Trapped

Trapped under a rock. That’s what it comes down to.

It’s a slightly higher-gravity planet. The sky is bright green and the ground around me is white gravel. I feel like all of those musicians from back in the nineteen-sixties would really enjoy it here with these strange colours.

I don’t think that they’d be too crazy about the war, though. The creatures that live here have said that their planet is not for sale. Not a great move on their part. Earth is hungry, as we’re taught in school, Earth needs food.

So I’m a soldier in an exoskeleton and there is a giant rock on my legs. The gravity here is a little higher than Earth Normal but it’s not that big of a deal. The rock on my legs is massive. It has to weigh the same amount as a galactic thruster. Tons of compressed sedimentary patience stares back at me when I look down at where my legs disappear below the knee.

The battle had caused a small avalanche. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. My fellow warriors who weren’t dead had retreated. My beacon and radio were damaged. They were probably still getting life signs back at the base but this battle had been lost. I was still in a hot zone.

I stare up a the emerald sky and it occurs to me that this kind of situation has been faced by many creatures over the billions of millennia. Trapped under a rock. From tiny spiders to buffalo, cavemen to dolphins, it’s happened at some point to every living thing.

They’ve breathed their last, hopefully half-amused at their predicament. I wonder if they thought the same thing.

I can see that my oxygen meter has six hours of air left. I haven’t seen any of the aliens poking around for survivors. Looks like I have some free time on my hands.

I’ll get to see the suns go down. Night time here is beautiful.




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Warriors

I created warriors.

I don’t mean that I trained them.

We had the bridge between the meat and the metal sussed out perfectly. Generals and violent criminals, psychos and teachers. High-functioning savants and self-medicating geniuses. We researched them all.

We grew the brains. We fed them the dreams. We had them controlled and merciless.

We also gave every tiny piece of the whole its own brain in case it got separated. These glittering jewels, designed for their separate purposes, would snap like wet lego onto appendages and become weapons, scanners, or communication equipment as they reordered themselves.

In the end, my warriors looked like marbles, tic tacs, glow sticks and light tubes all bundled together and studded with armoured vacuum tubes.

We gave them a rudimentary human shape at first that they could deviate from if they wished. They could even dissipate. Thousands of components would drop to the floor and use their little means of propulsion to crawl under doors and between cracks.

It was magnificent. Like watching stained glass shatter and reassemble itself.

Like a group of insects taking on the form of a soldier. Highest achievement, really.

A little too late, though.

This lab is armoured and very far underground. The strikes didn’t penetrate down here. That was six years ago.

These warriors are trained to never harm me. They’re also trained to keep me fed and taken care of in just this instance. They leave for days at a time on a constant rotation, finding dogs or deer or meat that I don't recognize from outside the danger zone. They must look like army ants coming back to that navel of a manhole on the top level.

They’ve done a great job. I'm in great shape and show no signs of radiation poisoning. I talk to them but they never talk back. I get the feeling that they might hear me but they don’t respond. They’re taught only to respond to orders, asking only for clarification.

We didn’t install a way for them to just talk. I see now that we should have. Soldiers need banter. My hair and beard are long. I have long since stopped wearing clothes.

Sometimes I scream and try to hurt them. They always gently keep me from doing it.

Sometimes I scream and try to hurt myself. They always gently keep me from doing it.

The strikes knocked out the above-ground cameras and the doors are on autolock until the half-lives dissipate enough for brief trips.

It could be a while. If I had an Eve, I could have a doomed little family down here.

Just me, though, and the odds are actually quite high against that happening. I scream into the microphone a lot but I have no idea if it’s broadcasting topside.

The silent, green, nubbled warriors watch me. I send them through training exercises that are more and more complicated that I can follow.

Nothing breaks them. They're perfect.



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