https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/detonate/

 

The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

All Gone Wrong! All Gone Wrong!! My twin brother Brian would squawk that phrase all day long after the accident.  No Thanks to a traumatic brain injury Brian’s broken brain was forever stuck somewhere between ages eight and nine sometimes regressing to three or four on exceptionally bad days. Bryce hated seeing him like that on his visits to Sunnybrook Acres Restorative Brain Rehabilitative Brain Center where no restoration or rehabilitation every took place. Like Robby the Robot from the old-time TV program “Lost in Space” auto warnings of “Danger Will Robinson!” And now things would go wrong and there would be danger.

Bryce stopped his meditations on Brian to concentrate on the task at hand. Vengeance. Retribution for a Twin gone wrong.  The movies “Speed” and “Taking of the Pelham 1-2-3” had deposited unholy seeds inside his mentally twisted brain, seeds which took root and spawned a new way to spread real life horror.

Bryce sat inside the Command Center his attention riveted to the blinking lights, dials and buttons on the Control Panel. Having sequestered himself in a high security area of the Command Center he checked and adjusted the coordinates of each convoy of Driver-less Trucks approaching various metro areas.

In the background his iPod churned out the sweet refrains of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You could read my mind Love…..”  He liked Gordon Lightfoot’s easy listening music. Something you could tap your toes to and still concentrate on the task at hand. Soothing.

Gordon Lightfoot – If You Could Read My Mind (’74)

 

The convoy of Self-driving trucks drove mindlessly past required weigh stations, through Closed Bridge Tolls and one by one down into the midnight watery abyss as the bridge had washed out hours ago and frantic dispatchers were unable to reprogram any of the maniacally rapidly reproducing rogue trucks. If the situation wasn’t so dire it could have been funny with internal wishes for the days of “Breaker. Breaker One. Nine.”  Over now ancient outdated relics once known as C.B. radios.

Bryce from his locked perch at the Master Control Center smiled as he calmly bit into a ham and cheese sandwich smothered with mayo washed down with gulps of diet soda silently rejoicing over how easy it had been to rigged the undercarriage of these self-driving 18 wheelers with explosives set to detonate at gas stations, nuclear reactor plants, on bridges, inside city tunnels and as they barreled through densely populated metro areas.

In his mind he could hear the explosions, cries for help, dead bodies and disembodied limbs strewn everywhere and he could mentally envision the devastation as truck convey carried out it’s masters wicked plans. One man so quiet, so understated, seemingly so committed to corporations success yet so devious.  When so much hurt, anger, pain, and sadness fester inside the mind one becomes a cesspool cauldron of sadistic schemes to right perceived wrongs.  A singular moment of rage can last a lifetime in it’s efforts to truncate the lives of others.

Trucks that normally carried frozen and/or fresh foods, furniture, auto parts, etc….now carried death and thanks to the efficiency of inter/intra state highway systems which made it easier to spread destruction across the nation.

The deaths of others meant nothing to him as he had died emotionally, mentally and psychologically those many years ago…. and no amount of counseling, therapy, electrical cerebral cortex stimulation or happy pills could resurrect any signs of peace, purity or innocence if those had actually existed within him in the first place. His was a heart of vulcanized rubber mechanically beating within a dead soul chamber. Dissonant discordant symphonies played over and over again within his thoughts.

Revenge was sweet. Not revenge against that sleep deprived truck driver who so many years ago had changed his family’s dynamic in a way that no amount of their parent’s unlimited dollars could fix but vengeance against those trucking corporate megaliths who were the true perpetrators of injustice. Injustice that changed Brian from an active, dynamic, vivacious child who was now a drooling, adult diaper wearing, rocking idiot who repeated that hopeless refrain “All Gone Wrong” like a broken record stuck in an unforgiving groove with no hope for improvements despite that fact wealthy parents who could purchase the best doctors and medical techniques known to modern science. The tow-headed twins are no more for one now lies broken like Humpty Dumpty. We are he thought a family capsized like a pleasure boat caught inside a sudden unexpected storm.

Volcanic lava heated passions simmering then bubble over unable to be contained by saner whispering angels now drowned out who return to the creator defeated. Injustice that must be punished at all costs!

To Be Continued…………………….