The Program

Science and Darren never had a good relationship, here he is on his way to a science camp. But…this was one camp he would never forget.

Blood…

The crimson fluid flowed in the veins and kept all human alive was dripping out of Darren’s body. Pain had petrified his whole body, yet his brain was screaming, telling him to get up and run. His eyes started to blurred, he heard footsteps walking toward him…

He never should have come here.

13 hours earlier...

Darren watched as the scene shifted as the bus rode on the road. He was on this stupid bus off to meet a scientist. It was not Darren’s fault when he flunked that test. Science and he never had a good relationship. His beloved parent had decided to send him on a summer study session. Darren looked at his watch: 9AM. When will we arrive? There weren’t many kids on the bus either. Including Darren, there were 5 kids. Darren looked at all of them, boring he thought but except for the boy sitting opposite him. Darren observed the boy a little closer, honey brown hair, average height, brown eyes which had never left the PSP’s screen. Unlike other kids who were chirpy about the trip, he just quietly pressing buttons, focusing on some games. Darren decided to approach him, he flashed his usual smile:

“Hey,”

The brown eyes reluctantly rose up to meet Darren’s eyes. His finger flicked the switch on the PSP turning the screen off before he opened his mouth:

“Hi”

“What have you done to be here on the bus?”

“I love Science” The boy shrugged. 

“Okay, I didn’t know you’re the study type” Darren joked.

“I didn’t know you are the noisy one” The boys replied turned back at his PSP, turning it on.

Darren could feel his own cheek burn with embarrassed. He let out a nervous laugh as he scratched his head, slowly messing his raven hair. He reached out his hand toward to the opposite boy:

“Darren, Darren Miller”

“Ian” Ian shrugged.

“Might If I sit next to you?”

Ian didn’t say anything but shifted to the other side of the bus creating space. Darren took it as a “yes” and sat down. Throughout the whole trip, Darren managed to make small conversations with Ian. Though Ian didn’t talk much, but when he did, he was pretty funny. Ian really loved science, Darren could see it in the way his eyes sparkled up when telling him about his experiment with something called the “potato clock”, but Ian didn’t have the geeky look which Darren sure that nobody would think Ian was an actual geek.

The bus arrived at an old but big mansion. Everyone except for Ian, were looking at the mansion with amazed eyes. Darren suddenly became excited. He had never seen a mansion that big before in his life. They walked up to the door, but before they could open it, the door opened on itself. Walked out was a robot. The robot waved its hand at them before started talking in a monotone voice:

“Welcome to Professor Black’s Mansion. My name is Brook, your butler”

“Oh my god, you are a robot!” A blond girl asked, her eyes were filled with excitement.

The robot looked at the blond girl, seemed like it was scanning her freckled face before started speaking again:

“Yes, miss Hares, please follow me I will lead you to your room” The robot started walked ahead.

“This is sick” a boy squeaked and everyone nodded with him and followed the robot.

Once they entered the room, everything looked so modernised. Floating beds and wall texture as lights.  The first thing they did was jumped on the bed, clapped their hand to see the light turned on and off, pressed all button to see what function did the buttons had. Though this was pretty cool but Darren couldn’t help but feeling that something was off.

 

15 minutes later, the robot appeared again to call all of them down for dinner. Dinner was another pleasant surprise for them. There was nothing on their plate except a small pill. Brook press a button on it’s chest, drops of water were dropped to the pill from the tubes falling from the ceiling. The pill started to disintegrate, smokes started coming out covering the whole plate. A smell of beef hit Darren’s nostril and he looked down at the plate with awe. In front of him, on the plate were a grilled T-bone with mashes along with colourful veggies, all covered in gravies, hot and fresh. Darren and the other didn’t wait and dig straight in. He looked at Ian who didn’t once look impressed as he ate the food with pure boredom. Darren wondered why.

As they were eating, a hologram of a man in the lab coat appeared in the middle of the dining table, his face was hidden under a gas mask. The hologram started speaking:

“Welcome, I am Professor Black. You all can see here all of these technologies are made for the future. Imagine the future where labour work are non-existed, where food are always hot easy to carry around in this tiny pill and imagine that all sickness are easily cured and we’ll never be injured”

“Is it even possible?” Darren asked. He saw all the other kids except Ian nodded their head in agreement.  

“What’s your name, young man?” The professor looked at Darren. Though Darren wasn’t sure if he was looking at him since he couldn’t see the man’s eyes under the mask.

“Darren Miller”

“Well Darren, everyone is here because of their passion for science, and if we believe and have passion for it, anything is possible” 

The scientist laughed, Darren saw everyone clapped their hand approving and all of sudden that uneasy feeling returned. He swallowed his spit and sat there silently as professor Black continued explained their session, and gave each and all of them an earpiece, which he developed. Everyone could talk to each other they could even listen to radio through the little earpiece saying that all the session and assignment the next few weeks would be given and alerted to them through the earpiece.

After dinner, everyone decided to explore the mansion. Darren still felt sick from the dinner as he excused himself and went back to his room. He played around with the earpiece turned on the radio channel listening to it. Before he knew it, slumber was slowly creeping their way into Darren’s mind. He clapped his hand slightly turning the light off and fell asleep.   

