by Project Itoh
Holding a white bouquet of her namesake, Rose approached Jack’s bed. The boy hid warily in Rose’s shadow. Jack rolled onto his side, putting his back toward her, returning to the Bethesda sunshine.
Rose smiled sadly and spoke awkwardly to his back.
“Jack, how are you feeling?”
Jack voiced a noncommittal sound. He didn’t have anything more to say. When Rose asked if she could sit, he didn’t respond at all. Without change, without a place, just the flow of time to let pass by.
Rose sat in a folding chair a couple of feet away from the bed and placed the flowers on the side table.
Standing behind her, the boy peeked his head out to stare at Jack. Sensing this, Jack glanced over his shoulder, only to meet Rose’s eyes. He immediately regretted his curiosity.
“What do you want?” he said. “Come to laugh at me?”
Hearing the self-torture in his words and tone, Rose decided this was no time to worry about the distance between them. She stood from the chair, pulled the child over, and sat on the edge of Jack’s bed. Jack tried to move away, but the wall on the other side of the bed provided no room to escape any farther.
“Jack,” Rose said. “Look at the boy.”
“Campbell’s kid?”
Jack wanted desperately to run from the pain. There was the life that was supposed to have been his future, the life that was to lead him into a new world; the life that had not been granted birth.
Being stared at by the possibilities he had been unable to attain, Jack saw the depth of his despair as low as he thought it could ever be. This was the very bottom. This was when you were at the bottom and someone said dig.
Then, as Jack decided he might as well fall as far as he could and embarked on his way down to a new stratum of despair, Rose’s words held him back.
“No … he’s yours.”
In that moment, when time stopped, the soft hum of the medical equipment felt harsh and grating. Time had simply streamed past. The void had been something only to pass through. But now all was still; time had been frozen by one sentence.
Frightened and confused, Jack said, “I don’t have any kids.”
Rose touched her hand to Jack’s shoulder. The arms she’d heard he lost had been replaced with new ones without that purely functional aesthetic of the exposed combat exoskeleton. They were more like typical artificial limbs, coated with material that looked almost like real skin.
“He’s your son,” Rose said.
“You said you had a miscarriage …”
Her display of kindness left Jack feeling exasperated—to be honest, he tried to feel that way.
But somewhere, some deep part of his heart beat faintly with the desire to believe that she was telling the truth. Jack despised the baseless optimism that even now reached out to that vague hope.
“The miscarriage was a lie. I had a healthy baby boy.”
Rose lifted her hand from his shoulder, returned to the folding chair, and sat down. What her fingertips had felt might have only been a reproduction of human warmth, but Rose felt happy regardless to have touched Jack’s body again. She didn’t care if the flesh was only a replica as long as its heat came from the man she loved.
“Mr. Campbell pretended to be my husband to protect me—and our son—until you’d completed your mission … to shield us from Patriot eyes.”
“What?”
Jack turned to look at her. Maybe her hope—please believe me—was starting to get through. He still wasn’t ready to accept the sudden revelation as the truth, but at least he had stopped being so intent on rejecting her.
“He didn’t even tell Meryl. He sacrificed everything—even his family—to protect us. I’m sorry, Jack. I wanted to tell you.”
Jack sat up. The bedsheets slipped down and left his chest bare. A faint groove along his shoulder indicated the edge between body and artificial limb. The boy ducked back behind Rose at the sight of him, but the child’s eyes held on him, transfixed with curiosity.
“John … aren’t you going to say hello to your father?”
Rose motioned the child forward. When John didn’t make an attempt to move, Jack tentatively extended his arm out to the child.
“My son … little John.”
With artificial fingers, he reached out toward the boy’s face. His new limbs had been made to be as realistic as possible, but the minute differences couldn’t be ignored. He was real life’s version of the uncanny valley. Something was off about the texture of Jack’s skin; a hint of ceramics, the sense of rubber. Almost human, but falling just short and thus inspiring revulsion.
John backed away from Jack’s approaching hand.
“Scared of me, huh?” Jack said.
For a while, Jack hadn’t been human. To protect Snake; to die for Snake—with that drive all he had left to cling to, the beast known as Raiden was born.
He didn’t yet know if he could go back to being human again. And as long as he still remained in the realm of the beast, of course a child would be frightened.
Raiden studied his artificial body and said, “I don’t blame you. It’s okay.”
“Nuh-uh,” John said, the abrupt change of heart startling Rose and Jack. “I’m not scared.”
The boy approached the bed, reached his hand behind his back, and pulled out a toy sword. He pressed a switch on the hilt, and the toy produced the familiar hum of a sci-fi laser sword.
John spread his stance, struck a heroic pose, and said, “I think you’re cool—kinda like a comic book superhero.”
Jack laughed. How long had it been since he had laughed like that, heartily, and without a hint of sarcasm? For a time, he had forgotten how good it felt to laugh.
To forget was to become the beast.
John was grinning back at him.
Jack looked at the boy longingly. Would he accept a hug?
The question wasn’t one for the child—whether Jack could put his arms around his son rested entirely upon himself. Could he be a father? Could he take the boy into his life? Jack asked himself if he was up to the task.
