This was it. It was really it.
Yuri had been dreaming of this moment for so long that it seemed surreal, strangely fitting. He almost forgot to reload his rifle.
Another one of the camouflaged aliens shimmered around the bend of the hallway, trying to get the right angle. The hulk of shimmering translucence edged closer and was about to fire.
Yuri sighted the rifle and squeezed the trigger quickly, a warm satisfaction emerging from the recoil. The alien fell back as its camouflage failed, shimmering into view broken armor and a fountain of grey blood.
The radio crackled inside his helmet. Lieutenant Ander’s voice was raspy and hoarse. “We’re almost at the LZ! Two minutes.”
Yuri glanced at the nuke timer at the lower left hand corner of his visor. It showed three minutes and was ticking down fast.
He scanned the area, saw it was clear, and then backed up from the hallway. He spun on his heel and broke into a full sprint back towards the nuclear bomb.
It would be the longest three minutes of his life.
He thought about the drunken night that had brought him to the recruiting office. The night he had spent with Lieutenant Ander. The day he had graduated from Spec Ops. But most of all, he thought about how he was about to win one last time.
He reached the nest room and sealed the bulkheads behind him.
There it was, majestically half lit by the flickering light bar above. A smooth metal basketball, suspended by two hangers and a fistful of wires. The nuke that would save them all. The nuke that would end this war.
The nuke that would vaporize the entire planet.
Yuri eased himself down next to it, resting his tired body against the hard concrete of the room. He sighed as he took off his helmet and began to caress the casing with his fingertips.
In a cruel twist of fate, Yuri’s worst fear and greatest desire had come true. His eternal death wish, fueled by endless nights of drunken crying and cold bed sheets had finally brought him here to this mission, to this place.
The doors to the room began to dent inward as sounds of forced entry echoed. The timer in his visor read thirty seconds left. His radio crackled with Lieutenant Ander’s voice.
“We’re onboard.” The pops of gunfire were muffled as Yuri heard the drop ship doors close. There was a moment of silence before the lieutenant’s voice choked up. “It’s been an honor.”
Yuri drew his pistol, pointing it toward the door. “Helluva ride, sir.” He had seconds left on the timer.
Static filled the silence of the channel. It smoothed out as the drop ship cleared the atmosphere and escaped into space. The lieutenant spoke again, this time with more volume. “You never…” He could hear the heavy breathing. “…you never answered my question.”
Yuri steadied his hand, the pistol in his palm visibly shaking. “I was never afraid to die for a good purpose.” He fought back the tears. “I was afraid to live without one. Without you.”
“I love you.”
He clicked off the channel as the bulkhead doors fell, a strong slam against the floor that shook his body. Three aliens appeared before him as the dust settled.
Yuri smiled bitterly as a nuclear fury embraced him.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
82) Iuvate Liberatem
(Above: This author receives his high school diploma)As I reflect upon the words: "time flies by when you're having fun", I've come to realize that my time was not fun, and did not fly by at all. My high school career has come to an end, and I've been granted a reprieve before I'm shipped off to another fight in college.
Such struggles of life we must endure. And the world keeps on turning.
I know I'm right when I say I've had a unique experience different from everyone else in my graduating class. I don't float this as some horrendously apparent fact. I say it in comparison to the norm of what is expected out of ordinary high school students.
Now that the pomp ceremony is over, I can say in solitude that high school is an experience I will miss. But I won't miss it because I enjoyed the ride. I'll miss it because of the pain.
You see, pain keeps you alive. It reminds you that you're human. It spawns the problems that we must struggle through to survive.
And all those problems spawned from high school can be summarized as a learning experience for me. As my senior year English teacher would agree, I am now a master of pessimism, and all the practical advantages it brings.
Beside that huge and overarching lesson, I'd to share with you a list of what I really learned:
- School crushes your hopes and dreams. That's why no one likes it.
Such struggles of life we must endure. And the world keeps on turning.
I know I'm right when I say I've had a unique experience different from everyone else in my graduating class. I don't float this as some horrendously apparent fact. I say it in comparison to the norm of what is expected out of ordinary high school students.
Now that the pomp ceremony is over, I can say in solitude that high school is an experience I will miss. But I won't miss it because I enjoyed the ride. I'll miss it because of the pain.
You see, pain keeps you alive. It reminds you that you're human. It spawns the problems that we must struggle through to survive.
And all those problems spawned from high school can be summarized as a learning experience for me. As my senior year English teacher would agree, I am now a master of pessimism, and all the practical advantages it brings.
