From the Journal of Steven
Keys- May 27, 2024
I sometimes wonder
what it would have been like if I were a man of faith.
When this all began, I
was surrounded by men of faith, and it was (and this is horrible) fascinating
to watch so many of them break down and completely lose that faith. Mind you,
how could you blame them? If you believed in a loving, omnipotent God, then
watching as our planet and our civilizations were so effectively and
efficiently destroyed had to be unfathomable. Of course, those that placed
their faith in the Old Testament God saw the Omegans as the Almighty’s wrath
against people like me: educated, free-thinking believers in personal liberty
who didn’t care which adults married which adults.
I’d be lying if I
didn’t say I got a jolt of pleasure out of watching those types bite the dust
under enemy fire. What can I say? I’m not always a good person.
What kind of person am
I? That’s a question that’s plagued me for a long time now. Had I been a man of
faith, maybe I could explain how I managed to survive the torture and loss of
appendages. I could pin my rescue on divine intervention, smile brightly, and
call it good. But that isn’t the kind of man I am. I survived precisely because
my mind did break and it kept me from understanding the horror of what was
happening.
It’s been three years
now, but I still have the dreams. Not every night, but they come. Yumiko
remains the most patient, wonderful partner that I could ever imagine having. A
man of faith would say that God brought us together, that our finding each
other was all part of the plan. But really, what a shitty plan! Millions had to
die for me to find happiness? Yeah, I’m not buying that one. If that were true,
it would truly put me over the edge. I’d take being a miserable, lonely bastard
if it put our world right again and brought the dead back to life.
Oh! Anyway, what kind
of person am I? I was a man of letters for most of my life, but that was just a
thing that I did; I thought at the time that it defined me as a person,
but in hindsight, I could not have been more wrong. I know I’m not alone in
this; millions of people felt that way, that they could define themselves
through their work. But when my work was taken away – vaporized into dust – I
was still here, and I didn’t lack definition. At that point, I was partner to
Nadine and tried to tend to her need, her wounds.
I failed. So then who
was I?
A freedom fighter.
Ahh, bullshit. I learned how to be a terrorist. For the first time, I took the
life of another sentient creature. Did that change what kind of person I am? It
had to, I think. That’s a line you cross and cannot come back from. And after
that, my actions as a terrorist came back upon innocents as the Omegans
retaliated. This has happened time and time again that civilians just trying to
maintain their meager existence have died because something I was involved in
angered our alien overlords. So am I a harbinger of death? Is that it? Am I an
evil person?
I like to think I have
balanced the scales through the positive actions I have taken as a member of
this resistance cell. The projects, the reverse engineering, the dedication to
saving our planet… everything we do here is aimed at the greater good. So am I
a savior figure? Am I worthy of reverence?
These questions have
plagued me. Oh, how they have plagued me!
But today, I think I
found my answer. We were called into a meeting, and it wasn’t just those of us
in the “brain trust.” There were extra military there, as well as some people
we didn’t know, and everyone was pretty tense. I heard whispers of worries that
the new guys were followed, but we were never interrupted, so that didn’t pan
out. Anyway, the new guys had made their way to us from Antarctica,
one of the last places the Omegans had left untouched. Hell, we don’t want to
go there, so why should they? Anyway, these guys were engineers, architects,
and builders, and for a couple of years it turns out they had been smuggling
raw materials down there. Millions of tons of steel. To say we were all pretty
impressed would be understating it. The possibilities began churning inside of
all of us, but before any of us could speak, one of their architects rolled out
a set of blueprints.
It looked like a
brick, honestly.
But it was a spaceship
design, a design that incorporated some tech ideas we had stolen from the
Omegans along with some of the ideas that our little brain trust had come up
with over the last couple of years. As the architect spoke about the designs,
crude though they may be, I have to admit that at one point I had stopped
breathing. I was picturing it in my head, this flying brick zooming through
space and shooting the hell out of those Omegan bastards. It filled me with a
childlike glee.
As the presentation
ended, the plan was laid out to all of us: a small crew of us would be heading
back with the new guys and joining the build team in Antarctica.
I assumed that our serious tech guys from the brain trust would get the nod, so
I was pretty stunned when they called my name and told me I would be going
(Yumiko, too, thankfully). When I asked why, the Colonel gave me a slight smile
and clapped me on the shoulder. “Doctor,” he said, “do you know what kind of
man you are?” I shook my head no.
“You’re a survivor,
Doctor.” He took his hand off my shoulder. “You’ve survived so much shit that I
think you must be part cat. This project needs survivors, especially ones who
have spent as much time as you have inside the enemy’s craft.”
I nodded my assent. I
had my answer, too. I’m not a good person who has had shitty luck. I’m not a
bad person who has repeatedly gotten his just desserts. I’m just a guy who has
managed to survive. And you know what? I find that I can live with that. I can
wrap my mind around it and I can conceptualize it. It makes sense to me. It
even takes me back to my old life: “Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be
thou a spirit of health or goblin damned…”
Steven Keys is both,
yet neither, Hamlet.
Now, on to my to-do
list. I think I’m going to need a jacket at my next destination. Too bad the
nearest store is rubble.
No comments:
Post a Comment