A scream woke Darren up. His eyes wide opened, his breath started to speed up. He quickly clapped his hand let the light on, looked down at his watch: 10PM. Darren heard another scream, he raise his hand up and covered his ear, the sound became louder, Darren pressed harder with a hope that the sound would go away. Suddenly, a snap sound cut off the scream. Darren’s eyes widen, slowly removed his hand and found his earpiece was cracked from all the pressure he pressed in. The scream came from this little device was now broken on his hand

“Was this some kind of joke?” He hissed.

He threw away the earpiece to some corner of the room, messaged his temporal, when he felt like his heart rate had become normal, he wiped the sweat on his forehead and started to think. The scream was somewhat familiar or rather it was the voice. Darren had heard it somewhere. He closed his eyes; let his mind searched through all of his memories to find that particular voice. His memory stopped at the scene of a blond girl speaking gleefully at the mechanic butler, Darren felt the word being pushed out of his mouth:

“Julia Hares”   

Darren immediately stood up he ran toward the door. His guts were telling him that something had happened to Julia, but he hoped that he was wrong. The door slid to the right, Darren almost bumped into the person in front of him if he didn’t see the honey brown hair. Darren looked at Ian, seeing Ian was fine, a sense of relief rushed to all of his body, released all the tightened muscles. Darren let out a sigh of relief:

“Thank god, Ian you were alright”

“Darren, you were here all along?”

Darren raised an eyes brow and looked at Ian confusingly, but he decided to put it aside because he needed to find out what happen to Julia.

“Ian, Julia. Julia Hares, Something had happened to her”

“What do you mean?” Ian raised his eyebrow at Darren.

“I heard her screaming in my…”

“Your ear piece” Ian finished.

“Yeah, how did you know? Did you hear it to?” Darren shook Ian, the boy nodded in responds. Darren felt relief again. He didn’t imagine it after all.

Ian removed his hand off the male shoulder and started speaking:

“I think I know where Julia is, follow me”

Darren followed the shorter boy down the hall. Though the mansion was filled with light yet Darren could felt chill crept all over his body along with the uneasy feeling. They stopped at the door at the end of the hall, Darren looked as the door slowly slid to the right and his heart was still beating fast. When the door was opened, every hair on his body stood up, his face became pale as snow, his lip trembled as he tried to force the word out:

“What the f**k is this?”

In front of Darren were corpses. Not just any corpses, corpses of the kids on the bus, though Darren wasn’t even sure if what he was seeing were classified as corpses anymore. All of them had their stomach cut open, the intern organs were ripped out violently hanging on different metal cords, they were drenched in blood, eyes were filled with horror and for some, their eyes was pulled out of their eye’s socket and left dangling from left to right, barely held on by the blood vein, but what frighten him the most was the metal spiral spearing through every part of the body with electrical cords warp around them.

“It’s a pity, their body doesn’t fit for the program” Ian suddenly spoke and walked to the near corpse.

“What program?” Darren yelled furiously.

“A program designed to make human perfect, no more injures, or diseases we’ll all be INVINCIBLE”

“Are you crazy? LOOK AT THEM. They are all dead. Was Professor Black behind this?” Darren yelled.

“I am Professor Black. Professor Ian Black”

“You’re sick, you killed them? Darren yelled in horror as he took a stepped back.

“Tsk, don’t be so uptight Darren, some sacrifices are needed to be make for human’s future”

Ian laughed sickly as he bended down, viciously ripped the eyeballs out of the veins brought it up to his mouth, gave it a lick. He tilted his head joyfully before opened his eyes and stared straight at Darren's. His eyes were filled with insanity; he laughed louder and reached out his hand:

“Darren, would you like to help me?”

“No way in hell” Darren shook his head and turned around to run.

But as soon as he turned around he felt something sharp punctured to his stomach. He looked down, it was metal hand speared through his body. He looked up and saw Brook, the robot. Darren lost his balance and fell down to the ground.

Blood…

The crimson fluid that flowed in the vein and kept all human alive was dripping out of Darren body. Pain had petrified his whole body, yet his brain was screaming, telling him to get up and run. His eyes started to blurred, the last thing he remembered was hearing footsteps walking toward him

He never should have come here. Darren heard a chuckled and Ian saying:

“Cute, you actually think that you have a choice” and darkness swallowed Darren.

25 hours later...

Ian looked at the creation he had created with proud. All the electrical cords perfectly replaced all the blood veins. There was absolute no rejection from the host, Ian flicked his remote toward the creature, blue light simmer from the veins. The cyborg opened it eyes. One human eyes and one mechanic eye scanned the room. A beating sound was heard coming from its chest. Ian smiled:

“Darren, how are you feeling?”

The creature adverted its half mechanic and half normal eyes at Ian. Its mouth opened and a monotone voice was heard, it was nothing like a human voice not even mention Darren’s:

“Excellent.”

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

Well it's a short spontaneous story, apologies if it was horrible. And please ignore any of my grammar mistakes. and deeply apologies if it didn't well creep you out.