Havana Hell

My head felt like it was going to explode! "¡Explosión!" The world came down that day, and all that tethered to it by proxy. Deep within those SCIFs, orders were expounded upon, further clarified, and ritualistically placed into the matrix, then matter into Teleology. The Mantra was "follow the voice-to-skull directive!" There could be no derivations nor deviations—all the world watched ignorantly on. Like inept penguins floating on a doomed break-off of permafrost. The bubbling heated gases of change soon to cook and incinerate all of us—the unsuspecting few as sacrifice to some unseeable God.

The fog was thick; you could cut it with a Pacific stick. Of course, that Simon Says toy from the 1980s bought from St. Vincent de Paul would ring out like 2001's HAL screeching with inordinate terror. I found it, though! Finally, all our headaches and nosebleeds might be at rest? As I pulled away those wind-blown, heavily oxidized metal coverings tucked away at the base of that unsuspecting archaic light pole fixture, my nose began to bleed profusely. As I leaned forward and the blood poured out, hitting and splattering on the concrete base below, I wiped the excessive blood into my eyes as I attempted to bat away the sand blowing east, buffeting off those high peaks of white frothy turbulent winter waves.

Clutching the damn thing, as it had sat there for years. This little device kept me from thinking as a child just miles away. This diabolical yet arbitrary cymatic radio demon scattered my mind from collecting thoughts cell by cell, year upon year. As my hand came down, throwing it to the ground, instantly smashing it to bits, I could hear the waves and almost smell the salty air past the now caked-on blood blocking my nasal passages. Standing there on that sandy, windy, barren patch of dune, the loss of blood was a small final price to pay for a life intentionally ruined and turned upside down. But why? Was I just collateral damage? So much loss came from this device! As I now shot at it with this old handgun, hitting it twice and missing it repeatedly, I finally began to pull my neck back before I bled out entirely.

They'd be coming soon; they'd want a report. I had to ditch these blood-drenched clothes and clean up my face, bury all the bloody concrete before this unrelenting sand-bleach wind uncovered it again. Now I could hear the voices even better. I was trading in one demon for another, playing the devil's advocate with my life. What choice did I even have? "At least the old technology was being cast away for a more transparent form of cybernetic control?" Was I really thinking this? As I waited for a squadron to round that corner, so that we could further sweep the sandy strip of foreign enemy nanoid clusters, not yet released into the air. Those clouds could work as IoB or amass with trillions of others and create an EM storm—we had to stop it before these masks would conceal our faces from the healthy welcome pain of reality. "No quiero convertirme en un cíborg; no quiero estar encerrado."