Laser Light

A long, grey overcoat under a black fedora stared back in the window reflection of the train car as it rounded the plant. They are the most expensive clothing items I own though I don’t make much as a janitor at the Darmor Particle Accelerator Laboratory. Sporting the same overcoat and hat everyday justified the purchase for myself, barely covering the repetitive look on my face; bleak, tired and defeated eyes glared back at me. Quiet desperation loomed over my exhausted physique and mind. The weekly check in my coat pocket will barely cover my bills before I reset and do it all again. I sure hope 1952 will be a better year.

A bump on the tracks jolted my left arm out involuntarily to grab the standing pole and shift my weight around. At least the snow was pretty, I thought to myself, continuing my outward gaze. It covered much of the ground and sprinkled the rooftops of the facility buildings. The only color I could see was the yellow warning light affixed to the light grey buildings every hundred feet or so. Its flashing caught my eye, I now realize the yellow strobe has been initiated.

Suddenly a blinding flash of white light and a hard pressure of heat burst against my face. I was thrown across the train car which itself became unhinged from the tracks. Excruciating pain ripped through my left arm as the world tumbled around me in a sea of white light. Consciousness faded and came back to me several times.

The world calmed to a still aftermath, my vision returning to me. I lay on my black surrounded by flames of a burning train car now split wide open and exposing its contents to the cold wintery air. My left arm surged in pain followed by an icy-cool flush of relief and renewed pain again, the cycle repeated. I looked down to see my left wrist and hand gone, cut cleanly below the elbow by a few inches. My heavy head wobbled to stay upright, amazed at my disfigurement. There was no blood however, only a singed nub and cauterized flesh. My sleeve was burnt up to my shoulder revealing newly blackened veins etched underneath my skin.

Slowly rising to my feet, I looked back at the destruction. The new openings of the train car appeared as if they were neatly cut with a pair of scissors. The ground below exposed another perfectly straight line, thin as a pool stick shooting straight ahead from the plant behind me. Steam rose up from the ground along the eternally straight line, as far as the eye could see.

I looked over my shoulder at a massive whole blown out of the Particle Accelerator Laboratory wall, now burning in a ball of fire. A tragic error in calculation had occurred, leaving a straight shot of destruction along its discharged pathway.

My arm pain abruptly resided followed by a pleasant tingling and blitz of energy. Orange and yellow pulsing light illuminated the singed tip of my new half-arm, yearning to burst through the skin. I held my arm forward, pointing it at the steel wall of the train car and released the constricted feeling in my chest with a massive scream. With it shot out a yellow laser of light, blasting through the steel train car wall like a precise fine point of hot light. It sheered a hole through the train car wall like a hot knife through butter.

Unclenching my chest and withdrawing my scream, the light retracted back to the glowing tip. Exhilaration poured through my veins and one thing was for certain; whoever I was, I am no longer. And whoever I am now has a bright future ahead.

I placed the fedora back atop my head and let out a smirk of revelation.