THIS IS NOT MY WORK. THE AMAZING RAMEN/CAROLYN/NATHAN DID THIS. ILHER. STEAL HER WORK AND I'LL BEAT THE ******** OUT OF YOU. And she'll probably help.
To-day shalt thou behold a subject die
For truth, for duty, and for loyalty
Richard-III
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He is six years old. Standing in front of someone like he is now, only this person is not bound and gagged and helpless-he is.
Metaphorically. Never physically. Father raised a hand but never went beyond that. Spare the Rod and spoil the child was the credo for their town and he raised a right fine boy lying there on the floor. What point do children serve if they’re not to be broken at the first opportunity? Why breed when you cannot breed a compliant creature at all?
Give them the world? What a monstrous joke-pathetic mewling creatures these children. Father raised a dutiful son, obey, serve, and live. The most compliant of creatures. Whatever will be said of him later on he is a dutiful and obedient and no one will fault him for it. Even at his strongest and his most powerful he is still six years old, bound with non-existent chains by a father who did nothing more then what he saw as his biblical duty.
"Go to bed Steven."
Steven Baker is six years old, the product of biblical duty, an idealogy that will eventually be his undoing.
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See the world, a phrase here meaning “Visit everything.”
Meet interesting people, a phrase here meaning your fellow crew, your castaways, the dejected of society and those for some godforsaken reason called to serve-hearts that swelled when the Stars and Stripes were played, men who get a stiffy when they hear an order played.
Kill them, the tried and true credo of humanity. Us versus them, tribes in the desert, the constant struggle.
It is no longer about reason. There simply is a war, there has always been conflict and always been war and it’s always escalated. There have been efforts made for peace; there have been states made and treaties broken. Tribes in the desert and the plague doesn’t help matters so when it comes down to it the world reaches the breaking point and America-
Good and free America-
Says, Fine. You want to die? ******** DIE.
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It’s so perfect it could very well be a line from a twisted anime, a cartoon. It’s too unreal to be real and years after the fact people don’t acknowledge it. Torture and Sedition was one thing that was on American Soil. This was covert at it’s finest using one of the most sacred professions against their fellow man.
Because you know, it just seems to make a strange sort of sense that if you’re going to treat both sides you use it as an opportunity to do some real harm.
Somewhere writers die and artists shiver. Nobody ever figured they’d be taken SERIOUSLY when they posed something that was just…well…common sense.
Truly, the only silent killer.
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“Son. Let me tell you about Iraq. See, I was just a kid and there were towers and they fell and I was pissed as hell. Felt like somebody’d pinched me, poked me with a sharp stick and I wanted…well I wanted to hit um’ back. And there was the real toll and every time you saw a flag or you heard a song you started to cry.
And it builds up. The crying. You really don’t know what to do with yourself. What’s freaky is that every generation has it. It’s in them. Something they had to do, have to do. Only something went wrong. It didn’t get fixed. It was like something was building in a pot and it had to explode out cause they turned the heat up too high. We were done cooking.
Then everything went to hell with the plague-Don’t argue with me. Don’t preach those doctor terms. You know what? You’re an egghead who got unlucky. You’re damned good at what you do but you-don’t look at me like that-you’re too ********’ stupid to know how to do it right. Too stupid to take the goddamn reins.
Just like me. Just like us. That’s what we were, the fightin’ generation. The killin’ Generation and we started not to feel when you were just babies and we perpetuated that. Do you know how scary it is? You look for death, you seek out bodies on the highway, and you pull over for crashes hoping for a corpse. We drank in the towers falling; we drank in the images of the flag covered coffins because we were looking for feeling. The bloodier the better, the scarier the better, scrambling at walls because real life was so solid it was a punch in the face for those of us who’d never been in a fight.
They wanted to save us. They did. They gave us pills; they gave us escape, and in the end it went too far and nothing worked. We sought out feeling, like cats without whiskers. You ever see a cat boy? You cut off its whiskers and it stumbles around like a blind man. They cut off our whiskers because they loved us. And we…we did the same to you. It’s human nature. It’s why we’ll eventually be destroyed.
That’s what you are boy. Think about this kid you’re about to kill. What’s he to you? Nothing. Honestly, reach down deep and find human compassion for him. Huh. Thought you couldn’t.
