Travel Log

Science fiction/horror, philosophy, solipsism, identity. Written through the journal of a young soldier.

Entry: 1

Date: 03/12/2210

Subject: Goodbye Earth!

Everyone around me looked angry or depressed. I think I was the only one who was excited. Most of them are leaving their family and friends behind. Many of them watched really cool commercials, with aggressive music. So they thought the military was all about being a bad a*s and blowing s**t up. Or maybe they are expecting to receive a stipend for college or a promising career because they enlisted in the US Military. Most of them come from poor families, from backwater province towns. I am an exception though.

My family is well off and I have a college diploma, unlike the rest of them. My dad keeps telling me I’m set for life. He treats me like a trust fund kid and I am a trust fund kid, actually. I still can’t forget how terrified and disappointed he was when I told him that I wanted to join the army. I made my parents very proud before, I graduated with honors and I have a degree from a good college but I don’t see why I should be proud of myself. I feel like a mass produced thing, with a diploma. No different than the millions of other mass produced things, with a diploma. All will eventually enter the job market and occupy themselves with something extremely boring and routinized. I’d rather get shot at. That’s what I told my dad and then he put on his coat and slammed the door on his way out. Five hours later he came home again and he stank like alcohol, but at least he seemed to cope better with the idea that I was leaving.

Slurring these words out, he told me: “You are my boy, and I want you to be happy, so do whatever makes you happy? But why did you have to enlist in the army, why could you just not be gay or something.”

So that’s how that conversation went down. Most of all I’m happy I’m leaving earth. I can’t stand earth. Terra on the other hand is a vast planet of natural resources, untamed and untouched by modern technology, teeming with strange and alien life. It is a large, wild planet, and I am going to have a s**t load of heavy artillery to blow s**t up. That’s always been my dream and I know it’s a very immature dream. This is why I feel like earth is not the place for me. People on earth have too many expectations of me. They expect me to grow into a mature and productive adult. Now is the time when I should start being serious, start a career, start a family. Everyone tells you that you have rights and freedoms, and you can be whoever you want to be. You are free to do whatever you want, but if you don’t do what’s expected of you, everyone starts looking at you in a certain light and then they make you feel like complete s**t for not following their expectations. The feeling is so damn terrible that you might as well willingly enslave yourself and just do what they expect you to do. I don’t call that freedom. Whatever I should not be writing and thinking about this, I’m leaving all that behind, now I want to focus on new beginnings.

Entry: 2

Date: 03/18/2210

Subject: Arrival

I could see vast oceans everywhere, but they were nothing like the oceans back on earth. Mountains emerged from the water, mountains which rose out of the water in strange clusters, unlike any mountains I’ve seen on earth. I asked Aron about them, Aron was someone I got to know during my travel. He at least made a small effort to talk to me and helped me kill some time.

“Did you see those mountains? They’re in the middle of the ocean.”

He didn’t look at me, he was typing on his computer.

“Yeah, those are not mountains, they are more like corals.”

“Corals?” I asked him.

“Yes, they are like corals.” He kept typing

I looked out the shuttle window again. I got a closer look at the coral-like things once we descended. They were indeed very different from the mountains back home. They were covered with convoluted, green and yellow folds, incredibly complicated structures, incredibly beautiful.

Entry: 3

Date: 03/21/2210

Subject: Basic Training

Sargent Bayer came into our sleeping quarters at sunrise and woke us up. Half an hour later we were running around the barracks. I was looking forward to seeing the Terran sunrise but the barracks were walled off and heavily guarded by men with guns and other artillery. Everywhere I ran I saw featureless grey walls barring my view. Below my feet there was also lots of gravel and dirt. I could hear heavy wheezing sounds all around me, I looked to my left and I saw Ray’s face. It was completely flushed, he was redder than the ripest tomatoes. On the right Gabe was bathing in a waterfall of his own sweat, he has this long thin face and his eyes droop downwards. His mouth kind of hangs open when he is tired and his lower jaw swings left and right. Then he turns his head and looks at you with those droopy eyes and you can hear the heavy breathing from his open mouth, you just lose motivation, you can’t keep going. I tried to look at the ground and I tried to avoid looking at his face but that face still burned in my memories. I slowly curled forward and eventually fell down on the gravel.

Sargent Bayer ran up beside me.

“Walter! What’s the matter with you!?”

“I can’t.” I was gasping for breath.

“Yes you can, get up and start running! Look at everyone else, they’re doing it! Why are you so special?”

“It’s not me, it’s Gabe..” I was beginning to catch my breath.

“What does Gabe got to do with this?”

“His face…” I gasped. “It’s demotivational….”

“Cut the bullshit. Get up and start running, this happens to you out there!” He was pointing at the wall, I assumed “out there” meant beyond the wall. “You are a dead man! So learn to run while you still have a chance!”

Entry: 4

Date: 05/02/2210

Subject: Can’t Sleep, Writing.

It’s been months and we’ve all had intensive training. I was in shape and I fancied looking at myself in the mirror, marveling at all the muscle and sinew that crossed my arms. I’ve never felt so strong in my life, I could punch, kick, grapple, use knives. I was an unstoppable killing machine, like Rambo. We would get together at our sleeping quarters, at night, and we would pit ourselves against each other just for fun. It was a dick measuring contest at it’s most testosterone fused height. The game went like this, there was one round of stand up and there was a second round of grappling. If you win both rounds, then you are the winner automatically. If you win one round and your opponent wins the second round, then we randomly get assigned a third round which can either consist of wrestling or stand up. If you get knocked out in the first round or submitted in the second round you automatically lose. It was a pretty fun game and I liked it because I had a natural talent for kicking a*s.

Gabe and I were up against each other last night. He is taller than all of us, so his reach is obviously the best, but it doesn’t compensate for his lack of skill or power. He was looking at me. His face hovered between two raised boxing gloves, his droopy eyes fixed on mine, his mouth hanging open. It felt so good when I delivered a right cross between his eyes. His eyes shot upwards and crossed right where my glove landed, which made him both droopy eyed and cross eyed at the same time. If you could take a snapshot of Gabe in that instance, when I nailed him, you would have a picture of the goofiest looking face in the universe. He stumbled backwards wobbling but he still regained his balance.