Beside that huge and overarching lesson, I'd to share with you a list of what I really learned:
- School crushes your hopes and dreams. That's why no one likes it.
- Schoolwork only tests for bare memory skills, nothing more.
- Alcohol above 40 proof usually requires a chaser.
- If the teacher's not on time, why should you?
- Tolerance is not acceptance.
- There's no difference between a nerd and a idiot, they'll both pass the class.
- Break convention, and prepare to face unforeseen consequences.
- Earning an education and deserving it are two very different things.
- If you think it's a waste of time, it probably is.
- Do everything last minute; the pressure works miracles.
- Suck up to the teacher. You'll always win.
- It's only illegal IF you get caught.
- Trusting your friends to do their part is resigning yourself to fate.
- It'll probably/might/will go wrong. (Murphy's Law)
- The simplest explanation is usually the right one. (Occam's Razor)
- Work hard, play much harder.
- Hope for nothing, fear nothing.
- It's not a lie if everyone is telling it.
- Truth is so relative that nothing is true.
- Don't speak unless it improves the silence.
- Assume nothing, question everything.
- Math teachers use calculators too.
- Idealism has no practical value if you're not going to act.
- Don't hesitate. Ever.
- Losing the battle is not losing the war.
- As long as there is light, there will be shadow.
- First impressions make all the difference.
- Love is pitifully overrated when you're young.
- Stay away from drama. It's like throwing the pin and keeping the grenade.
- There are situations where the bad choice is the only way out.
- Chances are, less than five people will ever really care about you.
- You're nobody. Deal with it.
- Thinking is not doing. Doing is both.
Just a few of the life lessons. Academically, I didn't learn anything that I haven't already forgotten past the chapter tests. What I do remember are fragmented tidbits that won't really carry me anywhere useful.
So just like that, I can say I learned something, although I'm not sure it was worth the sweat and tears.
And when situations like this arise, I find it easier to just let go and move on.
Goodbye, high school. Nice knowing you.
- Alcohol above 40 proof usually requires a chaser.
- If the teacher's not on time, why should you?
- Tolerance is not acceptance.
- There's no difference between a nerd and a idiot, they'll both pass the class.
- Break convention, and prepare to face unforeseen consequences.
- Earning an education and deserving it are two very different things.
- If you think it's a waste of time, it probably is.
- Do everything last minute; the pressure works miracles.
- Suck up to the teacher. You'll always win.
- It's only illegal IF you get caught.
- Trusting your friends to do their part is resigning yourself to fate.
- It'll probably/might/will go wrong. (Murphy's Law)
- The simplest explanation is usually the right one. (Occam's Razor)
- Work hard, play much harder.
- Hope for nothing, fear nothing.
- It's not a lie if everyone is telling it.
- Truth is so relative that nothing is true.
- Don't speak unless it improves the silence.
- Assume nothing, question everything.
- Math teachers use calculators too.
- Idealism has no practical value if you're not going to act.
- Don't hesitate. Ever.
- Losing the battle is not losing the war.
- As long as there is light, there will be shadow.
- First impressions make all the difference.
- Love is pitifully overrated when you're young.
- Stay away from drama. It's like throwing the pin and keeping the grenade.
- There are situations where the bad choice is the only way out.
- Chances are, less than five people will ever really care about you.
- You're nobody. Deal with it.
- Thinking is not doing. Doing is both.
Just a few of the life lessons. Academically, I didn't learn anything that I haven't already forgotten past the chapter tests. What I do remember are fragmented tidbits that won't really carry me anywhere useful.
So just like that, I can say I learned something, although I'm not sure it was worth the sweat and tears.
And when situations like this arise, I find it easier to just let go and move on.
Goodbye, high school. Nice knowing you.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
81) A Proper Blossom
It was very strange.
Death was being drawn elsewhere, his thoughts clouded and scattered. He was being drawn away from his current task to a place he didn’t recognize, to a time much foreign in stance and circumstance.
Like most other times, he wasn’t sure exactly where he was going, what he was supposed to encounter, nor what he was destined to do when he got there. It never surprised him though. It was a true bore at times, not being able to sense, to feel the destination that would bring no motion to his entity.
But he felt, no, he knew, that this was somehow different. It beckoned to him, nearly begged his attention away. It was very peculiar. It nagged at him as an uncomfortable situation that needed to be settled, explored. It clutched at his being.
He, the shadow, arrived.
Could death remember the past clearly, he would have found this destination to be infinitely familiar. But the past did not matter, and Death perceived the image before him newborn.
