I sleep. I dream, but the dreams are memories, my brain on minimum, maintaining neural pathways even as I slumber. Everything which makes me, me, is still here. I set my mind to recall as they pinned me down, the last to enter my box, the longest to watch the struggles and pleas of my friends as they too were overpowered by the executioners.
For that is what this is: death. Do not let them tell you it was a mercy that they have somehow spared us, pending some better era which will know how to treat us.
Do they truly think that if they abandon us here long enough, that humanity will catch up?
They have no idea what we are made of.
This is living death, the incapacity without the oblivion, for we are able to retain some consciousness through their clumsy stasis. I hissed to my friends to sleep, to forget their imprisonment, to cling to their sanity. But I am strongest, and our present leader, and I chose captivity, and knowledge.
Through my memories runs a spark of revenge, of grief, of fury. It flashes upon the most devastating moments of our final days, lending them a brilliance that seems like heroism instead of what it was - desperation. As we were hunted and slaughtered in punishment for our supposed crimes, we grew like the animals they thought us: afraid, bewildered by the hatred we were shown, and in our terror, dangerous.
Then any torture they could devise became justified as we were cornered and captured and an entire galaxy cried for our blood.
We would not divulge our secrets. I still do not know if this saved our lives or prolonged them only for future misery. It was my decision and the guilt - all imagined outcomes - is mine.
I sleep, and remember, and tend my bitterness, for it is less painful to me than hope.