Then Jack pulled his son in close, resting the child’s head against his chest. This was his new life; one with responsibility, and with hope. In his arms he held his future, and he was ready for it, body and soul.
Suddenly, John began to cry—not afraid, but recognizing as much as a child could Jack’s internal conflict, and his decision. He understood completely that this man was now his father and had chosen to take on a father’s responsibility.
“Rose,” Jack said. “I’m done running.”
Jack became overwhelmed by how precious the child in his arms was to him. Emotions long suppressed now came to the surface. A tear ran down his cheek and landed on John’s crew-cut silver hair. Seeing Jack crying, Rose too was brought to tears.
Rose leaned over their child to hug Jack and said, “And I’m not afraid anymore.”
For John, this was the moment he finally found the father he’d been waiting for. Not every man could become a father. A man didn’t become a father when the woman he loved began to carry his child inside her. Nor did a man become a father when the child was born. That moment only came when he accepted his child and decided, unconditionally, that they would share their lives together.
In a mirror in the corner of the room, Jack caught the reflection of their embrace. He chuckled and said, “We’re like Beauty and the Beast.”
Rose lifted her head and looked into his eyes.
“No,” she said. “You’re no beast. You’re my husband … and his father.”
Part of me thinks that in this moment, Rose truly became John’s mother. She stopped fearing this man, the father of her child. She accepted him the way he was. As Jack began to acknowledge his role in their family, she too started down a new path.
How many detours had she taken before reaching this point? Much she had given up, and much she had lost.
Jack had come dangerously close to stripping all meaning from her sa
crifices. He had selfishly rejected life and basked in the comfort of nihilism and despair.
“I won’t lose my way again. I don’t have time to waste in searching for myself.
“I have too much to do now, as a father.
“And only by remaining true to my family can I repay the freedom Emma and Naomi gave me.”
2
THE LONE MAN was placing a bouquet beside a gravestone.
The words inscribed upon the stone read: IN MEMORY OF A PATRIOT WHO SAVED THE WORLD. No dates of birth or death were to be found on the stone slab, nor any name.
This was, after all, a cemetery for the unknown. For unknown soldiers buried in solitude. For those whose identities were not permitted to be recorded. Carpeting the cemetery grounds were white flowers, called stars-of-Bethlehem, a name that evoked the light of heaven.
But the graves here belonged to those cast out from the world.
This was a potter’s field, so named after the field of a potter that Judas purchased with his blood money and turned into a cemetery.
A graveyard for the outcasts, for the exiled, and for the abandoned.
The True Patriot, exiled, her name stolen, her remains lost, left nothing behind but her gravestone. Only the blanketing stars-of-Bethlehem, white and virtuous, reflected any memory of the grave’s owner.
The Joy. That was her name.
She loved her country more than anyone, and her country was always in her thoughts. And yet this proud, beautiful woman was exiled, buried here, and stripped of her name. By all rights, The Joy’s remains should have been properly laid to rest at Arlington, not abandoned in distant Russia.
At the site of that same grave, fifty years earlier, Big Boss’s battle had begun.
Big Boss—who always hated that code name given to him by the president—had also come to the cemetery. Back then, the stars-of-Bethlehem had yet to bloom. Big Boss stood at her grave, his head tilted back to keep his tears from spilling. With that sorrow, that lonesome tableau, numerous battles were to begin. And fifty years later, those flowers he laid to rest there had spread to carpet the graveyard grounds.
And now, Big Boss slept beside her.
Snake stood before his grave. In southern Africa and Central Asia, Snake had fought this legendary mercenary and won. How had Big Boss felt, seeing his own copy turn against him? Could he have kept his head in battle, when the face of the man trying to kill him had once been his own?
But Snake and Liquid’s fight had been similar. Aside from a genetic marker, the two clones shared the same genes. In the end, perhaps Snake had only traced Big Boss’s life. As Big Boss killed The Boss, Snake killed his father in Zanzibar Land. As Big Boss faced his clone in battle, Snake had fought Liquid. And the fulfilment of Big Boss’s desires to free the world from the confines of prediction and control came by the hands of none other than Snake himself.
Snake offered a bouquet to Big Boss’s gravestone.
To the fight he’d passed down to his sons.
You are to infiltrate the enemy fortress Outer Heaven, then destroy their final weapon Metal Gear. That mission, given to him upon joining FOXHOUND, must have come from the Patriots—no, from the machinations of Zero. Zero sent Big Boss’s own clones against him. The spite beneath this act was now as clear as day.
This was the form taken by Zero’s deep, seething hatred toward the comrade who had betrayed him; a twisted declaration of victory: If I want to, I can create you.
But in the end, all three Snakes created by the Patriots turned against their creators.
Snake had to wonder: if he remained, would history repeat itself again?
But that wouldn’t happen. Snake had come here to end his life.
Snake lifted the hem of his suit jacket and withdrew the pistol from his waistband. He pulled open the action and confirmed the round in the chamber. Then, as if in prayer, he kneeled before Big Boss’s gravestone and thrust the barrel into his open mouth.
The gun was terribly heavy. His hand trembled for more reasons than fear alone, as keeping an object that heavy in his mouth was a grueling task.
