Gods By Necessity

December 17, 2007

Xenet 71.43.1 System Msg

TTY31201.12.17

Network Connection Enabled
_____________________________

Before the Bane, I was a network systems analyst, if you can believe it. I’m not even sure how that happened to me, but my job was to find other people’s boneheaded mistakes in a sprawling, ill-conceived web of electronics.

When I decided to write this, I was standing in the shower at the barracks, still wearing my stealth armor. What do I care, all the gadgetry is waterproofed, and I’ve found this is by far the easiest way to get it clean after a day or two in the field. It’s not the dirt or ash, it’s the blood. Once blood dries onto your armor, there’s no way to get it off without soaking it anyways.

I used to try and keep track of my kills every day, but the illusion that was possible was dispelled along with so many others about war within my first week on Foreas. Now, I just read the colors on my armor. Thrax bleed purple. Caretakers bleed green. Lightbenders bleed orange. And so on. The deep crimson of human blood is a chronicle of my failures; everything else is a success story.

I’m standing here watching this macabre rainbow swirl into the drain and I feel like a god.

About three weeks in, someone in command apparently caught wind of my job back on Earth, and my CO told me I could transfer to tech if I wanted, go back to network repair. I politely declined.

Okay, maybe ‘politely’ is putting it a bit too nicely.

Yeah, losing Earth sucked, but look at those of us who survived. Ordinary people do incredible things every day now. It’s why we’re going to win this war. When they’re absolutely forced into it, everyday people can become gods.

Daemion Sevren
AFS Special Forces