Prometheus Dystopian Trilogy Box Set

One It often happens to me, this sudden feeling of having been here before, in an indefinite pastime, at this place. Before me lay a city bathed in the early sun rays, smoke, and panic. My Tesla sped through the streets of Globalized London, streets that looked so different on that day. My medical beeper buzzed relentlessly. The Ancient Greeks called this feeling anamnesis. Like waking up to some ineffable truth, peeking behind a curtain far beyond myself, just for a split second. “… unclear if the explosion on Trafalgar Square is a terrorist attack,” a male voice in the late forties broke my thoughts through the crackling radio, trying to sound matter-of-fact. But I sensed the tremor behind it. Trafalgar Square. I would have to pass right by it to get to the hospital. I accelerated instinctively. My mind objected, as did the display on my lenses, raising a red warning sign that I drove too fast. “Danger in Trafalgar Square” the display on my eyes read, and I blinked to erase the information. The sense of anamnesis refused to leave me. It was one of the side-effects of the ecstatic state my mind would escape to when it sensed danger. My brain released dopamine and norepinephrine into my system, chemicals that increased heart rate, tightened focus, and boosted pattern recognition capabilities, allowing me to make connections between information I hadn’t noticed before. And this was only the first stage. The ecstatic experience was like breathing, like a sport the world chased since the bio-technological revolution. Still, it always made me uneasy. Countless pedestrians fled. Ambulances and police cars rushed past me. Sirens resounded everywhere. Armed men and women from the London Global Police roamed the streets, joined by soldiers and special forces in their black exoskeletons and blue helmets. What had become of this city? A European megapolis, a city that never sleeps, advanced, a model for the rising global world. Amidst the chaos stood the red double-decker bus, and a gorgeous blonde woman waved at me from the large screen attached to it, advertising tooth-paste. The screen blinked and went dark. London crumbled around me, yet another city unable to escape the increasing terror that roamed our world. I pushed a button on the left-hand side. “Auto-pilot activated,” a female computer voice spoke, too soothing to fit the tension that hung in the air. I tried to relax. Except for the strange notion, this morning had started quietly. As usual, I woke up from a nightmare of flames and fire burning, a nightmare I had since I was little, and thus gave up trying to make sense of. As on every morning, I took two white pills and sipped my dark coffee while watching the sun chase away the dancing street lights. My head still buzzed from the alcohol and the deafening music from the night before. I bathed in the memories of the tender shape and smooth skin that belonged to the woman I had been with. Carly, right? On the dance floor it was she who made the first move. Her words rung in my ears: “I’ve always fancied red-headed men.” But the look she gave me had sealed the deal. In the background, the newscaster as usual discussed the endless waves of refugees storming from the Outer Areas, the danger of terror that had hit countless Global cities in Europe and beyond over the course of the past five years. Then the earth shook. Now here I was, driving to the hospital. The air thickened, smoke and dirt condensed in the atmosphere. I knew I was close. Chaos. The whole of Trafalgar Square was bathed in it. The monument of Admiral Nelson rose above the turmoil, coldly staring at the spectacle. Just drive by, Adama. You have to get to the hospital. Then I saw them. The people lying on the ground, injured, most of them so severely they wouldn’t make it. Just drive. “Auto-pilot off,” I shouted. With a sudden movement, I steered the Tesla to the roadside, opened the door, and dismounted before my logic had the chance to contradict. The air outside my car smelled of death, a foul mixture of blood, bones, and dirt. My hands trembled. A red exclamation mark popped up in the corner of my lenses, indicating a dangerous area. I blinked to make it disappear and focused on what I saw in front of me. Was this really true? It felt like a nightmare, like I would wake up any minute, because it was so different from the calm and restless life I lead. This sight was not new to me. How many times had I seen this on the television from the other global cities? The panic, the cries, the traces of the bloody corpses. The Outer Areas, created over three decades ago in the global reform, now turned against us, with the violence they once served to prevent. But until then the news had been always far away, like a movie. I could switch it off, and the horror would end. But now, standing in the midst of it, the dirt on my skin, the stench in my nostrils, I feared that I was unable to handle the moment. My medical bag lay in the trunk, and I snatched it while throwing the buzzing medical beeper inside. Now, Adama. I took a deep breath. Smoke and chaos swallowed me as I marched directly towards the scene. They enveloped me like a blanket. Time began to slow down. No, I thought faster. I fell into the well of darkness, giving up control. The conscious mind is slow. It can only process about twelve thousand bits of information at once, which equals two people talking. But unconscious processing can handle billions of bits at once, like a big data computer. I let my unconscious take over, entering the depths of ecstasis. A girl was on my right. Her white shirt smeared with blood, her eyes wide with horror. I bent down to examine her. My lenses switched to face-analysis. Amanda Faux. 22.—Letters appeared on the screen and disappeared with the blink of an eye. She had just a minor injury, some insignificant splitters. The man next to her tried to stand up, and I asked him to help her. Daren Green. 