He came at me swinging wide hooks with his lanky arms. I dodged and spun around him. Before he could turn around I delivered a kick to his kidney. He stumbled to one side and fell over. He kind of wallowed in pain on the ground and I waited while I stood over him, eager to do some more a*s kicking and hoping that he might get up. He managed to get up again and the rest of the room shouted in exhilarating cheers.

“You a solider Gabe, fight to the end!” Someone shouted.

I particularly liked beating on Gabe and it’s not that I had something personally against him. It’s just his face. His face has bothered me ever since I came here and if you saw us outside of this game, this social ritual you would never suspect that I derive pleasure out of this beating because quite honestly he is a cool guy and we get along quite well. He stood there and he was looking at me. He was probably contemplating whether to continue or not and I had to taunt him a little.

“You gonna give up Gabe? Is that what you’re made off? You useless little pansy, why don’t you join the marines!”

Everyone “oooooed” in unison. That did it, Gabe came at me and tried to pull off a spectacular jump kick but it looked so damn awkward and that made me even angrier. I stepped aside, he landed in a semi-splits position, his head dropped down and it was the perfect opportunity to nail him with a left uppercut. His head jerked up, as it came down again I smashed him with a right hook in the jaw, his long head was almost completely horizontal and I thought it was about to spin 360 like in a cartoon. He fell forward and I caught him. He was out for good, just hanging there in my arms. People quickly rushed over and tried to slap him awake. Eventually he came too but we still had to drag him to the bathroom where he could wash the blood out of his mouth. I patted him on the back.

“You did good.”

He looked at me, quickly nodded and turned back to the sink where he spat a ball of blood into the running water. After the ordeal was over we were at our beds when Dan brought up a question none of us had thought seriously about up until now.

He is this pale faced brat, with prominent eye sacks and a tiny little mouth. In my opinion he looks like a corpse, or that boy from the Adams family cartoons. He simply asked us, “Do you know what we’re gonna be doing after training is over?”

Erik who we officially deemed the military red neck of our squad answered, “I don’t know, they gonna tell us what to do.”

I butted in. “Well according to the pamphlet we’re gonna explore Terra and look to establish contact with intelligent life. We are gonna protect our scientists and diplomats, isn’t that what the pamphlet says.”

Dan continued. “Yeah but look at the number of recruits they are training, look at the heavy artillery man, this doesn’t look like a peaceful exploration mission, it looks like we’re preparing for war. Tell me honestly if everything was nice and peaceful outside, do you think they would keep us inside the barrack walls until our training was complete? We haven’t even seen the outside world.”

An uncomfortable silence fell over the room. I was pretty sure that all of us were thinking this but Dan said it, and we really didn’t know how to answer.

Gary spoke “So what do you want us to do? We signed up for this, we can’t go back.” I looked around the room, people were silently contemplating what he said and nodding their heads.

Then Aron spoke, “Whatever I’m going to bed.”

Gary continued, “We don’t know what’s out there or what they are gonna tell us to do when we’re done…But we can’t jump to conclusions, when we signed up for this we signed up for all the responsibility and duty this badge of honor carries. We are together, we are a squad, if you turn around and run now you turn your back on the squad.”

Everyone was nodding and looking at Gary with determined, half furrowed expressions. To me it kind of sounded like lame and sappy rhetoric, but that could be because I was the only one with a college education, still though I kind of gave a half assed nod just to fit in with the rest.

Williams spoke, “I don’t care if I die. My biggest concern is how am I gonna find p***y on this planet?.”

“Maybe there is some alien p***y out there.” I answered. “Like a chick with 20 b***s or something.”

That drew a few laughs.

Williams laughed then turned to Erik, “What about you hick, you’d probably f**k anything that walks?”

We laughed and George added. “Won’t be hard for the hick to get laid on this alien planet!”

Erik yelled at Williams “Shut the f**k up before I lynch your a*s! You ain’t protected by the constitution here!”

That exchange kind of lightened the mood. Then we heard Aron yell at us “how about you all shut the f**k up!? I’m trying to get some sleep!”

Entry: 5

Date: 05/04/2210

Subject: Lunch

Games and social rituals are interesting things. They allow you to do things that you would consider inhumane and horrible in any other context. Beating on Gabe is really fun in the context of the game we created but I would never do it outside of that. When I read history books about the war between Bosnians and Serbians back in college it always fascinated me how neighbors and best friends would instantly start shooting at each other as soon as war was declared. Imagine how that feels like? Would you shoot your friend or neighbor? I’m sure it’s unthinkable and you would cringe at the idea of blowing your neighbor’s brains out, you are probably thinking I would never do that. But that’s bullshit, you would do it in the right social context. Do you think I would ever legitimately enjoy beating Gabe into a bloody mess if we never invented our game? Probably not, I would’ve never even thought about that. But the game lifted my moral censor and I’m not gonna lie, it felt good in that particular social context. I was eating some nasty a*s porridge at the cafeteria while I was thinking about this. I was sitting across from Aron. He was mesmerized by his laptop as usual. The screen projected a blue light which reflected off his glasses. I looked at him while slowly eating my porridge.

“What?” He asked me without looking up.

“How did you know I was looking at you?”

He shrugged.

“Anyway, you seem really chill, like you don’t give a f**k about anything.”

“Should I give a f**k?” He asked me.

“I don’t know, training is gonna be over soon. Aren’t you a little anxious to know what we are gonna be doing here? The other guys are kinda freaking out and here you are all calm and cool on your laptop.”

He finally looked up at me and asked “Have you heard of human replication? You got some porridge under your mouth.”

I took a napkin and wiped my mouth. “No.”

“It’s human cloning, but get this, they can clone your exact double, with all your brain structures intact. All the information in your brain can be cloned, your experiences, your knowledge, your memories.”

“That actually sounds familiar. I heard about it.”

“It’s safe…:” He looked at me, nodding with emphasis.

“What do you mean it’s safe?”

“It’s a safe procedure and it can be applied to humans. In fact it’s been already used to bring people back from the dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m saying if you die you can be cloned and brought back to life.”

“How do you know it’s gonna be you?”

“Who else can it be? Everything that is you, your entire body is replicated, all your experiences and memories that are preserved in your brain, who else can it be?”

