Travesty (SolarSide Book 1)

by Austin Aragon

  I take a turn joining a stage of other representatives and decorated military officers. I sit among them and continue, “But this war can’t be won on its own. I, we the Coalition, need you. We need you to support us by buying war bonds to supply our armies and sons and daughters fighting. Most importantly, it’s war bonds in AbsconDX that you should buy. AbsconDX is the leading contracted industry behind the amazingly successful, and recently being called miracle drug, program that gives us Buzz. It is Buzz that gives us the fighting technological edge on the battlefield over the Herculeans. It makes us stronger, fiercer, and more devout and passionate in our fight for freedom. Without Buzz I would not have single handedly freed the town Tionem of Herculeans, or saved the Rangers there. Or have recently liberated Khaf’Jadeed from the Muslim extremists that threatened our cause of freedom and Party Ideals for all. So support our troops. Buy war bonds. Help us win this war.”

  The crowd cheers. Pictures are relentlessly taken of me and wealthy purchasers of war bond contracts. Funny, they are taking pictures of a picture.

  The procession ends and the stage turns dark, I am instructed to remove my earpiece. “Well done!” says a Civil Commissar in the seats. “They ate you up. Go ahead and get back to your room. It’s not the safest out in the city at the moment with the crazy locals and all.”

  I go into my room. Their drugs wear off and I cry against the bed. The lies I tell. The lies I live. I fucking hate myself. I look into the mirror. My body is pale from my previous shower that cleared away the dirt tan I had. Scars and bruises checker my face. My birthmark stands out on my lower chin like a lighthouse reminding me of my former appearance before this war. I look years older than when I was first drafted. My eyes drag about huge bags underneath them.

  You’re a piece of shit Peter. Just do it already.

  I lean against the windowpane, looking out. I could jump. Just end it all. My life has lost all meaning! The Party, oh how I once trusted them. That I wanted to be one of them! Now I see what this war really is. I thought I was their liberator. Part of a country that would be extending its hand of help to these people. My country that was supposed to be blazing the trail for progression and advancement. Now it is a fist—but it has always been a fist. A fist that has punched me down. A fist that hangs over me, waiting for me to move so it can strike again.

  I see a platter of DT glistening from the falling sunlight in the corner of my eye.

  They put this here for me. I stand petrified for a moment. Don’t Peter—

  My addiction is stronger than my self-will.

  Than I.

  Cloud lays me softly onto the bed. I try to remember about the Peter I used to be. “Play that song again from last night,” I tell the music player.

  “Imagine…”

  That’s all I can do now. Try to imagine what I was. What I wanted to be.

  “Don’t lose who you are Peter,” says Mr. Martin’s voice.

  “I am so sorry,” I mutter. My eyes close.

  There you go my little warrior. There you go. You are with me now, my brave one. Rest in me.

  I wake up. Hate myself. Get high. Go to the stage and recite the same event at a new city in America. Go to my room and shoot up again. And go to bed.

  I wake up. Hate myself more. Get high. Go to the stage and recite the same event at a new city in America. Sometimes I play digital ball with a sick kid at a hospital, or partake in a monumental ceremony praising a dead soldier in the war against the Herculeans. I go to my room and shoot up again. And go to bed.

  I wake. Hate myself more. Get high. Now I am told I can go outside temporarily so I don’t get cooked up. Like it matters, I have enough DT to enter a vegetable state and I wouldn’t even care.

  The city is a mess of rioting protesters and starving people. Trash everywhere, bodies zipped up into bags and taken away like piles of trash. A homeless man shakes his can at me for change. I drop my dog tags into it. A Party Rep following behind takes it out.

  I go to the stage, and tell America how great the city I am currently in is back to Earth. All thanks to the Coalition’s efforts and of the greatness the Party does here. I go to my room and shoot up again. And go to bed.

  I wake up. Hate myself more. Get high. And go to the stage. This time it will be different. It will be my last hologram tour before I am done. I will be at the White House where I will receive my Medal of Honor from the President himself.

  My earpiece recites the same story to the thousands watching me. The President hands out the Medal of Honor onto the table near me.

  “We know you can’t actually put it on,” the crowd laughs. “So we will watch you put on a real one, back on Nova Terra where you are.”

  This time, the real Marshall Hannibal, comes up himself to the stage with me under the thundering applause back in D.C. “I think Peter has gotten more popular than me,” he says.

  The crowd cheers and shouts. Hannibal places the Medal of Honor over my neck and it rests against my chest. The President stands next to us. “A true American hero!” The crowd is ecstatic with self-cheering. After they calm down the President speaks, “I have something very special for you today Peter. I heard your family did not get to see you on your way out months ago when the Fleet left. So here they are, right here for you to see.”

  Now the crowd has lost itself into an orgy of sheer applause as my family comes forward. My dad and mom, my little brother Creon too. “We miss you so much Peter!” they shout and cry. My little brother runs forward hugging my hologram, disrupting it temporarily. I watch as he goes right through me and ends up behind me. The crowd roars and the Pledge is sung as giant posters depicting me fall down from the stage. My earpiece recites a fake speech to my family. How I am doing okay and how I love them. The stage turns to darkness as the hologram ends.

