[Prompt] Rainy days used to be relaxing days when people stayed home or played in puddles. In the future rain is diverted immediately to water banks via force field tech. One day the field falls in your neighborhood and people experience rain for the first time.
Sh4d0w927
It’s hard to believe how different things were only a few days ago. A matte grey highway had stretched out in front of me, my attention gliding smoothly from the crisp yellow markers on the pristine metal road, across the white painted border and into the adjacent walkway. Mind wandering aimlessly, I watched the same vista’s pass by like they did every day. Glistening windows twinkled down at me from the towers in Corporate, the usual preprogrammed sunrise their perfect backdrop. Every shade of orange and red cascaded into pinks and yellows, projected on the shields that held back the enormous grey skies. It was the same glorious sunrise that played every morning. An improvement, many agreed, to the previous version. Rise 7.06 had too much blue and the transition into day was jarring and unnatural. 8.0 took a more abstract approach.
Letting the steering manage itself I rubbed my fingers together, my dry skin stinging slightly at the chill of my touch. Something about that sky, although I had seen it countless times before, unnerved me. I adjusted my gaze to the grey neutral expanse behind the muted gradient projection, watching it swirl and swell as it laid the weight of its presence on our shield. My gaze shifted to my reflection in the ceiling window of my car, fixating on the slight dark movement beneath my nose before I felt it: a crimson drop of blood trickling from my nose. Something was wrong with the humidity, there had to be.
I felt the car switch lanes beneath me as I fumbled in the glove box for a tissue but none could be found. A drop of blood dripped from my lip and splashed against the white fabric cover on the middle compartment. A stark red stain amongst a perfect canvas of white.
I will never forget the feeling that crawled up my spine when I heard it. The deep resonant rumble, audible even from inside of my car. Blood dripped again as I watched the sky fall.
The brilliant hues of Rise 8.0 split in the middle before crumpling away, revealing the chaos behind it. A sound like gunshots sounded all around me in a discordant cacophony louder than even the wailing sirens that accompanied it, and before I had a chance to react my vehicle was coated in it. It was like a hundred microorganisms, sliding across the glass of my windshield with thousands more clattering down every second. It took me a moment to realize it was water.
In seconds my windshield was useless, looking as if it had been folded into a thousand organic bends. All light beyond it warped into nothing more than a blurred mixture of greys. Abrasive beeping sounded from the car’s internal speakers as I felt its pathfinding give out. I watched in stunned horror as the rigid steering wheel loosened before thinking to grab it. A message flashed on the dash, “LiveSight Obstructed.”
The cars around me were nothing more than blobs of movement that I could barely see through a distorted lens. Guessing where the lane was I tried to keep straight but the water didn’t let up. It was as if the ocean had fallen from the sky with more and more water falling every second and no sign of stopping. It was impossible to do anything and my car wasn’t righting itself.
Blood still dripping from my nose, I found the breaks and slammed them and although the wheels stopped, the car didn’t. The rear of my vehicle slid out to the side and I felt myself spin out of control. My stomach lurched as I pulled the wheel hard counter to the spin but it was useless. Light from the streetlamps twirled around me, visible between the cracks like a flashlight on the other side of a bookshelf. I squeezed my eyes shut, anticipating the moment I inevitably hit something, surrendering all control.
…
I woke up with a jolt, needles of pain washing through my body as I coughed and sputtered in surprise, the wailing sirens returning to my ears, clearer than before. My body was lying face-first in a pool of blood-stained water, my car in a heap against the concrete wall of an office building with fire licking at its metal components like parasites that hissed at the downpour. Heavy drops of water pelted down across the street, coating the lights, the hedges, and the buildings relentlessly. With shaking arms I pulled my sopping wet body from the bloodied water. Cars everywhere had lost control and crashed. I had been lucky enough to have been thrown out before my car lit aflame. Water flooded the streets, pooling up wherever it dipped and gathering in the corners between buildings. There was nowhere for it to go.
Blood was streaming from my nose as I stood up, no longer a simple nose bleed. I suspected it was broken. Half of my body felt numb and the siren that blared in my ears rattled my consciousness. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I was afraid. Deathly afraid, but I guess everyone was. We had no idea what was out there. Sometimes I wish I could return to that ignorance.