Letters

Cole slapped Baird on the back. The blond man jumped with surprise and looked up to the looming mountain of a man. Did Cole never stop smiling?

"Yeah?" Baird snapped. In his rare moment of peace and quiet, he was busy poring over blueprints of the Armadillos. The last one his squad had taken out groaned too much for comfort and barely absorbed the roughness of the road. He was betting on it being a problem with the struts, but first he had to find them in that compact ball of metal. He was lucky to bribe a print off an engineer, which he now secretly studied in the barracks.

Cole pretended to take interest in Baird's notes. "Sorry to bother you while you're looking at porn, but do you have a free scrap of paper?"

"Paper? Yeah, sure." He dug into the pouch on his belt. As a rule, Baird made sure to collect anything he could write on. Any paper still in production was reserved for the Chairman and Control; everyone else had to make do. Normally Baird would tell anyone else tough shit, but he had grown to tolerate Cole; hell, maybe he liked him a little.

Baird pulled out a small slip that was already worn from constant erasing. Before he offered it to Cole, he asked, "Am I ever going to see this again?"

"Probably not, if that's okay," Cole replied with an apologetic smile. "If not, I can ask someone else."

Baird sighed. "I doubt anyone else is as resourceful as I am. Listen, I've got plenty of extra pieces so you can have this one for free. Any others and I'll have to charge you."

He passed the paper to Cole and he accepted it with a laugh. Someone down the long line of cots mumbled for quiet and Cole apologized as he sat on his own sagging cot. Baird watched as he smoothed the paper over his knee and pulled a stubby pencil from his shirt pocket. He sat in deep thought for a moment before he began to scribble in the left corner.

Baird returned to his work. How could he even replace the struts in the Dill? The nearest auto parts store—which happened to be six hours away—definitely wouldn't have military grade parts. If it was even still standing and if Stranded hadn't raided it.

Damn vultures. They take a lot of things I could use. At least we're allowed to shoot if we catch them in the act. Rules of engagement and all that shit.

"Damon," Cole interrupted. "Damon?"

"What now?" he asked. "I'm kinda busy, Cole."

"I was just wondering if you had a knife. My pencil broke."

Baird pulled a pencil from his belt pouch and tossed it to the other man without looking. "You can't keep that, got it?"

"You're a good man, Damon."

Baird looked up to that honest face of Cole's. Did he seriously mean that?

"It's just a pencil, not ammo or a ration bar," Baird replied. "If you want that, you have to take me out to dinner first."

Cole chuckled and, shaking his head, returned to his letter. At least, it looked like a letter to Baird. Cole was writing as small as possible to save him the trouble of erasing in the future; that proved he was smarter than some men Baird worked with.

Five minutes of blessed silence passed and he had finally worked out how he could salvage parts and rework the support of the Dill, and Cole was still writing. He stopped and started sporadically but it was starting to get to Baird. What could be so important that he would use his free time writing? Most Gears preferred to catch a nap or lounge in the mess. Baird liked to create ways to keep himself busy, like the Dill problem. He could have reported it to an engineer but solving it meant he wouldn't have the chance to let his mind rest.

"So, uh, Cole." Damn, Baird wasn't expecting it to be this hard to ask. He was used to staying out of people's business. "I didn't realize you had family to write back to." There, that was his best effort at sympathy. It sounded human enough, not like an uncaring jackass.

"I don't," replied Cole, pencil still scribbling. "They died on E-Day."

"Girlfriend?"

"Nah. I'm writing to my mama."

Oh shit, he's gone off the deep end. Should I alert medical personnel?

"But you said they … passed."

"Yeah," he sighed. "I guess it's a habit now. Back in my Thrashball days, I'd sit down to write her a letter after every big game. I called her all the time but there's just something special about physically writing the ones you love, especially when they call you up all happy about receiving a letter, you know?"

"No, I wouldn't know. My parents and I didn't see eye-to-eye. Hell, we barely spoke."

Cole shook his head. "Damn shame. I bet they still loved you and had your best interest at heart. All parents do, no matter how they treat their kids."

Baird could have said a lot of things to that. He didn't believe for a second his parents saw him as anything other than a successor. If he wasn't their offspring, maybe he would go as far as saying they hated him. That wasn't entirely true. They tolerated him through childhood and it was only after he announced his plan for the future did they genuinely hate him. Denied his inheritance, they refused to speak to him for three years and died without trying to repair that bond. He only knew they were dead because his family's estate was in a sinkhole. No hurried phone call, no last letter—just gone.

But Cole was a family man. Saying any of that would probably just upset him.

"Sure, I bet they did." Baird shrugged, rolling his head as he often did when uncomfortable or embarrassed. "So why do you write letters to your mom if she's gone? Can you communicate with the afterlife? Send a letter through astral projection?"

"Nah, man, nothing so fancy. It's … peaceful. I know it's stupid to write a letter she'll never get, but it helps me relax, clear my mind for the next crisis. And even if she's gone, nobody's ever really dead unless we forget them."

"Very philosophical, Cole," Baird replied. But he had never thought about it like that. Once you're dead, you're dead. That's it. Living on through memories never occurred to him because he considered himself a forgettable person, not to mention he didn't have close friends or family. No one would want to remember him.

"Sounds like you're jealous, baby. Cole, meathead ex-Thrashball star, outsmarted Damon, scrawny brainiac!" He guffawed and reached across the small gap between the cots to slap Baird's shoulder. "Don't worry, I've always been an average student."

You're smarter than you let on, Cole. I may have excelled academically, but you understand the world. You know what it means to be a real human being, someone adored for being yourself and doing what you love. Yeah, maybe I am a little jealous.

Baird shoved Cole's massive hand off his shoulder and rolled up the Dill blueprint as he stood. "Whatever. Are you done with that pencil? I gotta go strike a deal with an engineer."

Cole handed over the pencil and asked, "Do you ever stop tinkering? Don't you get tired of it?"

"Gotta make myself useful somehow, right?" Baird tucked the blueprint under his arm and the pencil behind his ear. He left the barracks with the sense Cole was watching him, maybe waiting for a confession, but that would never happen.

You've got your coping mechanism, I've got mine.