Entry: 6

Date: 05/20/2210

Subject: Weapons Training

Today was fun, we started using different artillery. There is the plasma pulse rifle, the gun shoots rounds of plasma that can instantly melt through an armored vehicle. Then we got to use the rotating slicer rifle. Four barrels spin, shooting blades of penetrating titanium alloy, the gun can chop up a grizzly bear into fine steak in under a minute. There are also explosive flying devices which we navigate with a head band, with our thoughts. They are smaller than golf balls and when they fly around they barely make any noise. They have cameras installed, and we can see where they are flying on a small screen which is attached to our head bands. We can navigate them and plant them anywhere we want and detonate them. Really cool stuff.

But the best part was when they gave us our military suit. It is black and unbelievably light and flexible. It changes color spontaneously to make you blend into the surrounding. It is covered with a fiberous network of nanocomputers along the surface that generates a force field along the surface of the suit. The force grid is powered by quantum computers and it instantly reconfigures to motion. The quantum computation occurs instantaneously and the reconfigurations occur at the speed of light. If my suit had infinite charge, you can stand and unload an infinite supply of rotating slicer rifle blades at my suit and I can dance around as the blades bounce harmlessly off me. Coolest day ever!

Entry: 7

Date: 09/15/2210

Subject: We fucked up.

Our training is approaching completion and none of us know what to expect or where we are gonna be stationed. It’s been six months now and I haven’t seen life outside of these walls. I’ve seen the sky, it’s no different that the one back home on earth. Days and nights are all the same. We stopped fighting at night because people were starting to get seriously injured. The morning after I pummeled Gabe, Sargent Bayer noticed that he was bruised and swollen up, it was apparent that we could do damage to each other even with boxing gloves on. I personally felt like I fixed Gabe’s face, he looked better all swollen up, even somewhat normal. But Sargent wasn’t too happy and he suspected we were probably up to no good. Few days ago I was going up against Gary. He was always trying to establish himself as the leader, he is essentially a jock archetype, like the many I knew in high school and his charisma just pissed me off. I think he was trying to live out this fantasy that he is that guy from the archaic movie Starship Troopers who banged Denise Richards and he looks exactly like him, tall, good looking, athletic. This time we started with the grappling round and he kicked my a*s. I mean come on, a guy like me versus a guy like him, I couldn’t do much. He instantly pinned me and I found myself in many compromised positions. I hated smelling the fresh shampoo of his perfect dandruff free hair while I was on the ground. Second round, now that was fun, he held his own I gotta say. He is quick and he is strong. He almost knocked me out when he landed a right hook and smacked me on the side of the head. My vision went black and when I came to I was on the ground. But I quickly got up. And there was a whole debate among us as to whether the fight should continue. At the end we came to a consensus that I didn’t stay on the ground long enough and I could still reasonably continue to fight. So we continued, this time I was focused and as soon as he came at me I kicked forward and caught him in the stomach. You could tell by the expression on his face, he looked like he was about to throw up. But he still came forward, full of handsome arrogance and pride. I smashed him in the nose and he fell on his a*s, drenched in his own blood. I proceeded to beat him mercilessly and people got between us. I was snatched and pulled back from the bloody mess that was Gary, then I suddenly realized what I had done. I felt like s**t.

I was spaced out, trying to absorb the situation. Occasionally I could hear people yelling at me. “What the hell were you thinking!?”

Then I saw Gary push through everyone and I was about to apologize when he grabbed me, lifted me right up and slammed me on the ground. I was out, I don’t know how long I was out but a lot happened during that time. When I woke up I was in a white bed at the medical quarters and Gary was beside me. I apparently suffered a concussion when Gary body slammed me. I turned and looked at Gary, he looked quite broken himself. He suffered a broken nose, and over all 36 stitches on his face. I felt kind of bad, not so much because of what Gary looked like but because of what I did to him. The fact that I did this to his face made me miserable, but I felt more at peace now looking at his face. He went from star quarter back to Frankenstein in that single night, with his face all stitched up like that. Anyway I felt like s**t, and really, I genuinely felt bad. But I liked his face now and I prefer his face this way, but I just wish it wasn’t I who did this to him. The fact that I did this to him gnawed at me and I had a hard time sleeping or maybe it was because I had recently suffered a concussion, I can’t be absolutely sure. Sargent obviously discovered what we were up to after that.

Entry: 5

Date: 09/17/2210

Subject: No Subject

I have bad anxiety and this is probably the worst I’ve ever suffered. I am still waiting to hear my sentence. It’s been a week of terrible, sleepless nights. They told us we might be discharged from military service because of our incident. This is horrible I don’t know what to do. I just realized right now how uncomfortable earth makes me. I can’t stand earthly structure, I can’t stand skyscrapers, I can’t stand cars and jets, I can’t stand mass produced patterns. Structure makes me behave predictably and I feel helpless when I encounter structure. I get paralyzed and I have no other choice but to behave appropriately. This is what I’ve been doing all my life and no matter where I go I can’t escape it. I feel so powerless, being stuck in middle of something I don’t wanna be a part of. I don’t like things that make me predictable, I hate predictable behavior and most of all I hate when a thing makes me behave predictably. It makes me angry, mostly angry at myself because I cannot control my own predictability. It makes me feel helpless, it makes me feel like I don’t have a sense of self. I don’t think I have anything else to write tonight so I’m probably gonna go to bed now.

Entry: 9

Date: 09/22/2210

Subject: Relieved

My last entry sounds a little weird and crazy. I can’t believe I wrote that, I was probably under a lot of stress. Anyway I am happy, because today I found out that I am not discharged from military service. But I will be punished and I will have to clean toilets for a month.

Entry: 10

Date: 10/06/2210

Subject: I shouldn’t be writing about this.

We were recently told that some complications have occurred in the last few months, the planet appears to be inhabited by a highly intelligent and malicious organism which we cannot establish communications with. Some of our analysts and researchers believe these beings have some form of a hive mind, which allows them to act in very organized and cooperative ways. It’s as if every member is just a component or an extension of a greater organism. None of us have an idea of how such a thing could be, but all evidence points to some kind of a communication network between these organisms which is not apparent to us. Sargent Bayer told me that this subject is confidential and no one on earth is supposed to know about it. Our communications with earth will be stringently monitored.

Entry: 11

Date: 10/12/2210

Subject: First time out.

