"To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'"
Ayn Rand.
Chapter one – Reflection on the lost.
Gone.
"I can give you over forty thousand reasons why I know that sun isn't real. I know it because the emitter's Rayleigh effect is disproportionate to it's suggested size. I know because it's stellar cycle is more symmetrical than that of an actual star. But for all that, I'll never know if it looks real... if it feels real... before this is all over, promise me you'll find out which one of us is the machine."
Cloudless night. Clear is the way.
"We were supposed to take care of each other... and we did!"
We are sometimes so wrapped up in our own world that we lose perspective of the World. We lose sight of what is real and what is not. But in my case, it was not my choice.
"Welcome home, John."
I am a ghost. The remnants of a shattered soul broken in two. No hope of life or guiltless death.
The galaxy is traumatized. Broken. Torn. Abstract. So many things I have done were not of my choosing. So many actions I have taken that have resulted in pain.
"At the end of the game the king and the pawn go in the same box." She said. But in life who was the king? For I am a Pawn. A selfless solider. An alien. An enigma. A Spartan.
The cold dead sun glared down from it's mighty perch in space. Scrutinising my failure as a man with an unrelenting stare. I would have chuckled at the thought of the sun being a living, breathing entity, that had the ability to judge our pointless acts in the space that revolved around it. But I couldn't, the gift of amusement was one of many things they took from me.
I walked slowly down the pristine tunnel, windows into space reflected my sullen form on both sides. The, heavy weight of my armor, finally, after all these years came to bear down upon me. Yet my shoulders were tall and proud, my posture that of a hero, but I felt like anything but. If I could I would have let the world see what little there was to see about me, but it would have been enough to show myself for once and rid the mask.
I stopped and looked out the transparent material that guarded me from an appeasing death, an escape from the now torture. I looked out onto the place this all started. The sphere that I have defended through thin and thick; the Earth lay silent and oblivious to my sacrifice as I studied it. It's perfect yet imperfect form was as beautiful as it was ugly.
"Mind if I join you?"A voice sounded to my left breaking the chains that held me to my grief fuelled musings. Instinctively I turned. It was the captain. I then did what any mindless pawn would do. I saluted.
"Of course not, Sir." My hard, broken voice sounded foreign to my ears.
"At ease, Chief." Lasky half smiled. "It feels kind of odd for you to call me 'Sir'." I turned my gaze back to humanities cradle. So did he. "Beautiful, isn't she? I don't get to see her often enough. I grew up on New Harmony. Attended Corbulo Military Academy. Never saw Earth in person until I was an adult, but I still think of her as home." Lasky told me, trying. Willing me to talk.
Home. "Welcome home, John."
"You don't talk much, do you?" Lasky paused and bowed his head. I continued to watch the peaceful planet below. "Chief I won't pretend to know how you feel. I've lost people I care about, but never anything you're going through."
I didn't turn. The man stepped up beside me.
"Our duty as soldiers is to protect humanity. Whatever the cost." This mantra, had helped when I killed insurrectionists, when I couldn't save someone, or was ordered not to even when I could, but now, it had little sway over the limited emotions that I felt. It did little to remedy the pain that swelled within me like a raging storm.
My sensitive, unnatural hearing, picked up Lasky sighing slightly at my comment. "You say that soldiers and humanity are two different things. Soldiers aren't machines. We're just people. I'll let you have the deck to yourself."
"before this is all over, promise me you'll find out which one of us is the machine."
"...which one of us is the machine."
"which one of us is the machine?"
"She said that to me once. About being a machine." I whispered to my reflection.
Lasky had by now turned and left me. Like all in my, I would say life, but am refrained from doing so by knowing the truth of my existence. I am a machine. I do things without knowing why I do them, only that I must.
To her question I know the answer: I am the machine, she was alive. The last of my moments with her played vividly at the front of my mind on a continuous loop, haunting my ever waking eyes.
"Cortana. Cortana, do you read? Cortana, come in." I called out into my communication device. I looked up at the mysterious, holographic like environment that surrounded me. Something began to materialise from the wall in front of me.
Cortana.
"How?"
She smiled. "Oh, I'm the strangest thing you've seen all day?"
I didn't understand. Moment before I had just defeated the zealous Didact. I set of a Thermo Nuclear device. Was I dead. "But if we're here - "
"It worked." She said, laying to rest my fear, If you could call it such. "You did it. Just like you always do." She smiled sadly.
"So how do we get out of here?" I looked around, trying to find a way to escape this prison of light.
Cortana looked to her feet guiltily. "I'm not coming with you this time."
My head snapped, locking onto her. "What!?"
"Most of me is down there. I only held enough back to get you off the ship." I realised now what I was in. A expansive hard-light shield.
"No. That's not-! We go together." I tried to argue however she cut me off.
"It's already done."
Standing up to my full height I vowed: "I am not leaving you here!"
"John..." Cortana whispered as she steped closer toward me. Now standing before me she place her holographic, yet so alive hand on my chest plate. Her real artificial eye shut tightly as she felt, some unknown to me emotion. "I've waited so long to do that."
My words caught in my throat. An unnatural felling befell me. He inhaled heavily. "It was my job to take care of you." I explained, trying to convince her with futile hope.
She smiled. "We were supposed to take care of each other. And we did."
She started to peacefully fade. "Cortana- please Wait - "
"Welcome home, John."
Fear. Her eye's bolted wide open. A red light filled my vision. Her image flickered in and out of existence. The static hiss reverberated through my communication. Her image was replaced all of a sudden by a large red hologram, of some sort of crustacean. Yet it only lasted mere seconds before flashing out of existence.
Coming back to the bleakness of the present was sorryfully painful for me. I enjoyed remembering her as if she was still with me.
I closed my eye's once again delving into that most unhappiest of memories. The way she disappeared still troubled me. It wasn't right.
My eye's snapped open. It wasn't right!
Please don't judge harshly. I don't usually wright from 1st person. This is a pilot chapter, and this story will not be a priority of mine... Yet! It will be more of a side task to a side task.