The very first thing that satiated his curiosity was the lack of motion. The field before him was frozen, still figures suspended in action and intention. The scene was a picture, with nothing that was immediately distracting, moving. He had to search the picture, find the aura that was drawing his powers of observation away.
Death pondered. Was it the stillness? It couldn’t be. He didn’t perceive time. He could know and feel the place before him, see it with nonexistent eyes, but he didn’t register, couldn’t, the still frames that brought one event to the next. It was a unique caricature that mortals could imagine as the act of passage of time.
The next object apparent in question was not very apparent at all. But Death still knew where to look. The focus of the picture was narrowed as the lens focused on the black hulk that was centered. It was female.
Death yearned to draw closer, but hesitated. He had never felt, never known in his vague memories such temptation, such allure to the soul in question. But then again, what was the harm? He was invincible. Regardless, he decided to look everywhere else first.
They indeed were on a battlefield hung in still air. The mortal soldiers were clamoring around him, toys locked in by a master’s strings. It was a suicide charge, Death had guessed, by the forces emanating from the soul light. If one thing was certain, he had either just left here, or was about to arrive here particularly soon. He could feel his presence scattered and drawn to all the bodies in the picture, torn apart as he were exploding slowly. They demanded his attention, his work.
Death focused back on the female. He couldn’t afford to be drawn away, or he might leave and never come back. His curiosity had not yet been satiated satisfactorily.
He drew closer, the hesitation disappearing. It was not fear that grew as he came to touch the female, but a stranger, much stranger force he felt compelled to confront.
The armor adorning was cracked, blood spilling in many directions outward. It was a familiar hue, a color that Death had forgotten the name of. His entity twisted strangely as he struggled to make sense of the feel.
Red. It was called Red.
The plates of the armor were next, segmented plates of shiny ceramic that gleamed an opaque luster. They were black, a color he was no stranger to. Death found comfort in that familiarity, and wisely staged a moment to appreciate it. He paused and collected himself, feeling the scattered pieces of his consciousness pulling together. He delighted in understanding that the armor was meant to evoke attention rather than protect the wearer.
He reached out, a shadow that had no physical presence, glazing the armor. It felt like nothing to Death, for he could not feel. It was the act of touching itself that had any meaning to anything in the scene. It felt, but did not feel, right.
He saw the white, was about to act surprised, but realized shock was not part of his being. His consciousness was deciding to mock emotion. Strange indeed.
It was a blossom, a white blossom that decorated the armor. A mere symbol on the thigh armor plate of the female. It was adorned with a speck of the red substance of blood, spilling down away from the source of the rupture from the chest of the female.
That touch not granted to death smeared the blood lower, feeling in some awkward sense that this was the right and proper thing to do. The white pure blossom turned slowly pink. It was with some sense of misunderstood intervention that this was now a proper blossom.
Death was palpable. He did not remember and struggled to, a time and place with which this intensity had been felt before. He failed to find solace in the ailing memory that could not fail and was not really there. This was a foreign masterpiece with which he had not known before.
But it was when he looked up that he was done.
The eyes. It was the eyes that bled through the cracked visor. The eyes of the female shone out to him, lights searching in the dark for a host, a justification of existence. They were fixed in a stance that few could see, and even fewer would understand.
And of all things, death understood.
These globes, those eyes were what had called him here. They had sought in the stillness, begged for his existence.
In the final struggles of this female, she had wanted to die.
Death felt the satisfaction slowly creep over him. Again, it was the mockery of emotion that somehow appealed to him. In this existence that he had now occupied, this was the first time he had felt belonging. He was not only felt by the fate of the scenario, he was wanted.
But he wanted her.
The exalted breath that never came moved Death to action. He was quickly losing his perplexed grip on the situation laid out.
His shadow washed over the female, clutches of unknown force that electrified, venerated and liberated the trapped life within. It surrendered to him easily, slipping out in elegant and beautiful waves.
In that moment that did not exist relative, Death felt complete.
He turned, the scene no longer demanding his presence. The allure, too, he no longer felt. He glazed over the lifeless form one last time. Something nagged at him, a directive that beckoned to remember. He held on, fought desperately not to forget what had just transpired. But it was slipping.
With a thought of the mind, Death vanished from the scene.
He had gone back to work.
Death was being drawn elsewhere, his thoughts clouded and scattered. He was being drawn away from his current task to a place he didn’t recognize, to a time much foreign in stance and circumstance.
Like most other times, he wasn’t sure exactly where he was going, what he was supposed to encounter, nor what he was destined to do when he got there. It never surprised him though. It was a true bore at times, not being able to sense, to feel the destination that would bring no motion to his entity.