We were finally allowed to exit the barracks. We were surrounded by a bright orange wasteland, of rock, gravel and sand. There were a multitude of barracks, everywhere, as far as I could see. Thousands of armed soldiers surrounded us. Armored tanks and vehicles grinded the rock underneath, it was then that I realized that we were preparing for war.

Entry: 12

Date: 11/02/2210

Subject: Bored

We have been at our post for a week now. We were assigned to patrol and protect this region which consists of a lush forest. There are trees much like earth, except they are much bigger on average, there are all kinds of funny looking vegetation and plants which I can’t begin to identify and there are even more interesting animals. Things that resemble featherless, fluorescent birds, fly overhead, glowing in the night. They emit a strange shrill echo. There are these big animals that look like a strange mix between a sloth and a buffalo. It is quite large, larger than an elephant and it scared the s**t out of me until I found out they are practically harmless and dumb animals. They eat tree leaves, however it’s good to step aside when they walk by. They ignorantly trample all kinds of things. There are thousands of other critters and insects which I am not gonna bother writing about, but overall it’s a magnificent sight. But these sights can only keep you entertained for so long, like I said, we’ve been here for about a week and we practically haven’t seen any action. I seem to be the only one who is eager to shoot these guns at something, everyone else seems content just camping and hanging around in this wilderness. There was one interesting occurence. I was watching one of those large, sloth like, animals eating, when something emerged from the bushes. It was disgusting, I can’t really describe it but the best description I can conjure up is that it looks something like a human sized maggot with multiple legs. It crawled very fast and a large, curved tooth suddenly sprung from its head. It pounced on the large brute and sunk that tooth into it’s leg. The brute growled an earth shattering roar, and smashed the thing with it’s massive limb and sent it flying away. The large animal stumbled afterwards and it suddenly collapsed sending tremors through the earth like a falling tree. It was on the ground, it was breathing, I saw it’s chest move, but it was paralyzed. The large maggot came crawling back and from beneath it’s pale fleshy folds, a wide mouth opened with many pointy teeth. It slowly began eating the helpless brute. It was the most revolting thing I had ever seen, it was slowly tearing and chewing away flesh. The big brute was just lying there helplessly, he couldn’t do anything and this display of weakness sickened me. It was incredibly cruel. Without thinking I began shooting the slicer rifle at the big maggot. In as matter of seconds I shredded that thing and covered the forest with yellow puss. The big brute was still lying there breathing heavily and I aimed my gun at him. I had this overwhelming urge, to put several blades through it’s skull when I suddenly realized what I was doing and I dropped the gun. What the hell am I doing? I thought, I’m not a damn psychopath. No, I’m definitely not a psychopath. I didn’t like the cruel display evolving before my eyes, that’s all. So you could say I killed this disgusting thing because I had a moral purpose of a sort, even a somewhat aesthetic purpose. I didn’t mind these big dumb animals, I kind of grew accustomed to them. They even remind me of the animals back on earth. But this slimy thing which emerged out of nowhere looked so alien and revolting, I didn’t mind killing it. So I can validate my killing from this moral and aesthetic perspective, but there was more. I derived real pleasure from killing and that kind of worried me.

Entry 13

Date: 11/23/2210

Subject: Poker game

It’s been three weeks, three weeks and none of us have seen anything. One night Gary, Erik, Williams, Aron and I were keeping watch. We were playing poker with small rocks and pebbles because there was nothing else we could really do.

Gary was assigned squad leader and he kept trying to tell us what we were gonna do next, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and weeks ahead. We were all sick and tired of his bullshit, except for Erik, he seemed to have unflinching loyalty.

Williams eventually interrupted, “Why are you telling us all this?”

Gary answered, “Because it is my duty as squad leader.”

“Man, it’s gonna be the same bullshit, tomorrow, next week, next month. Why are you even thinking about this? Why are you wasting our time?”

“Private, we are on a serious mission and…”

“Shut the f**k up! Uhh private we’re on a serious mission here….” Williams was imitating and mocking him.

“No respect, you guys have no respect for your squad leader!” He yelled at us.

Aron added, “That’s because respect is earned. Talk to us about respect once you earn an actual badge.”

I changed the subject, “Anyway, anyone know where these things came from. I mean we have a general description of what they look like but not much beyond that. What are they? Why are they so aggressive?”

Gary answered, “I wish we knew.”

“Apparently they look like black, bipedal insects and they are nocturnal creatures. Did you know that squad leader?” Aron looked at Gary.

Gary sighed. “No.”

Aron continued looking at him with his typical smug expression, that expression which says ‘that’s right, I know a random stupid fact and you don’t.’

“I just wanna tear into them.” I replied.

“And what makes you think you can hit one of them? Do you know how fast they move?” Aron asked me than he added. “Fast and synchronized.”

I sighed. “No I don’t know how fast they move Aron, but I would love to hear you lecture me on that.”

“Who cares how fast they move or if they come out at night. There’s no way out, we in this, they not gonna let us go back. It is what it is. So we either screwed or not screwed.” Williams was getting annoyed with us and I know he used one of my all time most irritating cliché statements just to annoy me ‘It is what it is.’

“Yeah but I got a plan, I’m gonna get my body cloned back on earth. They are gonna reanimate my body and bring me back to life. I already registered for the procedure.”

“You know how expensive that procedure is?” Gary asked Aron.

“They gonna resurrect your broke a*s. Then what?” Williams asked Aron

Aron replied “I don’t care, better be broke than dead at least I’m gonna have a second chance.”

Williams spoke to me. “What about you? Mommy and daddy gonna pay for your procedure?”

“I don’t know, I don’t care,” I replied.

Williams laughed at me, “Damn, trust fund baby, I got no idea what you’re doing down here.”

Entry: 14

Date: 12/05/2210

Subject: Dangerous encounter

I was pissing in the bushes when I heard branches cracking. I quickly zipped up and drew my plasma rifle. The light on my rifle blazed in the forest. I scoured the dark, things were uncomfortably silent. An instinct told me that a predator was waiting for me out in the dark and I could feel the blood pumping in my head. I caught a glimpse of two crimson lights. I quickly aimed my rifle and fired. But I didn’t hit my target, the red eyes disappeared and I heard the shuffling and breaking of branches above. Leaves and branches suddenly rained on me. I was knocked senseless and crushed by something massive. When I gathered myself I realized I was lying beneath a gigantic tree. The force field generated by my suit was the only thing keeping the massive trunk from completely crushing my bones and organs. I tried moving but I was stuck. An inhuman rattling sound came from above and I quickly looked up. It was crouching on the trunk above me, bipedal and insectlike, it’s eyes burning red. A pair of yellow fangs dropped. I screamed and it was instantly gone. Then I heard Erik, Gary and Williams calling my name. They were approaching, I yelled at them.

