Title: Independent Research
Author: MarySue
Date: Sept 13th, 2002
Notes: I never thought I'd write anything about this other than what was required of me in a class, and I certainly never thought I would write something pertaining to both the subject at hand and Gundam Wing. Duo POV, mild language warning. Stream-of-Consciousness warning, but that's how I write, so, meh.
In general, life can be pretty full of surprises. It's not that we don't see it coming, it's just that when it finally arrives, our apathy is forced away and so we feel shocked. Outraged. Lost. Numb.
History is a class I've taken too many times. It's painfully sad, how very few school curriculums truly differ from one another. I've learned the same dull facts about the same dull wars a thousand times over. I know pretty much all there is to know about macro economics, micro economics, the war of the roses, the fall of the Hapsburgs, the hatred between Russians and Japanese, between Japanese and Chinese, between pretty much everyone else and the Jews- There's a point where you stop paying attention.
As a terrorist, I thought I knew everything about terrorism. To be honest, I never really thought it was done any differently. I mean, look at me: I sneak into bases filled with soldiers and machines of my opposition and destroy them, utterly. I can clear a battle field of fifty mobile suits, crush one of the leaders in my enemy's ranks, and stroll away. I blow shit up.
It's not noble, but it's surviving. That doesn't justify it. I don't think I ever truly bought into the 'greater evil' shtick. I kill people to show millions of other people how horrible death is. I commit a comparatively lesser evil to end the greater one. That's not ironic, it's just sick. As much as the mobile dolls mean more danger for me, they mean less lives lost. WuFei insists that it's meaningless battle. I'm off track. I'm a terrorist: so I know what it's about. The anonymity, the underhanded attacks. Mobile suit battles weren't meant to be like this; they're kind of up front, out in the open weapons. People are starting to realize, though. They're seeing how horrible war is, what comes out of hate and oppression. I'd felt like I was, for all the perverse logic, accomplishing something.
I didn't realize it had been done before.
Independent research projects aren't my thing. I've done the work already. Let someone with genuine interest in my group do it. But no, individual work it is. Heero won't even let me run off a copy of one of his reports- the ones he keeps on a disc to print off at every school. Like I said, the curriculum never changes.
So I do my own research. The subject is terrorism, what with the war with the colonies and the gundams going on, our teacher thinks it's a good way to occupy our time this weekend, and make us examine current events.
I wasn't gonna do it. Oh, hell no, I was not going to do it. But if I get called to the dean's office one more time, I know my steely-gazed roommate will kill me for drawing so much attention. Fine. Research it is.
I hadn't realized it had been done before. A little more than two hundred years ago, something relatively recent in the history of man, and I hadn't known. I want to know why no one ever told me. I want to know why G never did. I probably do know, on some level, but I feel cheated.
I want to know why no one recognizes it as a day for mourning or remembering anymore. I want to know why no one drops their flag at half mast. I want to know why no world leader makes a speech. I want to know what happened to September 11th.
I've watched the vid clip on Heero's laptop about eighty seven times, now. I've seen it from all angles. I watched the first plane go in. I watched the second plane go in. I watched one tower collapse after the other, and I watched it again.
I watched the first plane go in. Watched people jumping from windows one hundred stories above the ground rather than be engulfed in flame. Watched the second plane go in, knowing damn well that not just innocent tourists, office ladies, office men, janitors were dying when it did, but that there were still selfless soldiers rushing up those stairs, towards the fiery death that others were jumping out of windows to escape from. Watched one tower collapse under the hideous weight of the wrong that had been done it, and the other collapse with horror and sorrow at having watched its brother fall.
And I was shocked. Outraged. I felt lost. And when I realized that a life is a life, that a fireman was a fireman after having been in the military, that the lives lost were lost in the pursuit of one true evil's 'greater good', I felt numb.
The world had been shown before, in one act of culminated hatred and extreme violence. Terrorist bombing. Stupid, hateful, evil people, who destroyed thousands and thousands of lives. And no remorse- no hesitation.
How was it different? How was it the same? From me, and my wasteful cause. And two hundred years later, people didn't even acknowledge the absolute tragedy. Why? Just someone tell me fucking why.
Oh, God, I've lost faith in everything. Everything.
I transfer the footage to disc. Splice it with nearly unblinking eyes into a presentable stream of horrible facts and graphic, tangible truth. I don't type a report, because I know what I had to say, and I don't type my citations: I jot them down the next morning, the url's of news sites and archives emblazoned onto the backs of my eyes, onto a note card.
I'm glad Heero's in my class. I push the disc into the drive that's hooked to a wide screen mounted on the wall. I stand still and, for the first time any of my classmates have seen, sobered, and say "I'm sorry." I'm sorry. Me. It's not sympathy. It's not even regret. I just fucking am.
I press the play button and stand to the side, neither bowing my head nor fidgeting like I usually do. I'm sorry. I'm so damn sorry. And when it's over and my class is reeling and my teacher's looking away, gathering himself, and doubtless wondering what the hell grade he's going to give me, I look at Heero and mouth It has to end. And he doesn't nod, and he doesn't blink, but I know he knows. I know he agrees. And I know that, despite himself, he's asking why.