  I go back to my room and the DT wears off. I am lost with words. My hands turn into fists. I jump up and down. WHY! WHAT THE FUCK! I rip my hair out. Punch my fists against the wardrobes till they break. I go for the mirror. My face stares back. A wretched lost monster! Its eyes red and tears pouring down to its neck. My own family! And I was fucking drugged. I couldn’t even say what I wanted to them. Or honestly and really say I love them or that I was sorry!

  Not even to my little brother, Creon. I couldn’t tell him that I really loved him. They lied and said it for me. The words were artificial and its meaning fake. My last time I will actually see them and my “I love you” wasn’t even real. Now all I wish is that I could tell them that I really do.

  But it’s too late.

  How lost I am. I let them down. If only they knew who I really was. A monster, a hollow cutout of what Peter was. No more than the hologram Creon tried to hug. I kick at the mirror till it shatters. I am dead!

  Lost.

  And the military takes away what is left of me more every day.

  I take my medal off and place the Herculean necklace on instead. This is the only thing that is real, that I can trust. I fall to my knees, rubbing my bloodied hands across my face. “Who am I? Peter, or War!”

  I hurdle up into a ball on my bed, covered in a blanket of my own blood and guilt, and cry. I see the platter of DT. I won’t take it! I won’t give in anymore. No, no, no, no!

  But I do. Because the anxiety and fear creeps back in and I can’t handle it. I already lost a long time ago. Why couldn’t I have died on the ship? So I wouldn’t see my family, and take that last sting of what I used to be!

  There you go my little warrior. There you go.

  I slump against the corner of the room, near the dresser with a mirror on it.

  I place the photo of the girl on it. But suddenly there is more on her now. More than just the stain. On her face is a blemish. Yes! I can see it. Above her lip, a red bump. How have I been so blind? Why are you doing this!

  Get rid of it, Peter.

  “Why, why would you say that?”

  I have been lenient with you, even when y
ou saw that girl again! But no more. It’s not perfect. I am.

  “What do you mean? Why can’t she stay!”

  It’s insulting. Who do you trust Peter? Your real friend, me, Cloud, or that girl. Do you even know her?

  I look at the picture. I’ve come to resent it, not because I dislike her though, but because she is the embodiment of something I need, something I need even with her new imperfections, but I can’t get—

  No! You only need me Peter! Has she ever made you feel like I do? Has she ever eased your mind and made life bearable? You know she hasn’t, she has only tormented you. Only I take care of you.

  “But…”

  Don’t you love me Peter? After all I do for you, after all I have done to save you, you won’t even answer my one simple wish? How dare you defile me, cheat on me!

  “No! I’m sorry! I don’t, I don’t know what to do.”

  That’s why you have listened to me, Peter. You came to me, and I took you in. I am more than your friends, than Isaac.

  “Isaac?”

  Yes, you remember him, look how he failed you. How your family has failed you. Only I have stood by with you.

  “What do I do? I don’t want to live—-”

  Quiet my little warrior. Get rid of her, you only need me. You always only needed me.

  I take the picture and fold it, and place it in my pocket.

  I said get rid of her, fully.

  I shoot up again quickly. Cloud can no longer chastise me, for we are one now, even more so in my dumfounded state of decay and peace. Lost and in bliss. Calm.

  I lie on my bed. Ready to finally rest. To escape.

  But then I realize what I am as sleep nudges my eyes.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” I mutter uselessly into the pillow.

  Something grasps my bicep. There is a cold needle in my arm. Who put it there? I am higher with Cloud. I am calm. I fall asleep.

  XXI

  All of a sudden, I am ripped away from my drug induced sanctuary, and back in Love. I guess I should have known the date I was to return—but Cloud doesn’t let you worry about trivial things, it doesn’t worry about anything. I was gone for nearly two weeks in Jericho.

  I enter the airfield and find the helicopter that will take me back: a gutted and refitted Pave with a black mustache painted on the front. The hull is crowded with supply crates and stacks of body bags. The side gunner gives me a double take. “You’re the Medal of Honor?”

  I grab the top railing to steady myself as the helicopter rises, and nod.

  “Where you heading?”

  “Southern Kuplar, bottom part of the Confederates.”

  “I’ve made three trips there so far, rebels are getting tougher I heard, ever since Khaf.” He glances at the body bags I am resting against. “Don’t worry, those are for the locals.”

  The Pave flies over the alien jungle topography to my isolated outpost where Love resides. Out here, the pesticides used to clear miles of alien plant life for farmland do not reach. Out here, the land has not been terra-formed to fit my home world. It is wild and unfamiliar. It makes me miss home more than ever. The jungle swallows me with its vast hues of light and dark greens. I am gone. My last visit with Cloud ended as the chopper left. I stick my head out into the rushing wind to hide my tears.

  The chopper slows down as it approaches a clearing in the infinite jungle. It shakes from strong turbulence, then circles over the LZ a few times till it’s meters above the ground where I hop off with my sack back into the field life.

  Isaac looks up at me. All the marines are shirtless under this strangely hot day in fall. Sweat pours down their bodies as they assemble a foxhole and sandbag wall. “Look whose fucking back guys!” he says.

