The drive home should have been smooth for Linda, but after seeing that the biodegradable battery in his autau had been all but depleted, he had to take a detour and have it re-energised at the nearest cyber station.

Maybe if I’d taken the spare battery, like dad insisted, I wouldn’t have these problems, he thought.

He let out a long sigh, voiced the destination to his car and, as soon as it started moving, he continued his research on the pandemic on the still-functioning pod on the back of one of the car seats. As he passed Krazy Kairo’s corner street, he looked up and noticed that he wasn’t there this time, but nothing could stop anyone from remembering the sound of those cymbals! Strange how he could hear them though. He decided he would visit the auditory engineer to check his ears this weekend.

Linda had not passed the corner street before his automobile completely shut down. He was used to this with his old autau but he hadn’t had the time to process the tall, shadowy, ominous smiling figure that extended one of its synthetic claws under his hovering car and bored straight into his soul with the part that should have been its eyes. Linda suddenly remembered Michael.

Sipho had decided to visit one of his friends after practising baseball at the end of the school day. The feelings he had in the morning had returned and he was feeling uneasy.

Could be my eyes, he thought.

As he was driving to his friend’s place, he got a sudden rush of adrenaline when he saw Linda’s car parked just after the corner street on one of the patches of grass – grass that was designed to deter automobiles from parking.

How strange, he thought.

He redirected his car and parked next to the autau that wouldn’t even light up when he got within 10 meters of it. His autau made way to find a level glass parking spot that beamed green. When Sipho got out he suddenly had that all-too-familiar feeling that he had felt in the morning. He hadn’t been able to process it but now he felt a sense of urgency. He rushed over to Linda’s car and, upon seeing that he wasn’t there, he began frantically looking around. That’s when he noticed the completely concrete building.

How archaic, he thought.

All his senses were heightened when he started running toward it. When he got to the large metal door and rammed it open, the feeling he had intensified. He started walking and when he got to the end of the empty building he saw a light peek through the ground. Then he pulled the metal peeking out from the ground.

He was sweating, but he had to go down the ladder. It was a matter of life and death. When he got down, he was not prepared for the horror he saw. There were body parts with their wiring still attached lying on tables and people squashed inside human-sized glass jars filled with blue bio-liquid in the middle of the basement. He saw the bodies in two of the jars. They belonged to Michael and Linda. But the third glass jar…something was triggered when he saw it. It was his face, no, Sipho’s face, just his head. Resentment for mimicking such a weak body with weak eyes overwhelmed him.

“I’m so sad you started without me, my friend. I almost died in this body. It’s not viable for me.” His friend laughed lightly at what he said.

“You’d have been fine for four or five hours, you’re being melodramatic.”

His friend smiled at him while looking where his eyes should have been and extended synthetic claws holding the Replicator95. His friend noticed he looked exactly like him now. Shadowy.

“Anyways! Which body should I have next, Krazy Kairo?” he asked, winking.

Tell us: What do you think of this story?