He’s sick. He’s dying. This plague’s a sign. A sign from god, a sign that the world is coming to an end. You’re an agent of that.
No? Still can’t? I admire you. Out of all the doctors I admire you the most. We’re like Nisei, like Unit 731. Like Abu Gharib. And you, good little son, obedient soldier are saying no.
But you can’t pull up any reason why he should live. Why your knife shouldn’t do what you were taught to do and that scares you.
So do it. Do it so you learn to mourn him, do it so you have caused death. I’m cruel? I’m a monster for making you do this?
…No.
I’m giving you the greatest gift of all. I’m teaching you how to feel. The femoral vein starts right below the jaw. Get. Started.
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Salvation’s name is Alexandria Jacqueline Rodriguez.
He hates her. She’s a b***h with a name that’s too long and the self-absorbed nature of someone who apparently thinks herself god’s gift to mankind. She thinks she’s gorgeous when she’s unbelievably flat, unnaturally stick-like. Her red hair she considers wavy and beautiful is flat and dry in the arid desert air. She thinks she’s on a mission of mercy and he’s the devil incarnate so they butt heads every chance they can get.
“I am following orders.”
“I’m saving lives!”
Impasses are not for the faint hearted. He calls her all sorts of names and she calls him a pig and a liar and a manwhore and words he didn’t even know and they back away until the village boy dies. His name is Abutu and he’s eleven years old and he is neither the victim of American Madness or Mother Earth’s Revenge but simple blind chance and when AJ starts to cry over his corpse, pounding on his tiny chest with balled up hands he reaches across her body to put a hand on her shoulder.
His uniform shirt is wet and she looks at him, timid and trusting, feeling every inch of her body, every muscle in her skin.
“I’m sorry.”
He holds her as he can. Everything tingles, the shock of the impasse breaking down before them.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” It trails off into the night. Salvation’s name is AJ Rodriguez, but even Salvation can’t do everything.
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They flee. They have to. It’s the fall of Saigon all over again. The government finally collapses and there’s a new power in the world to replace politics. He knows this when he crawls off the plane-jet lagged beyond all rational thought and there are armed men to take General Conway into custody.
No one will yet acknowledge how little feeling they have left. There must be a show and the soldiers get one as Conway is dragged away screaming that the safety of the republic is in his hands.
The ones he left behind he leaves behind with nightmares of the crimes they committed and a need to forget. The most touching part of the movie, when the love struck couple holding hands walk into the sunset, somewhere the director waits to call cut, edit, print, ship, make the money.
This is not a movie. This is opera. This is a stated dramatic piece. Touching moments must reduce you to tears to pass muster and happy endings are for the faint hearted.
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Alex and Steven settle into a domestic routine that would put the cleavers to shame-adapted for the brave new world they both faced. Travelers often find the world changed when they re-arrive at home and in this case it was no different. Two doctors were in high demand in this society where the plague-surprisingly-seemed under control.
“I think they’d hire you too.”
She has been waiting days to broach this. Steven looks up from his coffee, utterly absorbed in his book, “Sorry? Who?”
“GeneCo.” She slides the pamphlets over, “You told me to start looking for work so I flashed my credentials and called my professor at Harvard annnnd…” she displayed an ID badge that looked like it was designed by a drunken teenager with a laptop computer, “I start Monday.”
“…GeneCo?”
“GeneCo.”
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She teaches him how to love himself and her with it. He teaches her devotion and duty, few men are as loyal, as hopelessly in love. He still can’t believe his luck, he writes her stupid poems, and he leaves her notes, sends her cute little pictures, and works.
They sit together late at night as couples are wont to do and she confesses her deepest secret, “It’s not the plague…but it happens. It really does. I’m sorry Steven, I knew you wanted…”
What was the point of love if it didn’t produce something? (If it didn’t produce compliant offspring? What was the point of all that if it didn’t…)
“…I understand.”
She takes his hands, “Which is why I took out a loan application and got approved. I-I’ll need your help but if you and I both work at it I think…”
He stares at her uncomprehending, “You realize what a risk you’re taking?” Credit is one thing, the economy has never recovered from the black years just after the war “ended” “…And with the way things are now…”
“We’d have to work together.”