“Get away! It’s gonna come after you!” Then I heard shouting and firing guns.

“What the f**k is that!?” I heard Erik.

I stretched my head backwards and saw them approach me.

“Go, get away from here!” I yelled at them.

“Shut the f**k up! We’re trying to save you!” Gary yelled at me. He turned back at the other two. “Alright guys, shoot!” The tree was suddenly incinerated from either side, which left me lying underneath a 3 meter log. “Now push!” Gary yelled. All three pushed the log and managed to roll it off me. I instantly got up and snatched my rifle.

“We need back up!” I yelled at them.

A dark shadow suddenly dropped on Erik. He squirmed in it’s grip but there wasn’t much he could do, it grabbed his helmet and twisted his neck almost 180, leaving his head grotesquely disfigured and his entire body limp. We watched in horror as it tore his helmet off and sunk those fangs into his neck, like a horrible vampiric insect. We shot at it but our rifles sent Erik’s body flying into the dark somewhere. And our target was gone.

I broke into cold sweat and I could sense the fear all around us. All of us were terrified, at the verge of completely breaking down and running away. Yet it was a miracle that we somehow managed to stay collected. I heard the fear in Gary’s voice, he was stuttering, I didn’t understand what he was trying to say.

Then I heard a high pitched scream. I turned and saw Williams, it was right in front of him and it seemed to spit a noxious spray in his face. Then it instantly turned and jumped at me. It happened way too fast and I could hardly comprehend what was going on. I heard rifles firing. The black bulk smashed into me and we rolled on the ground. I tumbled and realized there was a crimson spray flying all around me. Something slammed me from behind and I stopped. I got up and I realized I was splattered with blood. The alien thing was few feet ahead of me, lying motionless. I turned and realized I had tumbled into a tree, then I looked back and saw Gary, he was kneeling beside Williams. I walked up to them.

“What happened?” I asked him.

“It turned and jumped at you and Williams shot it.”

“And what happened to Williams?”

“As soon as he shot it, he screamed, it was a very painful scream. Then he fell holding his back and eventually he passed out.”

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know.”

Entry 15

Date: 12/25/2210

Subject: Alien physiology

Sargent Bayer told us that we were lucky that we encountered one, they usually travel in packs and once there are two of them the danger is significantly amplified because of their coordinated attack. Williams suffered from something that was common after fighting these things. Many soldiers noticed that once people get sprayed they either die from some kind of shock or if they survive, they appear to suffer traumatic dementia. No one could explain why this was the case but once we brought the thing and dissected it we eventually found something very interesting. There are nerves in the human body composed of mirror neurons which allow us to infer what others might be thinking and feeling from their actions. It’s also one of the reasons why we can empathize with others. It is confirmed that once we observe someone in pain, our mirror neurons stimulate pain receptors to fire as if we are similarly feeling their pain. However higher cognitive regions inhibit us from literally feeling pain in those moments. The toxin in the spray inhibits these higher cognitive regions in such a way that our mirror neurons are overtly stimulated and we start feeling the pain of other people and things. Because Williams was poisoned with this toxin, when he shot the alien in the back, he witnessed the pain he caused. His neural pathways for pain got highly excited. This excitation sent a devastating shock through his nervous system. It also explains why most of our soldiers die or end up traumatized once they’ve been poisoned. They witness someone getting killed and their nervous system responds in an uninhibited manner. These aliens have strange neural connections that are rich in mirror neurons. Their mirror neurons are much more highly developed than ours. It could explain their bizarre hive mind behavior. One alien could simply predict what the other is about to do purely by observing the other’s actions. In a sense they could be able to read each other’s minds from each other’s behaviors, which is frightening. What is even more frightening is that they could possibly predict what we are about to do from simply observing our behaviors and that could be one of the reasons why our soldiers have a hard time shooting them.

Entry 16

Date: 04/19/2211

Subject: Dan is a f*****g twat! I can’t stand him!

I was sitting with Dan outside our tent at night. We were drinking whiskey.

“So what are you gonna do. You are just eager to shoot those fuckers down, you just wanna nail them so you can be the next trigger happy American hero right!” He was blatantly drunk and sarcastic.

“Nah, I’m not looking for trouble.” I answered calmly.

“No you are looking for a lot more than that aren’t you? You are looking for power, real power! Am I right?” He passed the bottle to me.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” I poured myself a glass.

“Why did you come here?”

“So I can get away from earth.”

“You can’t stand earth? Why is that?”

“It feels like a prison.”

“And what does this, right here, feel like? This is your escape? Open your goddamn eyes you’re in the military. Your individuality is dead here, your freedom to choose doesn’t mean anything here. You are in a disciplinarian s**t hole, how can this be your escape? This is not your escape from earth. You are punishing yourself!”

“Whatever, and why are you here if you hate it so much?” I asked him.

“Because I am a self loathing b*****d. You think I wanna be here? You damn well know both of us don’t wanna be here. But when you get me back on earth I am an individual and you know how being an individual feels right? You know the feeling don’t you? Alone, insignificant, helpless…ring a bell?”

The conversation made me feel slightly uncomfortable and he could sense it.

“Don’t worry, our despair will come to an end.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked him.

“The insect vampires, they are gonna come after us, egoists.”

“Let them come, I will kill them all.”

He laughed at me. “You are really clueless aren’t you? You see that’s that anger talking inside you, that frustration that drives you to kill because you can’t stand yourself. They are much more sophisticated than that, that is why they will beat us in the game of natural selection because they already evolved above our egotistical drives. There are rumors that our exploration teams found old ruins, the likes of what only an intelligent and advanced civilization could have built. But all they found were ruins, you know why?”

“No.”

“Because of them.”

“You don’t know that and these are just rumors.”

