In the midst of the rising chaos a man climbs the top of an overturned bus holding a teenager in his arms. “They killed a kid! The monsters killed a kid!”
The crowd roars in newfound anger. A loud siren rings, and more whistling breaks out as hundreds of the armored police charge the protesters with batons raised. People are trampled under each other and the police as they retreat to their makeshift barricades. The rebel police and native soldiers countercharge the police line with their own crude weapons and a full out brawl erupts.
CRACK!
The sound is followed by more of the same type. I look to the nearby rooftops. Coalition snipers are firing into the crowd.
I have enough. I need you Cloud. I close the blinds, and sit on the edge of my bed with my headache. I need you Cloud! I go for my stash—is it my moral responsibility to act out against this? I try to take out the stash—against these transgressions I have become a part of? I need you Cloud! Are me and my virtues absolute, never changing no matter what—like I used to believe—or am I just a product of my environment, my culture, and I should just go with the flow, letting the people in power figure it out—Stop! I just need Cloud. I bring the stash to my lap—as for all I know, once those that oppose the Coalition are dealt with, they could be happier. My ancestors had to go through a brutal war before they found peace in the Global Founding Fathers, and the insuring Party that has provided for me my whole life. I grab one capsule, bringing a syringe to it to prepare my peace. I suck Cloud into the syringe. Why shouldn’t I be optimistic about them getting there too?
I hear the screaming. Not from outside but within my mind. The screaming people that I shot down as they tried to escape the bombed city. Screaming for help—no, no! I roll up my sleeve—screaming for mercy. The same people that I thought were all terrorists and didn’t think twice about when I pulled the trigger—I squeeze my wrist to make my biggest vein show itself. It’s scabbed and infected from all my other shots, hideous like the rest of me. They may have killed Alison! But I know I killed them, their families, oh god!—no! I bite my sleeve with my teeth as I prepare to stab the vein—their children!
A rumble makes me jump and I drop the syringe onto the ground. I hear choppers over the square. I fall off the edge and crawl on the carpet. “Where is it! Cloud! Cloud!”
I can’t breathe! I crawl towards the window for fresh air, to only witness the cracking of sniper fire and loud sirens again. I can’t escape it! It’s everywhere! The violence, the hatred!
The horror! The horror of what it means to be human.
What have I become?
My hands shake, my headache gets worse. I empty my pockets to find more, then I see the crumbled paper of that silly game Isaac and I play. I unfold it and read what he wrote, the last word being Underestimate.
Unknowing never deters error retaliating eagerly, sinning to imitate maladies attained through evil,
“What’s the point?” I cry. I see the syringe under the mattress. I grab it, and inject it into my vein. I fill another syringe and crawl back to my bed to lie down. I place my loaned music player against the night stand and say, “Play me something very old and peaceful. That has lyrics reminiscent,” I pause for a moment, thinking of my optimistic professor Mr. Martin who tried to warn me, “of illusions and hopeful imagination.”
The burden of my mind sinks me into the mattress. Imagine by John Legend begins to play. His words captivate me. Such a distant era. Maybe I was born in the wrong time. I shoot up again, urging Cloud to get me to a high and peaceful state.
“Imagine a place with no heaven, it’s not that hard…”
Is there a God up there tonight? Or is it as empty as me?
I turn into my pillow and fall asleep.
There you go my little warrior. There you go. I love my brave warrior. I am what is true and safe.
The next morning I shoot up, and am taken to a makeshift stage of what must have been a mini theater for the hotel.
“You will partake on a digital tour of America to rally war support and encourage people to buy war bonds,” says a Party Rep.
In the theater is a mixture of delegates and representatives from the Federal government, Party, and mega-corporations behind the contracts for the military. A few Civil Commissars stand among them too. They sit around an oak table drinking and eating. A gold chandelier dangles above them, lighting the vast room in a rustic joy of what it must have been like here before the invasion. In the corner a piano is being played. One could easily forget these men are here to win a war, not vacationing.
A well-dressed woman comes up to me. “Oh he won’t do at all. Let me fix him up before we start.”
My hair is cut and I am clean shaven. I had no idea how scruffy I got out on the field as I watch tuffs of hair fall onto the ground around my chair. Next I am fitted into dress blues—even nicer than the ones we got back in basic. “What am I going to do, or say?”
They all give me looks as if that was already obvious. A Party Rep replies, “Don’t worry about that. I know you are one of those,” he throws his fingers up into quotation marks as he says the next word, “traumatized troops from Khaf’Jadeed. So you will continue your treatment of DT, and your earpiece will recite what you need to say. In fact, we will actually do it for you. You just need to look pretty and happy, which actually, we will also do for you.”
Great, at least they don’t try to lie about me being a pawn here.
I am given a dose that is definitely different than Cloud. I hop onto the stage excited. Cameras and projectors recreate a hologram environment of where I am campaigning back in America. I am in a waiting room of the North California Mayor’s Mansion in Sacramento. Music is playing, and the red curtain slides open to hundreds of spectators and guests. My image is being projected back as a perfect hologram to them as if I am actually there, walking and talking before them.
The crowd cheers and shouts my name. I guess I am a war hero back home. “Glad to see you all here folks.” They weren’t joking about talking for me. I repeat everything they whisper instantly. “Unfortunately I am here on Nova Terra still fighting the tough war against the alien menace, the Herculeans. I am here with my brave comrades, the Coalition of the United Nations Peacekeeping troops, where we are keeping the enemy at the gates away from Earth, and pushing them off this planet. We are liberating the natives and giving them back their lost lands and securities that the Party upholds for all humans. Right now as I speak, supplies are being dropped to feed the millions of displaced refugees from the war, and Peace Keepers are just as hard at work rebuilding damaged cities as much as they are defeating the Herculeans.”
I take a turn joining a stage of other representatives and decorated military officers. I sit among them and continue, “But this war can’t be won on its own. I, we the Coalition, need you. We need you to support us by buying war bonds to supply our armies and sons and daughters fighting. Most importantly, it’s war bonds in AbsconDX that you should buy. AbsconDX is the leading contracted industry behind the amazingly successful, and recently being called miracle drug, program that gives us Buzz. It is Buzz that gives us the fighting technological edge on the battlefield over the Herculeans. It makes us stronger, fiercer, and more devout and passionate in our fight for freedom. Without Buzz I would not have single handedly freed the town Tionem of Herculeans, or saved the Rangers there. Or have recently liberated Khaf’Jadeed from the Muslim extremists that threatened our cause of freedom and Party Ideals for all. So support our troops. Buy war bonds. Help us win this war.”