But he felt, no, he knew, that this was somehow different. It beckoned to him, nearly begged his attention away. It was very peculiar. It nagged at him as an uncomfortable situation that needed to be settled, explored. It clutched at his being.
He, the shadow, arrived.
Could death remember the past clearly, he would have found this destination to be infinitely familiar. But the past did not matter, and Death perceived the image before him newborn.
The very first thing that satiated his curiosity was the lack of motion. The field before him was frozen, still figures suspended in action and intention. The scene was a picture, with nothing that was immediately distracting, moving. He had to search the picture, find the aura that was drawing his powers of observation away.
Death pondered. Was it the stillness? It couldn’t be. He didn’t perceive time. He could know and feel the place before him, see it with nonexistent eyes, but he didn’t register, couldn’t, the still frames that brought one event to the next. It was a unique caricature that mortals could imagine as the act of passage of time.
The next object apparent in question was not very apparent at all. But Death still knew where to look. The focus of the picture was narrowed as the lens focused on the black hulk that was centered. It was female.
Death yearned to draw closer, but hesitated. He had never felt, never known in his vague memories such temptation, such allure to the soul in question. But then again, what was the harm? He was invincible. Regardless, he decided to look everywhere else first.
They indeed were on a battlefield hung in still air. The mortal soldiers were clamoring around him, toys locked in by a master’s strings. It was a suicide charge, Death had guessed, by the forces emanating from the soul light. If one thing was certain, he had either just left here, or was about to arrive here particularly soon. He could feel his presence scattered and drawn to all the bodies in the picture, torn apart as he were exploding slowly. They demanded his attention, his work.
Death focused back on the female. He couldn’t afford to be drawn away, or he might leave and never come back. His curiosity had not yet been satiated satisfactorily.
He drew closer, the hesitation disappearing. It was not fear that grew as he came to touch the female, but a stranger, much stranger force he felt compelled to confront.
The armor adorning was cracked, blood spilling in many directions outward. It was a familiar hue, a color that Death had forgotten the name of. His entity twisted strangely as he struggled to make sense of the feel.
Red. It was called Red.
The plates of the armor were next, segmented plates of shiny ceramic that gleamed an opaque luster. They were black, a color he was no stranger to. Death found comfort in that familiarity, and wisely staged a moment to appreciate it. He paused and collected himself, feeling the scattered pieces of his consciousness pulling together. He delighted in understanding that the armor was meant to evoke attention rather than protect the wearer.
He reached out, a shadow that had no physical presence, glazing the armor. It felt like nothing to Death, for he could not feel. It was the act of touching itself that had any meaning to anything in the scene. It felt, but did not feel, right.
He saw the white, was about to act surprised, but realized shock was not part of his being. His consciousness was deciding to mock emotion. Strange indeed.
It was a blossom, a white blossom that decorated the armor. A mere symbol on the thigh armor plate of the female. It was adorned with a speck of the red substance of blood, spilling down away from the source of the rupture from the chest of the female.
That touch not granted to death smeared the blood lower, feeling in some awkward sense that this was the right and proper thing to do. The white pure blossom turned slowly pink. It was with some sense of misunderstood intervention that this was now a proper blossom.
Death was palpable. He did not remember and struggled to, a time and place with which this intensity had been felt before. He failed to find solace in the ailing memory that could not fail and was not really there. This was a foreign masterpiece with which he had not known before.
But it was when he looked up that he was done.
The eyes. It was the eyes that bled through the cracked visor. The eyes of the female shone out to him, lights searching in the dark for a host, a justification of existence. They were fixed in a stance that few could see, and even fewer would understand.
And of all things, death understood.
These globes, those eyes were what had called him here. They had sought in the stillness, begged for his existence.
In the final struggles of this female, she had wanted to die.
Death felt the satisfaction slowly creep over him. Again, it was the mockery of emotion that somehow appealed to him. In this existence that he had now occupied, this was the first time he had felt belonging. He was not only felt by the fate of the scenario, he was wanted.
But he wanted her.
The exalted breath that never came moved Death to action. He was quickly losing his perplexed grip on the situation laid out.
His shadow washed over the female, clutches of unknown force that electrified, venerated and liberated the trapped life within. It surrendered to him easily, slipping out in elegant and beautiful waves.
In that moment that did not exist relative, Death felt complete.
He turned, the scene no longer demanding his presence. The allure, too, he no longer felt. He glazed over the lifeless form one last time. Something nagged at him, a directive that beckoned to remember. He held on, fought desperately not to forget what had just transpired. But it was slipping.
With a thought of the mind, Death vanished from the scene.
He had gone back to work.
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