She squeezed his fingers, “I ran the numbers and we can pull it off. We can do it baby. We can…we can have…”
They kiss, as couples are wont to do. They hold hands through the entire process and as far as the credit department is concerned it’s utterly legit and probably pretty ******** commercial. Two GeneCo Doctors raising through the ranks wanting to order an organ so they could have a kid? Damn, if it didn’t get more hallmark then that.”
“I love it when things turn out so neatly.” The loan offer signs her name with a flourish, “Congratulations you too. I wish you all the best.”
And somewhere there is a file with their names on it as joint holders of the account and a murderer reads it in green letters across his eyes from behind a monstrous visage and knows it’s only a matter of time before things are truly decided.
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Nothing stays buried forever.
“I General Joseph Conway wish to confess the gravest crimes that I have committed.”
Not with Medicinal Technology able to bring raving madmen back to mental acuity.
“I, under orders, obtained the permission of nine doctors to systematically destroy the moral of the following communities in the Sudan. With permission from superior officers from the United States Marine Corps and the USAF, the following individuals committed atrocities in the name of their government….”
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Do we really need to go into details?
Can’t it be guessed honestly what would happen if your status as a mass murderer and perpetrator of crimes against humanity were announced on national television?
Steven Baker is caught as he tries to run and taken to the head honcho’s office. Meanwhile AJ is holding a little boy’s hand so tight the blood flow stops to his wrists and he begs her to stop as she staggers out into the hallway, hand on her stomach, eyes on the floor.
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“I had no idea what I had.”
Rotti Largo couldn’t be more proud.
“For god sake why didn’t you come to me?” The proud grandfather personified, “With your experience? If half the things that Conway said were true? Did you really once pin a boy against the wall and-“
“Please.”
He thought he was passed this. Steven is sick to his stomach, “Please don’t.”
“You were schooled by the best!” There’s a note of admiration in Rotti’s tone, “This is business but what you did…what you did was truly monstrous.” He sounded in awe, “What we do here is nothing compared to the crimes you committed.”
He wanted to cry, “…I was following orders.”
“Listen. How’d you like a bump in pay? It’d require a department transfer, but you know, the ER is kind of pointless what with everybody wandering in and out of Surgery Parlors lately….”
“What?”
“A transfer. And a pay raise. “Raises were not something Rotti Largo gave out lightly, “To the repossession department.”
It’s all Steven can do to leave with his dignity intact. He was passed this, past this, past the vivid memories, past the waking up screaming in the night, past looking at AJ and wondering how she was able to close her eyes to such atrocity.
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He finds out. She is throwing clothes in a bag staring over her shoulder at him, sniffling, eyes red, blurry.
“I didn’t see because I loved you.”
His heart hurts so bad he can barely breathe.
“When you love someone you will forgive them anything.”
“Anything?”
The hope in his voice must kill her. He still believes that. To this day. She pauses at the door, “Almost anything.”
He staggers against the bookcase, crashing to his knees and letting out a howl like the beast he will someday be before collapsing into sobs.
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“I can offer you protection Steven. Doctor Steven. You were a doctor and he used you, abused you. There was nothing good about what you did. It served no purpose, you heard the inquisitors say that. Regardless of what his mental health doctors say, he’s not well. And you…
You have a chance my boy. You have skill and you could do some real good. Real good for everyone. Because it has to keep going. That’s what drives me, it has to keep going, we nearly died. I brought everyone back from the abyss, I built them this world-meager though it may be.
And in order to do that-please-please don’t cry son-in order to do that sacrifices had to be made. You under the nature of sacrifice?
I think, out of anyone, you understand it the most. Because you sacrificed who you were for a madman and a monster and so many people have had to do that in the past decade…I see them. On street corners and I want to help them because…
Because I cannot begin to fathom what it must be like for them.
I can offer you protection. I can offer you safety. All I ask is something that you’ve given before, something that you have in spades. Loyalty. You’re a monster and a fool, you’re evil, but you can put it to good use. And I will never judge you for that. I’ve dared things for my species, for my country, for my business that no man will ever understand. It is not for me to judge, that’s between you and the Vatican son. All I ask is loyalty and I’ll allow you to live in peace.”
He wanted AJ back, he wanted things to be like they were, but lies find the liar and kill them in the end.
“…What do I have to do?”