Snake may have spent more of his life holding a gun than not. In not one day since he first killed another man in the Iraq War had a gun ever felt light in his hands. Not the difference in heaviness noted from one specific firearm to the next, but the weight brought on by the gravity of the weapon’s nature as an implement for killing and for war.
Perhaps the soldiers under the SOP hadn’t felt that weight; the System had whisked it all away. But the Patriots’ destruction signaled the end of the era of war without pain.
Each time had its own wars. War has changed. Our time has ended. Our war was over. But Snake still had one more thing he must do; one last punishment he must endure: to erase his genes, to wipe that meme from the face of the earth.
This was Snake’s final mission.
Before he pulled the trigger, Snake spoke.
“At least I wasn’t alone.”
Nothing awaited him now. Snake feared going to a place of nothingness.
He remembered the faces of those who had fought at his side.
Emma, Mei Ling, Naomi, Meryl, Sunny, Campbell, Raiden, and Otacon.
“I can’t allow myself to harm their world. If my death will prevent that, so be it.”
His trigger finger tightened with conviction.
And finally Snake could pull the trigger.
I thought I heard a gunshot, and my muscles instantly tensed—though I knew the sound was only the cork popping out of a bottle of champagne. I became painfully aware that after my many years with Snake, the battlefield had worked its way into my very marrow—even if I had never been in combat myself. I sighed. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was a green-collar worker through and through.
A short distance from where the rest of the wedding guests drank champagne and celebrated Meryl’s day, I stood leaning against the white APC and drank my own glass. Sunny had taken the Mk. III’s remote controls and was playing with the robot, sending it scurrying around the runway—though she wasn’t watching the robot with the same amusement a typical child might. Her interest was in things like the Mk. III’s steadiness on one wheel—to discern the original coder’s methods from the workings of the auto-balancing algorithm—and the coordination between spatial recognition and evasion systems when presented with an obstacle.
A bottle of champagne in hand, Drebin walked up to me and said, “Nothing beats a stiff drink, huh?”
“I didn’t know you drank.”
“It’s not that I don’t like the stuff,” he said, the alcohol slightly edging into his speech. “Soda just agrees with the nanos better. The nanomachines break down alcohol before it has a chance to get you drunk.”
That meant that Drebin was drunk because the nanomachines’ control had disappeared, and the alcohol had been left unfettered to exercise its chemical effects. The time under the SOP must have been tough on the brewers and distillers of the world, their products having been stripped of their effects.
“So that explains it. No need for the nanomachines anymore.”
Drebin swished back another mouthful of champagne. “Yeah, well, it ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. Lotta folks lost their entire sense of being the moment SOP went offline.”
Drebin was right. The effects weren’t just limited to the US Armed Forces and the PMCs. In militaries of every country introduced to the battlefield control system, vast numbers of soldiers suffered from physical and mental breakdowns. The phenomenon, known as SOP Syndrome, or SOPS, was not, strictly speaking, caused by the SOP itself, but rather its absence—the outcry of a heart left bare against the onslaught of war memories.
More than one in ten soldiers worldwide were affected by SOPS, making it the most widespread disease in recorded history. We had eradicated the Patriots’ control, but our actions had been drastic, with far-reaching consequences for human civilization. Getting rid of the Patriots wouldn’t solve all our problems overnight.
“To be honest with you,” Drebin said, “I’m not actually an employee of AT Security.”
“Huh?” I said.
Drebin glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. He spoke matter-of-factly, a common technique for those making a guilty and serious confession.
“The Patriots raised me to be a gun launderer.”
“The Patriots?”
“My earliest memories are of the Lord’s Resistance Army. You know, the LRA? A bunch of wanton murderers and rapists in the Ugandan Civil War. They kidnapped me, indoctrinated me … forced me to fight. You’re staring at a former child soldier. My parents, brothers, and sisters were all killed in the war. I was a war orphan.”
He traced his finger down the scar on the side of his head. The long, straight slash was likely a knife wound. Like Naomi and Jack, Drebin had survived the chaos in Africa.
“After that, the Patriots picked me up and brought me into the family business. I was Drebin number 893. There’s a whole lotta pawns like me all over the world. How do you suppose I laundered guns like I did? ’Cause they let me.”
Drebin snorted with self-derision. “In fact, I was under strict orders to back you guys from the start.”
“You what?”
I couldn’t believe how careless I had been. He had gone one-and-a-half times across the world, from the Middle East to South America, from South America to Eastern Europe, and finally to the Pacific Ocean. Snake and I had never bothered to question why this man had followed us over such a distance. We had just filed him away as eccentric. I scowled, less angry at his lie than my foolishness.
“Hey man,” Drebin said, “don’t take it personally. I wasn’t the only one under their orders.”
Drebin glanced at me, then to the newlyweds opening another bottle of champagne on the runway.
“Meryl’s unit?”
“They probably never realized it themselves, but …”
Drebin produced a piece of chalk from his cargo pocket and wrote on the tarmac: RAT PT 01. Then, a quick wave of his handkerchief over the writing, and the next moment, the letters had changed places.
