The Image of What Used to Be

At this time of night, the sewers were crawling with scavengers. They picked through garbage and muck, thrusting their hands into the frothy water that trickled through the putrid caverns. Bit was among them, sifting through the trash, side by side with other Scants who were eager to find spare parts.

The Scants toiled in the dark, hastily throwing useless scraps of metal over their shoulders and wading through the deeper areas of sewer water. Bit straightened from her squatting position and let out an involuntary groan, sweating in the stale, sticky air of the sewers. She swiped a muddied hand across her brow and planted her hands on her hips to take in the scene.

Caverns bathed in shadow stretched out in front of her. The buzzing handlights strapped to the wrists of all the Scants did little to dissolve the oppressive darkness that pressed down on the scavengers with palpable hopelessness.

That was the most prominent emotion plain on the Scants’ faces: hopelessness. Bit turned her head and glanced at her companion, gauging the way he was feeling by his features. The young man caught her looking and offered a small smile.

Bit could never see hopelessness in Volt’s face though she knew it was deep inside. He was skilled at hiding the frustration and despair that came with searching through the sewers, night after night.

Instead of sighing in resignation, Volt simply clapped Bit on the back and said, “It’s been a long night. Maybe we’ll find some spare parts tomorrow. Let’s go home.”

“You know the Department will dock our pay if we don’t come up with something soon,” Bit mumbled, eyeing the Scants to her left and right.

Volt gave another tight-lipped smile, leading Bit out of the sewers by the hand. “The Department of Cybernetics can go without parts for another day,” he explained.

As Bit and Volt stalked toward the ladder that led to the surface, a jarring wail echoed from the caverns behind them. Bit spun around at the noise, and Volt unsheathed a small, rusty dagger from his belt, standing at the ready.

From out of the inky blackness, a figure began to emerge, frantically running the length of the tunnels and coming toward the groups of Scants on their nightly shift searching for parts.

“HELP!” the figure yelled, splashing through the cloudy water, his shadow skipping around the cavern walls illuminated by the dim handlights. “Help me!”

The group of Scants straightened, backing away from the approaching figure. Bit shielded herself behind Volt as panic-stricken footsteps sounded on the ground, growing louder and louder.

At last, the terrified man stumbled into the main cavern, soaked with fetid water and anxiously coming closer to the scants.

“You have to help me,” he pleaded in a harsh whisper. “They took us all. We couldn’t find enough parts!”

Bit’s heart was pounding as the image of the man became clearer up close. In the pale luminescence of the handlight strapped to her wrist, she stared at the full image of the man’s body and nearly gasped in fright.

Middle-aged and bleeding from multiple wounds on his body, the man was dressed in the rags of what seemed to be a paper gown. His disheveled appearance, however, was not nearly as alarming as the empty space where his right arm should have been. From the exposed socket, wires protruded, sputtering sparks.

The other Scants must have seen the missing limb at the same time as Bit, for they all shrunk away from the man. He splashed forward further, exposing his face to the light. His sallow skin dripped with grayish water, and red streamed from a gash in his forehead, complementing the dreaded yellow glow emanating from his eyes.

A collective gasp sounded from the group of Scants, and some leapt away, running for the single ladder that led to the surface.

“Please, help me,” he pleaded again, and a pang of sympathy washed through Bit as she gaped at the cyborg. She tried to focus on his remaining human parts: his pallid skin, the bags under his eyes, and the natural way he moved. But the blood leaking from his wounds had a tinge of black in it like oil, and the sizzling sparks from his nonexistent arm repulsed her.

As Bit stood frozen in place, caught up in her contradicting feelings, a sudden flash of floodlights lit up the cavern as bright as the sun at noonday. Artificially amplified voices screamed, “Halt!” as a thunder of footsteps stormed through the sewer tunnels.

Instant panic flooded through the remaining Scants. Even Volt with his calm emotions yanked on Bit’s hand, pulling her toward the ladder. The group began scrambling up the rungs, one by one, in a mass exodus. But Bit’s feet were stayed in the murky water, transfixed by the blinding floodlights that made her squint.

“Please!” the man wailed before he was tackled to the ground mid-stride by beings clad in all black. He crumpled to the cavern’s floor and a struggle ensued between him and the violent newcomers.

Several more of them started after the group of Scants racing for the surface, and another sharp tug came on Bit’s arm.

“Let’s go!” Volt yelled over the commotion of splashing water and commanding agents. “C’mon, Bit!”

Bit let Volt drag her toward the ladder, agents advancing toward them at an enhanced speed. “Halt!” they cried in shrill, inhuman tones.

Volt slashed at one of the agents with his knife, catching the being’s helmet and leaving a long, vertical scratch mark. Before Volt shoved Bit onto the rungs, she had one last glimpse of the poor man that was now being drug back through the tunnels, into the harsh lights of the invaders.

