Station to Nowhere

There is nowhere left to go. Nowhere left to hide. And in that end. They have all lost.

It was hard to believe there was a time before the war. Before it broke them down and scattered the pieces. He took to rubbing his frozen knuckles trying to generate heat but it was truly hopeless. He was alone, his family a distant, lingering but fading memory. Most of them had died on the frontline to a faceless enemy, and some of them had returned home to a hell that broke them all. It mattered not who delivered the killing blow. Now he was alone and no amount of prayer could save him, could save any of them from where they were headed. He had heard the stories, rumours on a grapevine. Of places where men like him. Useless, defunct and barely able to think straight go to be forgotten or be repurposed. The Future is Now. Die Zukunft ist jetzt. We are Men. Wir sind Maschine. 

The chilling slogan of the Future Society rang through him like a chant on a loop. He never anticipated it to be literal but maybe it was. The whole country was changing, even those that watched them wait. These hybrid machine-like men. Der Clockwork-Mann. It wasn’t unique to them either, their enemies made similar weapons of war. The flesh was fast becoming a hindrance to many. To him, it was a reminder of who he was and what he would never want to become. Some of these men had had almost all of their body parts replaced. Even the gasmask helmet looked surgically attached. Their hands were a black pair of claws, connected to pistons and motors. The type of thing he had first seen in factories now had been perfected, reduced in size and made in the image of mankind. A metal mankind. Eine metallene Menschheit. 

The fog descended covering the platform and hiding those much like himself. All he could see was those red eyes, glowing in the grey. Penetrating his skin and peeling back all that he was. This is the future they say. Every step is just another leap forward. There can be no looking back. No regrets. No fear of what awaits us. Where we’re going there will be no reason to fear, no reason to feel at all. 

He shivered, breathed, spluttered and reached across again to scratch at his hands. This time he winced and saw it through the blur, red mixed with thick black oil. His hand was cold, numb to touch. And it began all over again.

Back at the station. Waiting for a train that will take him to nowhere.