Ink Raindrops

I don’t know what the alcohol is made from on Foreas, but it brings out the worst in people. I found this out one afternoon while taking refuge from the chaos outside Foreas Base with a bottle of brew, lost in my private thoughts at the local tavern. I’d thought it would be a good place to avoid the pleading eyes of soldiers begging for assistance in the form of my healing disc; who could need healing in a bar? Of course, someone managed to prove me wrong.

Seeing the injection gun at my hip, he asked if the “good doctor” wanted to hear a story. In the interest of civility in an already uncivilized world, I invited him to pull up a stool. Having pursued half of my former education in the field of psychology, I was well aware of the importance of being available to those in need. There were many soldiers yet traumatized by their new lot in life, and this fellow was no exception.

He opened his mouth to tell his story, but what came out was a swan song for our dead Earth, just as I had suffered from countless others before him. He told me of his model wife and angelic children, and of his job that left him rich, and of his beauty of a car that got at least a billion miles to the gallon. All of it was gone, of course, and he didn’t see the reason in fighting any longer. What did it matter, if the Bane would win regardless of what we did? We never saw it coming, and we wouldn’t the next time either. He never saw my fist until it had made contact with his jaw.

I was beyond tired of hearing about the world we’d left behind. Every soldier fighting had the same story to tell, and the more they told it, the more they believed that everything would be right again. Perhaps at the thousandth telling, their wives would be in their arms again, or their children’s laughter would ring in their ears anew. They didn’t realize that with each telling, they died a little more inside by demanding constant memory and recreation of the past. Most swore vengeance in the same story, but I knew better – only those of us who pushed our memories behind us would ever consciously make the decision to fight, and to win.

He didn’t want to hear it, and after a few curses and bitter threats, he left. I didn’t expect to see him again. However, my behavior left me with a sour taste in my own mouth. The old Hippocratic Oath rang loud and grating in my ears, and I sank back onto my stool and finished my drink in silence. The future would make animals of us all, and alcohol only brought the nature of that transformation to light. It was the last time I tried to find peace in a bottle.

It was hell. That’s all I could think about, between storms of gunfire and shrapnel and smoke. Bodies everywhere, and I was starting to have trouble telling the difference between which were alien and which were human. The splintered squads that still stood at the gate and fired like they had nothing to lose looked at me with the eyes of the damned. I knew I had to help them. But what could I, a brand new Specialist and practically a kid besides, do against the onslaught of the Bane that ravaged what remained of the Landing Zone? What more could one gun offer against hundreds?

It wasn’t a gun I offered in the end, but a prayer. Crouching at the heels of my failing comrades, I wiped the sweat from my brow and pulled out the new repair tool I’d bought less than an hour ago. Things looked bad, but more than the power of another gun, we needed an angel – someone to gift us with the last breath we needed to stop the rush, and God wasn’t listening, to say the least.

It lasted an eternity, but when the dust settled, our last stand had become the first miracle we’d seen since we left home. I’m not sure whose tears flowed faster – the soldiers’ or mine.

The only thanks I got in the end was a salute, but somehow it was more than enough to make me think real hard about becoming an angel more often. Maybe this war doesn’t need more guns after all.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

That’s what they told me when I climbed into their van.  They didn’t ask twice about the bloodstains on my hands or the ghosts that haunted my inner vision — they didn’t need to.  They’d seen it all before.  I wasn’t the first doctor pulled from the front lines, but I was, perhaps, the most dedicated.  They said something about a way to restore what we’d lost, a way to harness an ability never before seen on Earth, and that only myself and people like me could use it; I laughed.  It was the first time I’d laughed since the Fall.

They would hear none of my demands to be freed from fairy tales.  I fought, thinking to rid myself of them, but they quickly overcame me, and my consciousness faded in a haze of confusion.  What madness had taken these remnants of Earth, that they believed in a half-baked scheme based on purely conjectural context?  With my skill, I was needed to aid the survivors and lead them to shelter, and these devils had not stopped short of violence and abduction to gain my compliance with their wishes.  If I hadn’t believed that Earth had fallen before that moment, it was a turning point to be certain.

I awoke in a room filled with light.  They’d put me in solitary confinement after treating my various injuries.  The days when my father had taken me out into the fields and taught me to shoot targets in Berlin were impossible to recall when brought to rest against the might and brutality of our enemies.  Within a few moments, something akin to food and water were supplied by a silent man, not much older than myself, wearing a lab coat like the one I had recently torn to shreds in the name of supplying bandages to the injured.  I didn’t realize I was hungry enough to consider the primitive mass of spoiling food and sour water appealing until it was halfway into my belly.

The silent man returned, bearing another man in military garb that managed to make the tall and lanky doctor appear mouselike by comparison.  The speech he gave was free of nonsense in that he spoke in short bursts with no embellishment required, but his words were far from sensible.  His song was the same as the men and women who had pulled me from the field with a promise of backup and supplies – a ballad of alien technology, inborn hidden potential, and outer worlds that could save us from extinction.  They needed a doctor with my skill, and that was the point that he most returned to over the course of the conversation; each time he reached it, his eyes changed from empty to pleading.  Instinct couldn’t lie.

I asked him why, theoretically speaking, I would be a greater aid to those who had decided to take this chance by leaving Earth, than I would be to those still remaining and injured.  He shook his head: over 90% of Earth’s population was dead or dying, and our enemy had leaked intelligence that they planned to eradicate the planet once they had finished their slaughter.  Most of those left worth saving had been saved; I would just be saving those who could no longer aid themselves or others – and I would be promising them another chance to watch their life slip away between their fingers, nothing more and nothing less.  I reacted badly, and he left me to crouch in the corner, my knees locked to my chest and my body rocking back and forth, just as subject to shock as any of my patients.  Of all the things I had been in my life, helpless was never one of them.

They called it a choice, but it wasn’t, at least not at the heart.  If I hadn’t agreed, and if I’d fought to remain on Earth, they would have forcibly thrust me through their impossible wormhole and dragged me off world; this I know now beyond a shadow of a doubt.  It’s absolutely true what they said; doctors and medics are desperately needed out here.  And even though I’m not accustomed to choosing a computerized handheld device over a tourniquet and scalpel, I know what is needed to save lives.  I can do good for those of us out here learning a new way of life, and making a new stand against those who shattered our lives.

The magic, I still have to get used to.