The man sobbed, “It’s not our fault! Not our fault. We tried to find more parts. We tried!” The man wriggled helplessly in the agents’ arms, and amid all his thrashing, something flew from his hand.

A slight twinkle caught Bit’s eye; a glittering piece of metal winked at her as the object fell soundlessly under the cloudy water. Her heart jumped, tempting her to run into the oncoming danger for the piece that could save her from being assembled into a cyborg for another day. But Volt’s hands were on her rear, pushing her upward.

“Go, go, go!”

Finally, her limbs reacted, and she began climbing, pulling herself up. The surface was only yards above her, and the dim light of an early morning filtered down in the sewers.

“Departments of Cybernetics,” the agents in black announced their authority. “Halt!”

Bit and Volt refused to turn back as they scrambled up the ladder. Once the worn soles of Bit’s shoes touched the surface, she took off in a sprint, Volt bounding after her.

As she ran, there should have been sack full of clanking parts bouncing against her hip, but today, and for the past several days, there was only the sound of her labored breathing and the incessant screeching of the robotic agents from the Department of Cybernetics in her head.

~

The Department of Cybernetics, or DOC for short, had stormed every district in the country when a military coup had overthrown the government. As part of their mission to put the country back on top of the global chain of power, military might had become the sole focus. Now, military strength had evolved into an identity, and Bit disdained the way this identity was forced onto the Scants.

The finding of mechanical parts allowed DOC to continue their experimentation, pushing the boundaries of human engineering, fusing man and machine together.

Bit shivered as she picked her way through the slums, a makeshift town of tents and lean-tos next to the main sewer caverns. The image of the half-man from the night before was burned into her mind, and she winced each time she thought of the DOC agents swarming him. By now, he had probably been dragged back to DOC headquarters, tubes and wires protruding from flesh as DOC replaced his humanity with an artificial identity of cogs and parts.

The sun was dipping beneath the horizon, and hoards of Scants were gathering for another night in the foul tunnels. Bit hurried herself beneath the surface before they could begin their shift, sliding down the ladder and landing in the odious water below with a splash.

Immediately, she got to work searching through the water, using her dim handlight and the dying sunlight to see through the murkiness. Bit spent several minutes elbow-deep in the water before her hands brushed the object she sought.

As she clasped the object with a heart full of relief, a voice startled her.

“What are you doing?”

Bit jumped, instinctively reaching for the ladder. “Oh, Volt,” she sighed. “You scared me.”

“Your shift hasn’t started yet,” he commented. “What are you doing here?”

Bit should have known that Volt would be here. The dedicated man spent more time in the sewers than above ground, searching for parts to provide for his family. And when he found extra parts that exceeded his weekly quota, he passed them off to other Scants who hadn’t been as lucky, sustaining their humanity for another week.

“I was looking for this,” Bit answered, slowly opening her hand.

Volt’s eyes widened. “What is that?” he asked in awe.

Bit merely shook her head, gazing reverently down at the metallic part that would save her from DOC the next time they came to collect Scants.

Volt approached to get a closer look, and Bit could tell that he had already been in the sewers for a couple hours judging by the pruning of the skin on his fingers and the musty smell that came from him.

“That should fetch you more than three weeks of safety!” he exclaimed.

“I hope so,” Bit mumbled. “During the night, they took Trig.”

The awed expression on Volt’s face evaporated. DOC agents had raided the slums only hours after she and Volt had returned from the sewers. Trig had gone without a fight, but Bit still couldn’t forget Trig’s haunted eyes as she had willingly submitted herself for collecting. The agent with the single scratch mark down his helmet had nodded at Bit once before leading Trig from the tent.

Bit shook herself from her thoughts and started fiddling with the part. “The shape is lovely,” she murmured to Volt, holding it up in the fading sunlight.

“A heart,” he named the shape, gently taking the part from Bit’s fingers. “Look, the latch works! Four weeks of safety, I bet.”

Bit offered a small smile as Volt pried open the face of the heart, and a single picture resided inside. Standing in the silence of the sewer cavern, both Scants squinted at the image.

After several beats of quiet, Volt wondered, “Do you think that this is what DOC uses in the cyborgs as the central operations unit?

Bit thought on that for a moment. “No,” she decided, “it is too rudimentary. It’s not mechanical at all!” With a frustrated groan, Bit snatched the part from Volt, balled the object up in her fist, and tossed it back into the water. It disappeared beneath the foamy surface.

Volt shrugged, giving her a comforting pat on the back. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll find something. Just gotta keep looking.”

Bit nodded resignedly, following him into the deeper caverns, but not before crushing the part with her boot beneath the water. As she did, she couldn’t help but feel a sudden sadness wash over her. The water-stained image in that part resurfaced in her head; a family smiling out at her.

But Bit knew that, like the humanity that remained in the world, the image in that locket was only something that used to be.