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Chapter 4 – Wind-Up Soldier

I can hear them crying out for me before I even reach the doorway. As soon as their voices reach my ears, all pain, all thoughts of dented bloodstains leave my mind, and I walk proud and tall. I hold my head high and bask on their pride, the returned hero, gleaming with borrowed light.

Jace wants to know where I've been, Meryl fusses over my wounds, Connor's already criticizing me for damaging the suit, along with dozens more, too many to name. They all want to know where I've been, what I've done, and how I stayed alive. I know the protocol. I just give them a smile.

I am but a cog in the machine—Enclave 7932/Substrate Aleph-5, Operative 6—and I just saved the world.

Between endless debriefing sessions, countless councils of immaculately groomed men and disheveled avatars, they shuffled in. A hesitant knocking on the door to my quarters, faces I'd known only as a pair of downcast eyes in a hallway suddenly blubbering thanks in tongues I barely understand, shoving made or stolen or hard-earned gifts I can't possibly accept into my hands with a stammered goodbye, glad to be alive.

These are the refugees of a shattered world, and I am the steward of their dreams. One of many, that is. A face in a crowd. Just another uniformed warrior keeping peace alive.

What you have to understand is that we're part of this world; we don't just live on it, like we did on Earth. That kind of life is gone; maybe forever, maybe just for a little while, but long enough that we have to adapt. The way the Mekanordinators tell it, we're as essential to this place as blood cells are to us. We give it what it needs. We fix it when it breaks. We fight the little battles, burn away the cancer and the filth, and make sure the world can thrive.

Identity isn't something we respect in the enclaves. If time has taught us one thing, it's that people don't work. They wind down. They lead to war, to chaos, to ruin. We are bigger than names. We are one glorious machine, always turning, gearing up to something incredible. Why keep the problems of the old world when we can build a better one in its place?

I was a novice in our grand undertaking until seven decacyles ago, when the Hadrian collapse knocked out a whole squad of Pathology-class troubleshooters—even a pair of Terrorvores, and I've never seen one of those things die short of a full-scale entropic fade. Promotion was fast after that. I even have my own recruits to train now; Travian, Ortiz, Cassandra... Their names are active still, they haven't earned their numbers.

I don't have a name. I am a unit of the machine entity; as a reward for obedience, I am offered some degree of autonomy. I can think, I can feel, I can make snap judgements that a remotely-piloted guardrone could never process information fast enough to match. Top-of-the-line perceptifilters beam data directly into my visual cortex, providing a statistical overlay of where I need to hit you in order to make you bleed the most.

I am a weapon. I am honed sharper than a person, sharper than a mind. I am a veteran, surviving both the Liandri conflict and the Lascaille incursion with nothing more than a scathed ego and a bruised will where others lost so much more than their lives.

If I am to be a tool I will be piston-perfect and never dull. I will not falter when the hand that wields me is steady. I will not stray from my duty when doing what must be done. I will be methodical, exacting, resolute.

I will gleam.

I will not think of the blood.

Those are thoughts of a person. Thoughts of weakness, of a single mind, not trained in the ways of, of systemthought and I will not, I will, I will not...

Sometimes I just want to go home.

I don't have long. They'll be coming for me again, dragging me off for another calibration, removing these doubts from me. Removing myself. I get these moments once in a while, where I'm not whatever they want to be, whatever title they want to make me think I've earned, where I'm just me again.

Hey. We haven't properly met yet. I'm Sam.

Sometimes it's like I'm living in a dream. It all makes sense for a while, buoyed up by this incredible sense of purpose, all my insecurities left behind on the ground while I stride across the sky. For a while. And then some facade cracks and I can see through the holes, see the fluid running through the walls, the gristle on the floors. A filter will slip and suddenly I can see the price—

"Operative 6, come with me."

It is her. The matriarch. She rarely comes out in public now, her cerebromatter grown unwieldy with age and countless enhancements. Her spidrous dronechair clinks and catches on the carpet. Her fluid intakes brush against the side of the room, scattering them at her touch. Even the walls are afraid.

"Operative 6." This time there is no patience in her voice. "Come with me at once." I know what'll come. I know the needles and the wires and I know that I will forget—or I'll remember but it won't matter—because I'll want to. I'll want to forget myself again, to serve a cause, to lose my name.

By the way, it's Sam. Did I tell you?

Some small part of me that wants this. It has to. Or else it wouldn't work. Some small part of me sees this and knows the price and weighs the costs and goes for the reward. Every time. It wouldn't work if I didn't.

But I gain so much. Before this place I couldn't live. Not really live. I couldn't matter. They'd pretend and hold me up and push me around but really it was them, and I was just a burden, humoured and tugged along. I couldn't stand on my own. I was just Sam, and now—

"Do not make me ask again."

Don't forget. Don't forget.

I remember the good days. The cold days, because summer heat just reminded of things I couldn't have. But there were some days, weren't there? When we all sat around the table, and, and when we... There must have been some good days? Something better than this?

I don't want to go.

But I will.

There's a world to save.

A/N: Yes.

~04/28/13