A Unique Understanding

The warrior met the cold gaze of his reflection impassively; the harsh, fluorescent lighting washing out his already pale skin, his dark eye-sockets giving him a deathly countenance.



     He eyed the jagged scar that ran from one corner of his mouth up his cheek – a twisted parody of a smile and an ‘adjustment’ that he insisted on having applied to his clones. He ran his finger along it, remembering the cause. Remembering when he was mortal.

     When he was real.

     His eyes drifted to a flickering digital image; a young man in a Federal Navy Academy cadet’s uniform flanked by an older man and woman. They were all smiling.

     He couldn't remember why.

     The light became suddenly intrusive, became intolerable. He picked up his combat goggles and slid them over his shaved head. Blessed gloom descended, obscuring the figure in the mirror; a figure lean and hard, dressed in black, a strange device crudely emblazoned on a flight vest – a bird of prey and a lightning bolt.

     The human mind was ill equipped for immortality. Death should be the end – a final trial before peaceful oblivion. Except the warrior could remember his death; could remember all of them. There was no peace, no oblivion, just the now familiar impression of a fleeting moment of agony followed by a slow awakening in a clone vat.

     Rinse.

     Repeat.

     How had it come to this? He stretched his cybernetically enhanced mind back through the long ages, generations past, the dust from the bones of his original body long since gone and childhood and innocence nothing but abstracts.

     He sighed.

     Immortality afforded a unique understanding.

     Nothing mattered.


-Nogusha.