Case: Karl Forland (SCI-FI short story)

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A lump fell rolling on the cold floor from a duct hidden in the gloom of the camera. The figure rested on his hands in an attempt to get up, but his numbed limbs succumb to his weight. The neon blue light was too dim, barely covering a circular area; out of this, the visibility was almost nil. Karl, however, knew that he was in a room about ten meters long by six meters wide: he had spent a half of his life on construction projects to be aware of these details even though he was almost blind.

After a few seconds, they entered through a door that was imperceptible to Karl. They were three men in butler suits. They went to Karl and caught him and then dragged him towards the entrance.

"Where are you taking me?" Karl said as they dragged him away. "What is this place?"

"There's nothing to fear," One of the men said with a raspy voice, then another of them continued, "it's just a very elaborate game, just made for you, you'll see."

They walked through a narrow corridor until they reached a gate with an electronic lock. One of the men approached his hand to the right of the hatch and a holographic panel unfolded millimeters from his fingers. They introduced a combination of digits and the gate opened with a muted scroll sound.

They put Karl in a metal chair. He struggled while the guys in the butler suit restrain his hands and feet to the chair with dark metal rings, it felt how his ankles and wrists began to get cold.

"But what the fuck? What do they think they're doing?" Karl said. He begins to feel that the effect of whichever the narcotic that was administered to him began to happen.

They opened his eyelids so that his eyeballs were fully exposed. Then a mechanical arm attached to the ceiling of the camera descended to the level of his head; It unfolded a surgical needle from its end and nail it to each of its eyes at a time, emptying a syringe in each injection. His eyes were reddish to the point that they were tearing while his pupils dilated dramatically, Karl snorted as his body began to perspire a lot. One of the men in butler suit put a sort of visual device on him as if it were a pair of glasses. Karl's vision became totally dark. A moment later he felt as if he lost his consciousness, but recovered it almost instantly.

He found himself in a city in ruins, or rather, half-built. He concluded it after taking a good look, there were skyscrapers half-finished with beams and other construction materials placed adjacent to their bases. While looking around his observation, he looked up, in the midst of what seemed to be stepped seats like those of a stadium, he glimpsed some diffuse shapes that were sitting in the place, you could notice that close to his right hands was projected a holographic panel in which some buttons were represented, one red and the other green. Karl watched uneasily as the silhouettes seemed to press the buttons repeatedly.

In his hands began to materialize small crystals of methamphetamine, Karl began to feel how the abstinence syndrome was pressing him from deep inside. To counteract his discomfort, Karl violently threw the crystals and crushed them with the tip of his boot so many times just to make sure the crystals would be turned dust. Karl sniffed the drug stripes with so much vice that he even licked repeatedly the pavement, so he didn't even let a single grain of dust.

After getting so high, Karl went to the top floor of the building half-finished, he stood at the end of a wobbly beam and threw himself into the void.

"Judgment finished," The Alarm sounded.

The 5 subjects got up from their seats and began to discuss the case.

"After all, his very vices ended with him," A woman with snowy blond hair said.

"I would say that more than his vices, his negligence was the one that ended his life," A grizzled old man replied. With a gesture of his hand displays on the holographic screen a report that announced in the title "Karl Forland, 41, is accused of negligence at work, which caused the death of several of his colleagues. It was determined in the toxicological tests that this tragedy happened when he was under the influence of drugs."

"Well, let's move on to the next case," A young man retorted too bluntly.

The men in the butler suits came back into the camera. Karl's body was there, bleeding from his nose and ears. They proceeded to remove him from the camera to clear the court to make way for the next trial.

Source: img

This is my entry to the @calluna contest. I hope you enjoy reading