  “How’s it going, Rosa?” says Isaac as the others crowd around me. “Gonna take us out with that new pension?”

  That’s right, my hawk is still tied to my helmet. “It’s going, depends if you earned it. How about you fuckers?”

  They all mock and jeer at me and my Medal of Honor. Tarnus’ new name for me is princess since I am a pretty boy all clean shaven and trimmed due to the holotour, in contrast to everyone else out here—filthier than shit. The same day I get here, I’m sent out with Easy unit into the jungle for rebel hunting.

  “No need to be tense, bud,” says Isaac on our first night. We are covered in black paint, the world a shade of whites and greens through our night vision googles.

  “Yeah, never met a rebel out here,” says Rommel, “boring as fuck.”

  “The only good thing is we can get dried meat from the village,” says Alex, handing me a folded paper filled with something. “It’s tangy, but good.”

  “How the hell do you always have that shit on you?” says Isaac.

  Blake halts the line. “What did I say about noise discipline?”

  I look at Isaac, his teeth show up black on my goggles as he smiles.

  Rommel leans in towards my shoulder. “Just don’t go near their fruit groves, someone from Bravo lost both his legs from an IED.”

  I’ll have to be careful where I piss at night.

  The nightmares come back.

  The next morning, Isaac sits with me in a foxhole while the rest of Easy are on patrol. I pull out a worn piece of paper, and look at the last line of our poem game, the word is Evil. What should I write? Cloud, you helped me once. Cloud…where are you? Cloud I need you! Come back!

  “Who you talking to, man?” says Isaac, worried and leaning over me.

  “Huh, oh shit. Just day dreaming I guess.”

  Isaac sighs, then goes back to resting on the grip of his HMG, whistling a tune.

  I put the pen to the paper.

  Envy vilifies ignorant love,

  “Whatcha writing there?” says Isaac after looking over again. I hand him the paper. He looks at it and cracks a half-smile. “It’s been a while.” I nod. “I’ll have to think on it, okay?” He puts the paper away for now.

  “Hey, bud,” he says after some time.

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s the name of that girl?”

  “What?”

  “That girl. You never told me. You know? The one in your photo.”

  My left leg becomes stiff, unmovable, where she is folded away inside a cargo pocket. The photo is now a dagger embedded into my leg, cutting off the nerve.

  “Cloud.”

  “That’s a weird name. Was her sister Starchild too or some shit?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It was just a joke.”

  “It always is.”

  Nothing happens for a few days. We build a new firebase of two spread out foxholes in a clearing, and waste our hours patrolling the area’s few paths inside the jungle. From the chopper, the jungle just looked like a rolling ocean of bright green with occasionally darker spots. Inside though, the air is stale and thick, and foliage goes waist high making it difficult to travel off trail. But the weirdest part about the jungle is the way trees grow here. They form around a network of one huge trunk, something you’ll probably never see due to the endless walls of foliage. Out of it are near infinite amounts of braches that are the size of normal trees back at home, and it is these branches that are the actual trees we see on our patrols here.

  The trees—those huge branches—grow upwards like normal, and then split off or tangle around other branches. Because of this we see trees growing sideways out of other trees, growing in arcs over the paths and into the bases of trees on the other side, and trees even growing upside down towards the earth from the sky, dangling from bigger branches dozens of meters high that are concealed within the canopy. And this canopy is what makes the air horrible. But more unsettling is that it doesn’t block the sun out, though it can completely cover hundreds of square miles without a single gap, but that the canopy roof made of leaves and smaller branches, is translucent. The light we view artificial, almost neon, like someone placed a huge pair of sun
glasses over this area of the world.

  In a nearby clearing like ours, after you walk through a jungle path for about three kilometers, is a small village that knows no English, or so they say. They happen to have an uncanny sense to know when we desire ancients and women though. Our night patrols normally end hitting the village temporarily for such—at the expense of our paychecks of course. In the dark of night on the third day, I stay behind a little longer in the hut we conduct our usual business in as the rest of my unit exits.

  “Got any of this?” I show the young native boy my chemsack, aiming his eyes to the label marked DepressTabs.

  “Sorry.”

  That’s all they fucking say when they don’t have something, or don’t understand what we want. “Listen.” I wave two paychecks before him. The lead headlight of my unit draws farther away. “I pay double.”

  “Sorry.”

  Fuck. I leave to catch up with the patrol.

  The nightmares stay.

  One day, I am alone on sentry in a foxhole as the unit piles out for a routine patrol. “You gotta get back to her, Peter.”

  I take my helmet off to bat away the insects. My head hurts—always with the hurting! “I can’t.”

  A bag spills over into my foxhole from a strong wind. I flip over the flap covering the satchel side, it’s the medical bag.

  “You gotta get her.”

  I open the bag. Dozens of morphine capsules line the interior.

  We haven’t seen a fight in days, they won’t need these. I grab one and a syringe, and lie against the foxhole as I shoot up. My body stiffens, but the soreness goes away. I feel dumb and airy. Almost calm. Good enough. And I can just barely hear her through the wind that plays with the leaves…