41. “Switch off face control,” I said. Not knowing the names made the sight easier to bear. My feet took me further into the eye of the storm. While I ran, I connected my brain to the web, retrieving information of when the ambulances left the nearest hospitals. The information appeared as a text on my lenses, one after the other. My mind calculated: There was another ambulance coming in five minutes, and it would arrive a hundred meters north. I knew it because I passed one of the hospitals on my way here. Another would arrive south in seven. My feet stepped onto watery ground. The explosion wave had destroyed the two fountains, their water spread all over the square. Remains of a bronze lion’s head lay scattered on the ground. I saw where the bomb had been ignited. Left was a pitch dark space, blood and human debris. A place of death. The suicide bomber’s body must have been torn into pieces in seconds. As was everybody’s who stood next to this beast. My brain automatically downloaded the newest information on the matter: Terrorist suicide bomber… refugee… religiously motivated. I knew the drill, so I switched off the notices. I had to concentrate on my surroundings. I looked around. There were too many injured. How could I decide whom to take care of first? How would I live with my decisions? But my subconscious made me act faster than I fathomed. A girl next to me had torn off legs and screamed at the top of her lungs. She would pass out soon, but so would her chance of survival as she was losing too much blood. A man in his fifties held his head like a madman, bleeding from his ears. Probably a concussion because of the detonation. The girl had to go first. I ran towards her, took my belt and tried to stop the bleeding. “A belt! I need another belt!” I shouted into the chaos and looked around. Another victim offered me his, barely able to loosen it as he himself had a huge splinter in his left palm, his face twisted with pain. I snatched the belt and tied it around the girl’s other leg, or what was left of it. She yelled again, and I had to suppress the rising panic. The ambulance. Two minutes left. I took the girl in my arms and carried her. In the distance, I could make out the sound of the siren. My hands were covered in blood, and my clothes also started to soak it in. The ambulance came to a halt while I ran. The emergency physician stormed out, just in time for me to pass the girl into his arms. He stared at me, dumbstruck. Then at the girl. No time to talk, no time to ask questions. “Who…” His voice faded into the distance. I sprinted like a racer. A man to my right, his stomach completely open. He was bleeding out. If he was not dead already, it wouldn’t take long. A hurt spread inside my lungs, and I felt like I could not breathe. Adama, stop thinking. I had to leave him there. He was dead. And so was the woman with a smashed head several meters away. The air thickened, and despite the obstructed sight, my mind fixated on all the corpses surrounding me. So many. Panic spread inside my guts, and anger rose in my throat. I needed to go deeper. Stop. Thinking. Now. A switch had turned. I gave myself utterly to ecstasis, allowing my consciousness to vanish, replacing it by an intense euphoria and what felt like a powerful connection to a greater intelligence. It took over everything, and my conscious mind vanished in a well of darkness. I started running like a madman. The man with the huge splinter in his palm limped in my direction. My medical bag had to be close. As soon as I found it, I bandaged his two largest wounds to stop blood loss temporarily. “Can you walk?” He nodded. “To the left.” I signaled with my hands. “An ambulance should be there any minute.” I watched him limp and turned around to see two children. Children? Why would children be here on their own? I hurried towards them. Children always travelled in groups with several overseers. Had they gotten lost in the chaos? As I came closer, a girl sat next to another child on the ground. A blonde boy around nine or ten years old. Several big splinters had hit his lungs. He desperately fought for oxygen. It was too late. “Face control,” I commanded. My lenses scanned his face, but there was no information on this boy. A refugee. His lungs had filled with air, and he would suffocate in minutes. Only then did I examine the girl. No information on her either. What was it about her? The wind threw her thin and dirty dark blonde hair back and forth, her deep blue eyes filled with tears. A contusion spread all over her right shoulder down to the elbow, the wound still fresh. But she did not seem to mind the pain. She held the boy’s hand, watching him die. This girl looked so familiar. She felt like a distant memory, but it was only anamnesis again, the side-effect of my altered state. I lifted her while she cried and refused to let go of the boy. She fought me, threw her arms into all directions, and yelled while I tore her away from the suffocating child. I remained silent, but her pain was the same kind that ate me from the inside. That day I stayed on Trafalgar Square for hours, ran several dozen kilometers, always carrying my medical bag with me. There were flames all around me, dirt and ash in the air. My clothes drenched in blood that had half dried. Same with my hands. But my ability to rely on ecstasis made it bearable, as I switched off my mind and let go of time and space. The ecstatic experience was a trend the world had embraced during the past years in all its forms, but military training had taught me to master it to such an extent. We would float in sensory deprivation tanks for hours, enveloped in utter darkness, all distraction eliminated. This way, we learned to train specific brainwaves and regulate heart rate frequency.