“Oh no, but I have that gut feeling and my gut doesn’t lie often. It often tells me things, things that come to pass. Do you see how they move? They cooperate, they are a single mind, unhindered by bullshit notions like individuality and freedom, they are one. They are the ultimate military power, the ultimate organization of organisms and no matter what we do we cannot beat them at their own game. We are helpless humans, looking for power and at the same time striving to be the power. I am powerful!!” He yelled in the night, then he turned to me and I smelled his warm, whiskey intoxicated breath. “You see the contradiction in that sentence, it is that ‘I’, that I is completely irrelevant to power because it is helpless and insignificant. But for them it is meaningless, it doesn’t exist!”

“I heard enough!” I got up and left for the tent.

He laughed and yelled behind me. “Why are you running from the truth comrade! You are doing it all wrong, you drink until the truth doesn’t hurt anymore!”

Entry: 17

Date: 07/03/2213

Subject: No Subject

We marched for 5 days in the scorching heat. The ground beneath our feet was cracked and dry, the hills surrounding us were red and orange, like enormous mounds of clay dotted with extensive networks of caves. Everything was still in the red, burning sun. I turned back to Sargent Bayer and asked him.

“Where are we, are we inside yet.”

“We should be right in the middle of their hive.” Sargent answered

“Maybe we should pull out.”

“Why? There is no reason to pull out. Our radars have not detected anything.”

My helmet and suit kept me cool under these unbearable conditions but I was still flushed and sweat trickled down my back. It had nothing to do with the heat, this was my own body responding to some unacknowledged instinct or impulse. I had a very bad feeling about being here.

The soldiers around us were laughing and joking. No one seemed to care, but for some reason I wanted to get out of here. And when it happened it all happened so fast.

“Look!” I grabbed Sargent Bayer and spun him around.

They exploded from the surrounding caves and poured over us in an impenetrable cloud of black, glistening bodies. The swarm rattled, piercing our ears as they descended down the hills. I heard an explosion, and it sent me flying off. My ears rang and everything was suddenly shrouded in thick white smog. I heard rifles and saw blinding flashes of light. Something flew at me, I quickly dodged it and turned to see the broken body of a lifeless soldier on the ground. Through the thick cloud I saw it’s glowing eyes, and I saw traces of it’s bloodied fangs. I instantly fired, it’s head exploded like a crimson fountain. The black, headless body dropped on the ground, twitching sporadically. I instantly started running up the hills. I could hear yelling and screaming, I spared a backward glance and I saw the thick white smog which covered the pass below. The barren hills stretched in all directions. I watched as they emerged from the caves across the pass, they poured down crawling over each other. The colony shifted and changed. It diverged and converged, shifting faster than thought.

My feet felt weak, and I was about to turn and run but some inner burst of courage drove me to instantly change my mind and charge into their midst. I ran back down into the smog firing my rifle at the black bodies. Their groups moved, dodging my rifle fire. The ensemble knew when I would shoot, it knew how to move and it knew what I was thinking. Streams of plasma fire rained down in blinding, scorching light. The swarm convoluted out of the way. They dispersed and reformed, they moved as flawlessly as a black flood, drowning out our troops. Sickness and frustration welled up inside me when I realized I could not isolate individual targets, they became indistinguishable from the swarm. I could hardly comprehend where I was shooting.

I turned and ran up the hills again, but I realized there was no where to go. They were everywhere and they stood all around me. I dropped my rifle and I realized that my underwear was slowly becoming moist. I waited for them to jump on me and overwhelm me. I looked at them.

“Come on!” I yelled.

But for some reason they spared me. I really wish they just killed me and put me out of this miserable, pathetic condition but they were not kind enough to do that. Instead they proceeded to feed and drain our dead of the precious blood they had remaining. From the hill top I saw them tear away at our soldiers, I saw them sinking their fangs and draining them of their blood. I was accompanied by several dozen soldiers who were spared and disarmed like myself. I caught a glimpse of something bigger, which suddenly emerged from the cavern across. I only saw a small part of it, but it was huge and revolting. There was a large, dripping probiscus which lashed out of the shadows and it slowly began to emerge into the light. I instantly turned and ran as fast as I could from the forsaken place. Most of us were eventually rescued. Some of our men are still missing in the hills. After a few days of psychiatric therapy I am beginning to feel better. I am able to come to terms with the reality of my situation. But I’ve been feeling depressed and miserable, there hasn’t been a day where I would not think about taking myself out. I have the same recurring nightmare over and over. It is that moment when I was surrounded by them and I felt helpless and weak in their presence. I was alone and insignificant.

Entry 18

Date: 07/23/2213

Subject: No Subject

I’ve been obsessively thinking about getting back at these things. I could not attempt to recollect those events, they filled me with anger and despair. I could not believe that I was forced to watch them feed on my dead friends and brothers. I’m angry, but I’m also helpless. I can’t think of a way to get back at them. I’ve never seen them come at us in such large groups and I’ve never seen such agility within their groups. If you shoot at a group of us, you are bound to hit a few of those who were unfortunate enough. Not with these things. All of them dodge and move in a synchronized manner. As Dan mentioned, they are not individuals, they are egoless insects that unquestionably comply with the colony. They might have spared me because they sensed my fear and helplessness. They knew that I would be devastated and that I would report what happened to me and crush everybody’s morale. And now I’m beginning to wonder and I am asking myself what is happening here? I’m told that we cannot establish intelligent communication with these things but they appear to be intelligent and they appear to understand us a lot better than we understand ourselves. I think they could probably communicate with us in a far more complex way than we can ever imagine, they just refuse to. It’s almost as if they can sense our motives and they are attempting to push us out of this planet. They are aggressively out competing us for survival.

Entry: 19

Date: 08/13/2213

Subject: No Subject

I’ve had reoccurring neurotic episodes at night and thoughts about hypnosis and mind control. I can’t imagine how it would feel. I can’t imagine someone hijacking my mind and controlling me. It terrifies me to think about it and I break into cold sweat. My whole identity, completely obliterated. Does someone just hijack your mind and control it as a puppet? Or does someone else’s mind enter your body while your mind completely vanishes? Most of all what happens when you enter someone else’s mind, I don’t believe that is possible because then you completely lose yourself and you become that other mind or does that other mind become you? It’s like you become dissolved or absorbed into another mind.

