled onto a small two-lane highway. The prison loomed in the distance, its gray, fortified walls cut into the skyline like a concrete mirage. A few cars on their way out passed by, and I could almost see the expression of torment sculpted on their faces. Usually it'd be hard to see a loved one locked up in an iron Petri dish, but not this time. He took my life and flushed it down along with the remnants of his own. If there wasn't going to be a shielding panel between us, I'd kill him myself.