Chapter 5
I had never been outside of the state of Michigan since my mother remarried. I spent a good chunk of my life either in the Naval Station Norfolk Shipyard Hab, where I grew up, or our small plot of land in Northern Michigan. While I spent 7 years in Petoskey, it was a “big town” in an area full of small towns. So when I say, I haven’t seen much of the world, and what was in it, this is all I was exposed to.
Arriving at the Lansing International Airport, I was amazed by… well, everything. While we did have E-busses, AI taxi services, and AI ran grocery stores and fast food… I was not prepared for the shear brilliance of a real modern city.
The airport felt like one of those world you read about in Sci-Fi novels about “a near but distant future”. There were so many lights, holo screens, drones zipping around, robot cleaners, I even spotted a few Augmented Humans.
From what I gathered in my hundreds of hours diving down random rabbit holes around the Web service, Humankind has always had a fascination with mechanically augmented humanoids. The borg from that cheesy show Star Trek, cyborgs, robot humans, androids, they have come in all sorts of forms starting around the industrial revolution. I read somewhere that Di Vinci had diagrams of human-like machines, though their veracity was… dubious at best, straight false at worst.
Augmentations started in the early 2000’s. It began with simple things, replacing limbs for soldiers or folks who lost them in accidents, followed by Neural implants in the 2020’s where paralyzed folks could perform some pretty rudimentary control of things like computers. By the time WWIII ended, we started to see people with fully robotic limbs, complete with mechanical motion and the ability to control the limb like any other with minor thought. Many say its even better than having flesh and bone limbs - the mechanical limbs don’t get tired, they don’t feel pain, and they're far stronger than they would be otherwise.
In the year 2130, a breakthrough was made with Artificial Nano-synth Skin becoming suddenly available en-masse. This skin, from what I gather, was revolutionary as it now allowed mechanical limbs could be shrouded in skin that, more or less, replicated human skin. They could feel with the synthetic nerves, but more importantly, it allowed for hiding augments. This caused a huge uproar in the 2140 presidential election, when President Mariana DeLecruz was the first ever elected Augmented Human. If you looked at her you would never be able to tell she was a paraplegic from birth.
However, some folks with augmentations saw them as a badge of honor, not something to be shrouded. So there were still a small sub group that walked around openly with things such as metal cranial plates for neuro-aug’s, mechanical eyes, and more. It was disconcerting for some, and for me, being from a town where aug’s didn’t walk around openly displaying their “upgrades”... seeing several was a bit overwhelming. It was like seeing a real life dragon you read about in myths - something you know could be out there, but the first time you see one you are awe struck.
I’ve also never seen so many people hustling and bustling around in a single area in my entire life. If I knew what anxiety felt like, that's probably what I was feeling now. A sense of overwhelming dread, fear, and elation, all at the same time. There was just so much happening around us, and we were only at the entrance of the airport.
As much as I would have liked to gawk for a few more minutes, our chaperone Sergeant Rico Perez, the station's Army recruiter, wasn’t about to let us take in the sights. The thirty or so of us were quickly separated by branch, and he assigned a person to lead each group through the airport to the assigned terminals. Thank goodness I wasn’t picked, I had zero navigational ability and I was just trying not to faint at the moment.
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That honor fell to a guy named Steven. He was a short, pudgy guy, with beady eyes and that annoying “I know everything” look. You know the type.
“Follow me troops!” he said with gusto, pushing into the crowd.
Into the wild blue yonder, am I right?
I’d bore you with the details of the very first flight of my life, but… well, while cool as shit, its not important in the grand scheme. What is important is that after disembarking the G-jet in San Antonio, where Air Force Basic Training is located, we were quickly ushered into small groups, and onto large, bright blue E-busses. The Military Training Instructors, all decked out in standard grey fatigues, large rimmed black hats with a gold rim and what looked like a buckle of an eagle holding some sort of plants on the front, were just pointing and pulling people, getting them onto the buses as quickly as possible.
I ended up on the second bus in the line of five.
“This is what cattle must feel like…” I remember thinking to myself. We didn’t even have time to get our bearings, let alone think, before being ushered into another metal box.
I made my way to the back and taking a window seat. Due to how tall I was, it was a tight fit, but I just wanted to make sure I could open the window if this human sardine can started to smell.
As I sat staring outside, watching the MTI’s continuing to randomly assign their human wards to busses, I felt the seat next to me sink. I glanced to my left to see what had to be the largest human being I’d ever seen sit next to me.
He was easily 6 feet tall, and stocky as a brick shit house. His brown hair was short and serious, the glasses on his face were simple, but framed his kind brown eyes perfectly. He was checked out in a flannel which was… weird. They didn’t really produce flannel patterns anymore, it was the type of stuff you would find at a thrift mercantile, or maybe in a discarded clothes bin.
He smiled over at me, reaching out one meaty palm to me.
“Heya, my name is Thomas!” He said in a gruff voice.
I took it, shaking it gingerly. His grip could have broken my hand I realized, this guy was strong as an ox.
“James” I said curtly. If you couldn’t tell by now, I had the social graces of someone who had been locked in a basement half their life. Which, I guess I kind of was, being a shut in afterall.
Thomas’ grin widened as he dropped my grip, and he began looking around. “Man, this sure is a lot! Where are you from?”
“Michigan, yourself?” I said, looking back outside as the MTI’s began loading the last few people onto the busses.
“Massachusetts brother. I ain’t ever seen so much… chaos.”
I nodded thoughtfully, returning my attention back to Thomas. “Yeah, me either. Why did you join?”
His grin faded a bit with that question, his face taking on an introspective look. I noticed his nose, while large, was angular, and his face was long but proportional. “Ya know, I ask myself that often. I had a good job where I came from, I was a lumberjack! I know paper is expensive, but its honest work, and its needed for all sort’s of stuff. But service… service is about more than yerself, you know?”
That kind of took me off guard. I hadn’t been thinking of this as service. I most certainly was doing this for my own selfish needs, and not for any other reason. This caused me to pause for a second. “You joined even though you were making good money?”
Thomas’ wide grin returned. “Yeah brother. Taking care of others is the most important part of being human!”