The crowd cheers. Pictures are relentlessly taken of me and wealthy purchasers of war bond contracts. Funny, they are taking pictures of a picture.
The procession ends and the stage turns dark, I am instructed to remove my earpiece. “Well done!” says a Civil Commissar in the seats. “They ate you up. Go ahead and get back to your room. It’s not the safest out in the city at the moment with the crazy locals and all.”
I go into my room. Their drugs wear off and I cry against the bed. The lies I tell. The lies I live. I fucking hate myself. I look into the mirror. My body is pale from my previous shower that cleared away the dirt tan I had. Scars and bruises checker my face. My birthmark stands out on my lower chin like a lighthouse reminding me of my former appearance before this war. I look years older than when I was first drafted. My eyes drag about huge bags underneath them.
You’re a piece of shit Peter. Just do it already.
I lean against the windowpane, looking out. I could jump. Just end it all. My life has lost all meaning! The Party, oh how I once trusted them. That I wanted to be one of them! Now I see what this war really is. I thought I was their liberator. Part of a country that would be extending its hand of help to these people. My country that was supposed to be blazing the trail for progression and advancement. Now it is a fist—but it has always been a fist. A fist that has punched me down. A fist that hangs over me, waiting for me to move so it can strike again.
I see a platter of DT glistening from the falling sunlight in the corner of my eye.
They put this here for me. I stand petrified for a moment. Don’t Peter—
My addiction is stronger than my self-will.
Than I.
Cloud lays me softly onto the bed. I try to remember about the Peter I used to be. “Play that song again from last night,” I tell the music player.
“Imagine…”
That’s all I can do now. Try to imagine what I was. What I wanted to be.
“Don’t lose who you are Peter,” says Mr. Martin’s voice.
“I am so sorry,” I mutter. My eyes close.
There you go my little warrior. There you go. You are with me now, my brave one. Rest in me.
I wake up. Hate myself. Get high. Go to the stage and recite the same event at a new city in America. Go to my room and shoot up again. And go to bed.
I wake up. Hate myself more. Get high. Go to the stage and recite the same event at a new city in America. Sometimes I play digital ball with a sick kid at a hospital, or partake in a monumental ceremony praising a dead soldier in the war against the Herculeans. I go to my room and shoot up again. And go to bed.
I wake. Hate myself more. Get high. Now I am told I can go outside temporarily so I don’t get cooked up. Like it matters, I have enough DT to enter a vegetable state and I wouldn’t even care.
The city is a mess of rioting protesters and starving people. Trash everywhere, bodies zipped up into bags and taken away like piles of trash. A homeless man shakes his can at me for change. I drop my dog tags into it. A Party Rep following behind takes it out.
I go to the stage, and tell America how great the city I am currently in is back to Earth. All thanks to the Coalition’s efforts and of the greatness the Party does here. I go to my room and shoot up again. And go to bed.
I wake up. Hate myself more. Get high. And go to the stage. This time it will be different. It will be my last hologram tour before I am done. I will be at the White House where I will receive my Medal of Honor from the President himself.
My earpiece recites the same story to the thousands watching me. The President hands out the Medal of Honor onto the table near me.
“We know you can’t actually put it on,” the crowd laughs. “So we will watch you put on a real one, back on Nova Terra where you are.”
This time, the real Marshall Hannibal, comes up himself to the stage with me under the thundering applause back in D.C. “I think Peter has gotten more popular than me,” he says.
The crowd cheers and shouts. Hannibal places the Medal of Honor over my neck and it rests against my chest. The President stands next to us. “A true American hero!” The crowd is ecstatic with self-cheering. After they calm down the President speaks, “I have something very special for you today Peter. I heard your family did not get to see you on your way out months ago when the Fleet left. So here they are, right here for you to see.”
Now the crowd has lost itself into an orgy of sheer applause as my family comes forward. My dad and mom, my little brother Creon too. “We miss you so much Peter!” they shout and cry. My little brother runs forward hugging my hologram, disrupting it temporarily. I watch as he goes right through me and ends up behind me. The crowd roars and the Pledge is sung as giant posters depicting me fall down from the stage. My earpiece recites a fake speech to my family. How I am doing okay and how I love them. The stage turns to darkness as the hologram ends.
I go back to my room and the DT wears off. I am lost with words. My hands turn into fists. I jump up and down. WHY! WHAT THE FUCK! I rip my hair out. Punch my fists against the wardrobes till they break. I go for the mirror. My face stares back. A wretched lost monster! Its eyes red and tears pouring down to its neck. My own family! And I was fucking drugged. I couldn’t even say what I wanted to them. Or honestly and really say I love them or that I was sorry!
Not even to my little brother, Creon. I couldn’t tell him that I really loved him. They lied and said it for me. The words were artificial and its meaning fake. My last time I will actually see them and my “I love you” wasn’t even real. Now all I wish is that I could tell them that I really do.
But it’s too late.
How lost I am. I let them down. If only they knew who I really was. A monster, a hollow cutout of what Peter was. No more than the hologram Creon tried to hug. I kick at the mirror till it shatters. I am dead!
Lost.
And the military takes away what is left of me more every day.
I take my medal off and place the Herculean necklace on instead. This is the only thing that is real, that I can trust. I fall to my knees, rubbing my bloodied hands across my face. “Who am I? Peter, or War!”
I hurdle up into a ball on my bed, covered in a blanket of my own blood and guilt, and cry. I see the platter of DT. I won’t take it! I won’t give in anymore. No, no, no, no!
But I do. Because the anxiety and fear creeps back in and I can’t handle it. I already lost a long time ago. Why couldn’t I have died on the ship? So I wouldn’t see my family, and take that last sting of what I used to be!
There you go my little warrior. There you go.
I slump against the corner of the room, near the dresser with a mirror on it.
I place the photo of the girl on it. But suddenly there is more on her now. More than just the stain. On her face is a blemish. Yes! I can see it. Above her lip, a red bump. How have I been so blind? Why are you doing this!
Get rid of it, Peter.
“Why, why would you say that?”
I have been lenient with you, even when you saw that girl again! But no more. It’s not perfect. I am.
“What do you mean? Why can’t she stay!”
It’s insulting. Who do you trust Peter? Your real friend, me, Cloud, or that girl. Do you even know her?
I look at the picture. I’ve come to resent it, not because I dislike her though, but because she is the embodiment of something I need, something I need even with her new imperfections, but I can’t get—
No! You only need me Peter! Has she ever made you feel like I do? Has she ever eased your mind and made life bearable? You know she hasn’t, she has only tormented you. Only I take care of you.