Planet Vlad

He sat out front of the cabin of a rusty abandoned all-terrain vehicle he called home.

Before him lay stretched out abandoned machines, wrecks of steel..

He shook his head at everything before him feeling nauseous with his crap life.

"Arrgh… I hate this world!!" Vladimir shouted out to no-one at all and everyone - everything.

Each day he had the same nauseous feeling… that his existence was meaningless!

With those thoughts, he urinated onto a rusty metal wreck, farting and yawning simultaneously as he steeled himself for a new day.

Vladimir was a practiced survivor in this world. He stored the negativity to the back of his head.

Threw on a pair of boots, his patchy coveralls, and strapped on his sustenance for the day. A camel-pak backpack filled with a watered down Gatorade like liquid that looked like green urine.

He stared out over the familiar wrecks, until he saw the one he would be working on today and begun his trudge toward it.

Making his way through chunks of strewn metal.

Vladimir had irked out a living scavenging for fasteners among the ruined machines. Screws, bolts, nuts, magnets, which he handed into the Over Seers in exchange for food, water and this Gatorade like substance.

That was Vladimir's life..

Approximately 200 years prior, society had begun to embrace smart technology. Then they became more and more reliant on it. At some point society had began to experiment with adding smart enhancements to humans too. At first it was only scientific experimentation, then it was implemented within the security forces of the wealthy nations. Then into the senior officers and parliamentarians overseeing the population and the military and police. In turn the wealthy, and corporations and their technologists enhanced themselves. A divide grew between the enhanced and normal society.

To try and qualm the public, enhancement lotteries were implemented to give them hope.. the winners were welcomed into the enhanced world of technology and high society.

When the general populace noticed they were being left behind, insurgent groups… anti-technologists emerged. Terrorism, blame, rebellion spread to the streets..

Now 100 years has passed… and two distinct societies now existed, one enhanced with vastly greater capabilities, enhanced intelligence, memory, strength, health monitoring capabilities, self-healing, non-vocal high-speed thought-based communications, and with it the ability to learn skills, languages at astonishing rates.

And the un-enhanced…

When Vladimir arrived at the wreck he had chosen the prior day, he drew out his tools and began to remove fastenings, sweating away, working with his set of tools.

The longer Vladimir worked scavenging fasteners – bolts, screws, brackets, magnets, the more he became more aware of the structure of the machines. How they were put together and how they would operate and move as a whole.

As usual, today Vladimir was working with Recoil a young girl of his age. She hated being touched, even a tap on the shoulder and she would recoil. Thus, she had gained her nick-name. Recoil and Vladimir worked together well and so they stayed a team working quietly side by side each day.

That day, after working for a while they stopped for a mid-morning break. Vladimir sipped the electrolyte substance from his Camelbak and looked down the path from the machine they were working on. An Overseer was peering in and out of machines and had spotted them. He was walking up the hill toward them. Quickly Vladimir kicked a metal can by his foot saying oiii! Recoil.!

She looked over at him and he warned her "O.S. coming up the hill towards us for a check!".

She shrugged he shoulders at him and sat with waiting for the encounter.

In a few moments the O.S. had joined them.

"Show me what you've scavenged now"! he ordered. He was covered in sweat and had a broken front tooth.

He leered at Recoil, "A pretty young one!" he said, and licked his lips.

First, he checked thru Vladimir's bag of fastenings, seeing there was nothing forbidden or of value or he gestured with his thumb to Vladimir and said. "Get out here." Vladimir moved away just enough so that he was hidden but could see what was happening.

The sweaty O.S. moved towards Recoil, looked down at her bag of fastenings, let me see your identity card he said. Then as she drew her identity card which hung within the neck out of her coveralls, he made his move. Forcing her up against the machine he reached down the front of her coveralls and said. "I'll get it for you."

Sweat was dripping off his grimy face.

"Help" Recoil screamed. "Vladimir… help!! "He's grabbing my boobs!!

Vladimir came sprinting around the corner, like a hero.

The O.S held Recoil firmly against the machine as she wailed, and swore at Vladimir,

"If you get lost, I will let you live... don't try and spoil my fun, boy."

Vladimir took a swing at the O.S! Thrusting out a weak jab, but the huge O.S. swatted him away like a fly. "Now, your dead boy, he snarled!" Then the O.S drew back his fist….

Suddenly there was the sound of metal driving into flesh. Recoil had climbed up behind the O.S and struck the side of his neck with her wrench. There was split in his neck and blood was pouring out.

The O.S's knees bent and he dropped to his knees as if bowing to Vladimir with his head bent at a weird angle.

"Hahaha.. nice hit!" Vladimir laughed. "Thank heavens," he said to Recoil, as she scampered down of the wreck.

Recoil was laughing, though as she dropped the wrench she had tears in her eyes.

Meanwhile the O.S had fallen to his knees and blood continuously flowed through his fingers as he panted and eyes grew dim.

"What are we going to do Vladimir? Are we stuffed now?" she asked.

Vladimir looked at her for a moment worried, then naively said "Don't worry, we did no wrong."

"Let's shove his body under a wreck and then collapse it. Then we'll clean up the blood."

"If we work together fast and do this correctly, keep both our mouths shut, we should be ok!", he said, hoping he was true.

Then finally Vladimir tried to hug her, reassure her, but she recoiled eyes wide.

Together they found a wreck which looked like a good spot to hide the body, dragged his body to it and collapsed it atop the body.

Vladimir was watching Recoil, worried. She looked alright, cleaning away the blood, she wasn't crying, and appeared focused.