Entry: 20

Date: 01/10/2216

Subject: Nostalgia

It’s been a while since I’ve written but tonight I’ve been reading over my old entries and I was overcome with nostalgia. It’s been raining for days. We are exhausted and making our way through muddy jungles. When we could rest under the cover of dense forest we took the opportunity right away, I also had the opportunity to talk to Dan these days. I’ve slowly become friends with him. At first he annoyed me but now I felt a kind of kinship with him. Almost everyone else that joined me in basic training has either passed away, fled or has been sent for psychiatric evaluation. Aron has completely disappeared without a trace. We are not sure what happened to him or where he is but I haven’t seen him in over a year. This war is taking an enormous toll on all of us. Rebel groups are beginning to form. They are separating from us, forming their own clans and camps. Attacking us with our own weapons, they are called terrorists by our regime. But most are soldiers like us, who disagree with this senseless war. A few are also groups of soldiers who became possessed by insanity and began preaching strange and violent ideologies. By now we all knew that our government was here to claim resources and open doors for various national and international corporate interests. Most of the soldiers here don’t share any of those interests and to them this is a pointless war. The rebels are saying that the war is promoted by a propaganda which tells us that we are running out of resources on our home planet. Most rebel groups have formed federated alliances and they sell their own propaganda, they tell us that our home planet is indeed in some form of crisis and that in order to get rid of this crisis there needs to be an entire revolution in the political and economic structures on Earth. A revolution which will be the end of consumerist culture, a revolution that would take away property and power from the wealthy and give it back to the people. The government seeks to preserve the power structures and status of the traditional elites and this is why this war is perpetuated. It is perpetuated at the expanse of human lives, in a fruitless search for resources. I don’t know who to believe and I don’t care, I didn’t see myself as a revolutionary. I am very passive in these matters but I’m slowly growing exhausted of this place. Dan was also a lot like me, he was also very passive and cynical. Anyway like I said, I finally had the opportunity to talk to him, while we were resting and our boots were caked in mud.

“So tomorrow we’re entering terrorist camp. Are you ready to shoot your former comrades?” I asked him.

“Are we gonna be shooting at the reasonable terrorists or the bat s**t crazy terrorists?” He slowly turned his head which was propped up against a boulder to face me. Water dripped from the visor of his helmet.

“Bat s**t crazy terrorists. I thought it didn’t make a difference to you, who we were shooting at….” I answered.

“Well I should confess, it breaks my heart every time I shoot at a reasonable terrorist. I feel like I’m siding with that same absurd force that always seems to f**k me over in life.”

“Well you know, what’s reasonable to us might not be reasonable to our government. If ending the war was reasonable to them they would end it.”

“I think our government might be more desperate than reasonable at this point. I have sympathy for reasonable people.” He was caressing his rifle. “But at the end of the day I would rather blow s**t up. It doesn’t make a difference to me anymore.”

“Anymore? What do you mean? You actually used to care about things?”

“Back when I was a teenager. I was interested in the French revolution and the whole libertarian philosophy. I was reading about all these free societies. These were communities that existed without government or authority. I was fascinated by that, a totally free society, without coercsion. For me, this was the essence of freedom, not the patriotic rhetoric I was thaught at school. I used to be involved in a lot of protests. But as the years went by I became more and more jaded by the whole libertarian ideal. I realized something about these societies, they never lasted. Whether you look at the communes in France or the anarcho-syndicalists in Spain, none of those societies endured.”

“So now you are just a self loathing nihilist?”

“Pretty much.”

“So what made you give up on your cause?”

“If you look at these societies, you realize they are not organized. A foreign military power can instantly dominate them or stomp them out. The key to power is organization. Freedom is like a stumbling alcoholic, it is vague, loose and disorganized. Power on the other hand is organized, complacent and bureaucratic. If you want freedom you can go out there and take it for yourself, be my guest, join these federated rebellions. But they won’t last against our organized military, because organization and complacency is the essence of power. Why fight for freedom when you will never have it?”

“Well I agree with you to some extent. No ideal can be fully realized, but we can at least work towards…...”

He interrupted me. “The ideal is bullshit, it is the ideal of a primitive mind. A human mind, just like our clans and rebels won’t last against an organized military, our organized military will not last against these insects. Look at us, it’s been only a few years and we are already falling apart into clans and tribes. Look at them, they are the next step in evolution. Complacent machines, that cooperate and think with a single intent.”

“Sometimes I forget whose side you are on.”

“Well I prefer not to take sides, I’m just giving you my predictions, based on facts. Facts don’t take sides or cling to ideologies.”

Entry 21

Date: 01/11/2216

Subject: No Subject

I woke up in the middle of chaos and turmoil. The crimson, morning sun burned against a shadow which stood over me. I realized that I couldn’t act or move. I was snared in a net. For a second I thought I was having a terrible dream. The thing that stood over me was human, but it’s eyes were lifeless with a blue incandescent glow. It’s mouth was a mechanical contraption of metal teeth. It might have been human once but now it was something much more aberrant and alien than that. It lifted my snared body like it was a sack of potatoes and it carried me away, across the fields. I looked around, the place was littered with the bodies of my comrades. Black smoke bellowed from the plain, and those that were not dead were snared and carried away like myself. The cyborgs had incredible strength and stamina, they walked for what seemed like hours, carrying our snared bodies without tiring, while I was growing thirsty and hungry. My body was compressed in the net and my muscles and joints ached. My eyelids felt heavy and I slowly drifted into semi-consciousness, I don’t know how long I was out but when I came too we were somewhere dark. I could not recount any previous events and the passage of time was meaningless in these dark corridors.

I heard the humming of computers. I saw flickering lights off in the distance. Lifeless blue light eminated from cryogenic capsules where human torsos and other dismembered parts were frozen. In the darkness I saw sparks of light, and in those sporadic moments, the luminescence revealed mechanical arms which assembled various parts, welding together metal and flesh, steel and bone. I looked away, and remained calm, trying to control the rising nausea. We were brought to a lit, domed room where we were cut loose.

