The soldier
I don't know for how long I have been lying here. The hours, the days, have passed before me like so many unknown faces in an overcrowded city. No single day differed from the others and only the difference between day and night gives me a feeble frame of reference for time's passing. Without this finite cycle, I would have closed my eyes long ago and sought out death. But now, as long as time keeps me alive and the sun is feeding me, I cannot do anything else but wait. Wait for deliverance, for the rescue that will come, whenever that might be. Staring, always straight ahead of me, my eyes -as if hypnotized - wide open, I lie here in a landscape that is so much closer to death then life. There is no hope in this stare of mine, no future, just emptiness.
Now, finally, the long awaited event breaks the circle of my sordid existence. Slowly the well known tremors of approaching engines overwhelm the soft beating of my heart. First quietly but then ever more intrusive. They fly over the spot where I'm lying and land on a outcropping of rock, somewhere to the left from me. It's a yellow-green vessel without any registration marks. Silently, but for the popping noises of it's strained metal skin, it sits there for hours. Then, after an eternity of uncertainty, the airlocks in the belly of the ship open up and little gliders race out. It's the scavengers! They come to collect the still functioning machines of war and the objects worth selling from those who won't need them anymore. They fly over this wasteland of corpses in search of riches and in search of the few survivors of this insane war.
Sometimes they pick up creatures that, just like me, had waited for even this kind of salvation. They are transferred to the mother ship, soon to be sold as slaves or processed as food depending on the bigger profit. Slowly the fleet of the searching scavengers moves in my direction. Soon I'll be saved as well! But then, the moment they fly over me, they don't see me. I scream at them, pleading to come back, but the effort is in vain. The vacuum around me stops all sound at it's very source. I want to wave at them but I can't. My carrier, my symbiont body, has been shot. So I lie here, incapable of movement, unable to signal them and to let them save me.
After days of frantic activity, the scavengers depart, leaving me behind. I'm alone now, a warrior without his carrier among billions of corpses of a war that was fought for forgotten reasons. There is no change in this airless world.
I don't know for how long I have been lying here. Only the difference between day and night gives me the time to live, the sun to feed me. I wait indefinitely for a salvation that will never come again...
...and I cannot die....
Now, finally, the long awaited event breaks the circle of my sordid existence. Slowly the well known tremors of approaching engines overwhelm the soft beating of my heart. First quietly but then ever more intrusive. They fly over the spot where I'm lying and land on a outcropping of rock, somewhere to the left from me. It's a yellow-green vessel without any registration marks. Silently, but for the popping noises of it's strained metal skin, it sits there for hours. Then, after an eternity of uncertainty, the airlocks in the belly of the ship open up and little gliders race out. It's the scavengers! They come to collect the still functioning machines of war and the objects worth selling from those who won't need them anymore. They fly over this wasteland of corpses in search of riches and in search of the few survivors of this insane war.
Sometimes they pick up creatures that, just like me, had waited for even this kind of salvation. They are transferred to the mother ship, soon to be sold as slaves or processed as food depending on the bigger profit. Slowly the fleet of the searching scavengers moves in my direction. Soon I'll be saved as well! But then, the moment they fly over me, they don't see me. I scream at them, pleading to come back, but the effort is in vain. The vacuum around me stops all sound at it's very source. I want to wave at them but I can't. My carrier, my symbiont body, has been shot. So I lie here, incapable of movement, unable to signal them and to let them save me.
After days of frantic activity, the scavengers depart, leaving me behind. I'm alone now, a warrior without his carrier among billions of corpses of a war that was fought for forgotten reasons. There is no change in this airless world.
I don't know for how long I have been lying here. Only the difference between day and night gives me the time to live, the sun to feed me. I wait indefinitely for a salvation that will never come again...
...and I cannot die....
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