This was lost in the mail. I know. It was last time, so why should this time be any different? At a certain point in the relay, a message from somebody with my security clearance (or lack of it, really) is just destroyed, dismissed, because every single bit of data and energy needs to go into the war effort. But please, please God. Just this once. Let it go through. Let somebody listen.
I never saw Trenton. Not when he was a kid, not when he was, well, now, I guess. My cousin never answered me when I called. Probably because of the same reason. The war’s been going on forever, and forever, and always. Even back then, it was the same. YOu had to hope and pray, and be content with the fact that what you said would almost certianly never mean anything.
I know she’s dead. Leah, I mean. There it was, in plain black text, set alongside a white background. Just that. No word from anyone close to her. Just a government bulletin. Due diligence by bureaucracy. That and nothing else.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t. I wasn’t even shocked. It was going to happen, anyway. It happened to my uncle quite early on, anyways. That time, I cried easily, and in full view of my boss, too. And then… and then it just kept coming. Name after name after name. The only voices I got to hear from real, actual people were those that came from places close to me, that never had to hop through the network to be obliterated.
When Leah died, I tried to go take custody of the kid. It would’ve been extra-legal, of course. But you know. I couldn’t. They caught me trying to board the ship, my passes weren’t in order, and I was legally bound to the job, anyways. I used all my luck in the fact that they didn’t court marshal me. That was it. That was all I got. And Trenton became a ward of the state. Forgotten.
Maybe not forgotten. Because I never got to meet him, because I never got to be the family I was, I never knew what impression he left on your community. So maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he wasn’t, and yet…
And yet I can hear you. I can hear all of you. It’s the weirdest thing. I can’t explain how, I just… it’s there, right in my inbox, your voices. All arguing over this one kid who shared my sister’s last name.
Arguing over him like a slab of meat.
I’ve heard enough. I don’t care. I mean, I do care. I care so, so much. I have to. Somebody does, right? That’s the whole reason that…
That’s the whole reason. Yes. I’ve been thinking that for a while. It was all apathy. Not a spell. Not the end of the world. Just us forgetting what mattered. That was what She feeds on. That’s what will get you to kill a kid.
I’ve worked the past twenty years in the local munitions plant. Real high caliber stuff, the kind of shells you only get on frigates and above. Weapons were only ever made to kill people. They were manufactured en masse long before the war. I know. I was there. There were fewer people in the plant, then more, then… then less again.
I’m lonely. All of us are lonely. We tell ourselves that we’re fighting for each other, working for each other, clawing against the void for the sake of the future. But what’s left? What’s left when you lunatics are debating on mutilating and killing my kid because you think you can make a weapon out of his mind? What’s left? What’s the ‘each other’ that can survive that?
I’ll tell you what. It’s the ‘each other’ that we tell ourselves we are fighting against. The ‘each other’ that makes me look at the next empty podium on the line and sigh because not only will I never see anybody there again, never have anyone to talk to, no… no, I sigh because I’ll never see Mardin again. His kids won’t see him either.
Will any of us see each other? I don’t…
(Voice change)
A great beast rose from the flames. Its flesh was bright, blistering ash. Wherever it trod, it brought misery and destruction. Great gouts of fire burned the town to the ground. Then the next. Then the next. Nothing that anyone tried could stop the beast. Not water, not prayers, not hopes and dreams. So the world suffered, and the beast wrought its misshapen pain upon the world.
Then the brightest of the bright thought they had a solution. What, after all, could be more powerful than the demon than a beast of its own ilk? A thing of flame that burned even brighter, whose trail of ashen misery stained not just the ground, but even the sea?
So that was what they worked on. Each day they observed the beast from afar. They collected the ash it left behind and performed experiments of such intensity that many died even in the process of observation. But eventually after dozens of souls perished and hopes were lost, they succeeded. Indeed, their beast was so bright it blinded those who even glanced it from the side of their eyes. And the heat of its mane… so terrible was its wrath that there was nothing left of the facility from which it was born by the time of night.
The two beasts did, indeed, find each other, and fought they did; passionately. For a day.
For a day, and they never laid hands on each other ever again. No, why would they bear animosity to each other? Why would they care for the cessation of a destruction they both craved?
The world does not exist anymore. Neither does its story.
Nor will we.
You have lost sight. We’ve all lost sight. Think of it this way; you’re about to kill a kid. For what? There goes the cost benefit analysis. For the price of an innocent life, you will preserve legions of soldiers. But the soldiers will never know what they’re fighting for. They won’t know in which beast of flame their ashes will end up in, nor do I think that they’ll care.
And then some estranged loved one, far off on a world unremarkable, will open their inbox. In their inbox will be one piece of mail. One bit from the government. Black letters on a white screen. And a little bit more of the world will die.
You can’t save it. Not if you think you are trying to save it. The only way to save anyone is to save yourself. To not take the blood of the innocent. To for once, in the darkest of moments, be good.
Yes, be good. But I know this will never reach you.