A large sculpture towered over us, it must’ve been over a dozen meters. It was discretely constructed from multicolored cubes. These cubes were not in perfect alignment or symmetry, they were sticking out everywhere and distributed in odd ways to make a chaotic sculpture of vibrant colors. From some perspectives the sculpture vaguely resembled the human form. But that form was never stable, it completely changed with the slightest shift in perspective. The colors and the sculpture were beautiful but with each glance it provoked a rising sense of uneasiness and anxiety, with each glance it’s colors, symmetry and resolution changed. It becomes incredibly hard to keep looking at it. It slowly becomes a form of torture, because the mind likes stability and definition. It likes to see stable objects.

I turned my back to the sculpture crawling away on my hands and knees. I looked around, the cyborgs were all around us, their rotating limbs and extensions were aimed at us and I knew I had to stand still. They were once human and they are built from our technology, but their programs and inner workings now had a life of their own. We were not dealing with humans, we were dealing with computers. Any motion we made could be interpreted and misinterpreted by the program. They were once like us, and they fancied themselves to be the technological prophets of the new age. Their god was a massive and super intelligent computer, their heaven was a virtual reality where human enhancement was limitless. Their humanity was forever lost in that transition, from earth to heaven, from human to immortal.

They parted and a man in a hooded robe approached us. His face was wrapped and masked with a scarf, only his eyes were visible and they pulsed with an inner light. When he approached us the light could be distinguished as faint strings of strange code which rapidly flashed across his eyes. He pulled the scarf down and we recognized his face in silent astonishment. It was Aron, my eyes felt moist, almost at the verge of tears.

He looked at us and spoke. “Hello old friends.”

He remembered us. “Aron what have they done to you?” I asked him.

He smiled. “They have helped me.”

“Helped you? How?”

“In ways you cannot even begin to imagine. But you must be hungry and tired, you may rest here.”

“Aron. What is the meaning of all this? Where are we? What happened to you?”

“I’ve enhanced myself old friend. I’ve become stronger, faster, smarter and better in every aspect. Look at me, you can join me.”

“No, no…this is not normal Aron. We have to leave this place.”

“Leave? No one is leaving this place. This is your home now, you must join us. Do you really wanna refuse this? We offer you immortality, we offer to assimilate you into a network that will span limitless virtual space, where your mind can roam freely for eons. Do you see what this place offers? It offers enhancement which will surpass all mortal limitations. Remember how I used to wear glasses? Well now I have new eyes, they have a thousand times sharper vision than before.”

“I am not joining you Aron….If you have any shred of respect and compassion left for us you will let us leave this place.”

“I cannot do that, it is not part of the protocol. I am here to help you. If you decide to die, then you have determined your own fate.”

The code pulsed and scrolled across his eyes, glowing from his shadowed, hooded face like a surreal ghost from a distant, haunting memory.

“Are you going to join us?” He asked me again.

“No.” I answered.

“I am sad to hear that old friend.” He turned and walked away as we were snatched by the machines. The other prisoners were carried away with us and I was completely speechless and baffled. The shock and terror paralyzed me. I was nothing more than a soft fleshy heap to these machines. Their cold and hard grip compressed my muscles and bones. I felt fragile in their mechanical hold. With a little more effort I felt like they could easily snap my limbs apart. I was thrown in a cold dark cell with others. I don’t know how long I was there, but with each grueling moment I anticipated my end. Until we were rescued as their hide out was attacked and infilterated.

Entry: 22

Date: 01/15/2216

Subject: Aron

I almost wish I found Aron dead as opposed to how I found him. The Aron I knew would never let his friends die like that. The Aron I knew cursed at the computer when the computer didn’t work the way he wanted to, he wasn’t fully assimilated with the computer. The Aron I knew used the computer as a tool and he used the programmed protocol to serve his purpose, he wasn’t subservient to the computer or the protocol. I wonder where in that assimilation, from Aron to computer, Aron lost himself. Was it when he acquired his new eyes or when a piece of his brain circuit was replaced with a motherboard? Was it when two pieces of his brain circuit were replaced with motherboards? I’m sure the transition was gradual, I’m just wondering when did my friend die and when did the computer take over.

Entry: 22

Date: 01/18/2216

Subject: No Subject

It appears that I’ve contracted a disease these past few days. I am in quarantine and bed ridden with some of the other soldiers. I’ve spent my days conversing with the doctors and some of the nurses. I feel very weak. I can’t even get out of bed and walk.

Entry: 23

Date: 01/25/2216

Subject: No Subject

My body is attempting to fight the disease. But I am still bed ridden and weak. The doctors told me that I might slip into a coma soon. The prognosis for my illness is bleak. It’s likely that I’m not gonna make it. I talked to my mom and dad, they immediately agreed to pay for the human replication procedure. The bad news is that I’m probably going to die. The good news is that I’m gonna be resurrected again, in a new body, identical to my own. I don’t know how much longer I can stay like this. Even if I survive I might end up a vegetable and that’s no way to live. I think I will like my new body very much because this one is wasted and used up. I don’t care about this war or the regime, I wanna get away from all this. This whole time I’ve been forced to do what was expected of me, first with my parents, then with the military. All of it was s**t, I never had a sense of self. What better place to begin a fresh start then with a new body?

END OF TRAVEL LOG

This is where our protagonist’s travel log ends because if the travel log continued here, there would be a contradiction of a sort, a contradiction from which our protagonist is utterly terrified. Our protagonist’s senseless journey for freedom and individuality ends here, with his death. For he cannot talk about himself anymore, there is no “I” for him from this moment onward. But while he still possessed his “I” he was very much obsessed with it, wallowing in his own solipsism and narcissism, anxiously contemplating subjects like mind control and losing his mind. Here is what happened next:

The protagonist’s original body was lying on an operating bed, next to his clone, preserved by a cold translucent layer of gel which slowly melted away.

The Doctor closely monitored the computer screen which recorded the vital signs.

“Is the body waking up?” The Second Doctor asked, confused by the other’s prolonged fascination with the computer screen.

“It appears both bodies are waking up.” The Doctor answered.

“That’s impossible!” The Second Doctor rushed to look at the screen.

Both bodies began moving on the operating bed. The two doctors looked at the bodies in silent, startled confusion. The clone opened his eyes and he slowly sat upright on the operating bed.

“Where am I?” The clone asked the two doctors as the protagonist’s original body blinked it’s eyes open.

“Which one’s the boy?” One of the doctors muttered in astonishment.