Thinking Ahead – Sunday Photo Fiction

Written for Sunday Photo Fiction. A story, about a government that oversteps and creates a new enemy, begins after the photo.

Genre: Science Fiction/Dystopia

***Warning: Mature Language***

Photo by: Alistair Forbes

Thinking Ahead

*click – clack*

*click – clack*

That’s the sound the guvmint man’s Newton’s Bridge kept making, on and on. You’ve seen those things, with the five steel balls suspended by thread in a frame. Swing one ball into the others and only one at the other end swings out. It demonstrates Newton’s law: For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Only problem is, it gets boring in about 30 seconds, and it makes that stupid sound.

Most of the time, the toy slows down and stops, but this one kept going, like a metronome, aided by the guvmint man’s psychic powers. I tried not to squirm while he stared at me with those crazy eyes. This is how the recruitment starts for making new psychic warriors like the guvmint man…with a bonafide mindfuck. Yeah, a poor boy like me has more in common with guvmint men than it seems.

We’re both mutants.

They say a virus got out in 2093. Killed over 4 Billion. Overpopulation? Not a problem no more. Most survived, but the infrastructure was gone. Most lived like my family, scrounging or killing whatever they could find to survive. I lived in what used to be Queens, New York. Don’t know what that means. I never seen any Queens and I have no idea what a York is. About 10 percent of the survivors developed a mutation that allowed psychokinesis. At age 14, your eyes would turn purple and green. That was the clue. To the day, when you turned 18 (and no sooner), you could blow holes in steel with your mindpower alone.

So the guvmint, the Consortium of whatthefuckall (I don’t really know the name), would usually ask a family nicely to give up their kid to work for the guvmint if he was a mutant like me. My family told ’em to fuckoff, ’cause they knew what would be in store for me, becoming a guvmint zombie killer an’ all. They asked a second time, and we said no, then ran for the hills. They found me again, and killed everything but me. They even killed old Bruiser.

I loved that dog.

So here I was gettin’ the staredown, with some guy thinking he can recruit me after killin’ my family and my damned dog. He didn’t have a psychic shield up, ’cause he knew I was still 17. Too young to be a threat, old enough to be molded into their twisted image.

*click – clack*

I suppose it was that stupid Newton’s Bridge that made me do it. He didn’t see it coming, I guess. I think it’s apropos, you know? Like the guvmint man’s toy, for every action there’s an equal re-action. Kill my family and my dog, and you get…

He wasn’t that stupid, really. You have to be exactly 18 or older to be a real threat. Still, the look of surprise on his face was priceless…when I blew a 60mm hole in his head. The two guards went down fast, cut in two with the power of my mind.

Seems my parents lied about my age.

Oops.

You gotta love folks that always think ahead.
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Each week, Alistair Forbes offers up an original photo as a writing prompt for flash fiction. Look here for the prompt and many more imaginative stories in response to the photo above: http://sundayphotofictioner.wordpress.com/2014/08/31/sunday-photo-fiction-august-31st-2014/