Thrust Vector - Log 8: Our War
Underneath the blue sky, he wakes. Atop the waves of an endless field of wild grass and unshifting earth, Alek Markov stares into nothing. The wind blows through the pilot as his fatigues gather the cool air, and petals of the infinite white flower gather together at the base of his fallen frame.
In the undiscovered country of the mind itself, there was an attempted creation of peace. A hollow shell of what could be considered humanity. And for one horrible second, it was almost real.
“You’ve finally slept at a decent hour.” She notes.
Alek blinks out the world from his eyes as he stares into the distant blue sky dotted with clouds. “Is it that uncommon?”
“It is.” She honestly answers. “In fact, I think it's the first time you’ve slept before morning since Block Nine.”
Alek stops. “I did sleep at a decent hour in Block Nine.”
“You did before me, of course.” She teases.
He sits up, finding himself next to her sitting frame. Today, her expression was different. A sad smile was pressed against pale white features as she stares at Alek.
With nothing between them, she says the words in their mind.
“You’re going to War.” Her voice echoes quietly.
Alek tries to say something, but nothing arrives. In his own world, the Pilot was lost over a single spoken item.
“You know, it’s a different feeling knowing.” She says. “I thought that it would be better, to actually see it coming. But…”
“It’s even worse.” He finishes.
She smiles, a tragic half moon that stretches across her pale face.
“We’re going against the Covenant.” He continues. “I don’t think… ”
She glares at him, an expression that shocks Alek to his core. “Don’t lie to me. Not now, and not like this.”
He blinks, within his eyes the bellowing light of surprise.
The separation between them, bridged by the complete understanding of the world, was divided simply by the perceptions of it.
The god pilot’s mirror was cracked, the invisible breaks within the human mind letting through a sliver of a sick reality.
The pale face of her couldn’t keep such an expression for long, however, and she sighs. “You can’t ever remain alive in the vector. If you do, you won’t come back home. It’s simple.”
There is silence. “I know, Alek.”
“What do you know?”
“You die now so you live later. You choose the longevity of the world over the echoes of some kind of fantasy. You choose life just like any other person would. One day you will live, uninterrupted, and that’s what you’re waiting for.”
Markov stares at her.
“Did I say too much?” She asks with a light smile.
Markov looks at her without expression, a surface level glance within his eyes. “No, no you didn’t.”
She moves her head to stare at a distant sky. “You don’t think you can live until that day, do you?”
Markov feels the grass at his fingers, the unreal sensation echoing throughout a false frame.
Her voice bridges his thoughts. “You keep saying that war shouldn’t be safe, and that it isn’t. But you also insist that you won’t die.”
Alek blinks, his voice quiet. “All Pilots are arrogant you know.”
“Too arrogant.” She replies coldly. “You play your own life like it’s nothing Alek. It’s like you don’t even care if you die or live anymore.”
“Is there any other way?” Alek stops. “You know the truth. You know that we Pilots can’t think otherwise.”
A wind picks up her hair, blending red eyes with the blue of a distant horizon.
The reality hits her again, and she grits her teeth.
“I wish you weren’t a Pilot.” The girl says. “I wish you failed the trials. I wish this never happened, where you had to play your life like it was some game.”
Memories that were of nothing well up, and the blackness of mind rushes into the gaps of the Pilot.
Unreadable images try and surface from a distant past; the child within the falling cherry petals, the face of a military officer, and the sound of a distant raid alarm.
Then it stops.
“Alek?” She asks.
For a second, he tries to speak.
“I feel it too.” She adds. “Something isn’t there.”
“Yeah…” He murmurs.
The girl looks at him, an almost pitiful expression stretched atop a pale face. “I’m curious, if those things are truly important then why would you forget them?”
Alek blinks. “That’s…”
“I’m saying, that if somethings are truly precious, why would you not keep them so close that you would never let them go.”
“You’re trying to tie this back.” Alek observes coldly. “All the way to being alive.”
She stops.
“You really thought you could get that past me didn’t you?” Alek smiles lightly.
“No. I didn’t.” She admits.
The Pilot looks out onto the distant field of grass, no words coming from him. Peace given in the ever changing falsity of the mind somehow having its own allure to a universe bathed in war.
Then, it hits him.
“What do you consider your life?” He asks.
She smiles at him, picking up the bound book from her far side. “What is life really?”
Across the pages, the unreadable words flow. Photos of a distant life ebb from the pages, triggering memories of a time before the nightmares, before the present.
The faces of Werewolf squadron, smiling glances made towards their prodigy, fall into place among strips of precious paper. Photos of children in uniform beginning schooling, distant falling petals of the ancient trees, the broken moon a world away in the sky.
“This is what life is.” She murmurs as she points. “Everything you ever were, together. All combined in the very pattern that is this.”
The dark covers of the material slam shut in a boom, the soul itself shaking. “And this is something we both share. No matter how different we are, no matter how far we run. One of the same.”
Alek blinks.
“It is only when you forget all the things that make you, do you truly die.”
Confusion sets in, and the Pilot can’t respond.
She smiles. “A man starves if he does not eat. No matter how much food surrounds him, he will still die if there is nothing in his stomach.”
“Is that how I…”
“That is how we die Alek.” She finishes. “You lose yourself so far into it the nothingness that you starve. The mind is a system just like any other, fed on whatever is in here.”
She carefully runs her fingers along the covers of the book.
“Do you know what it feels like?” Alek asks after time.
She doesn’t look at him, her red eyes focused towards a distant object far far away as she stares at the book on her lap.
“It hurts.” She answers quietly. “It hurts so much.”
Within the mind something breaks, a flood wall of nothing envelops the brain and the Pilot stares into the abyssal movements of time in aeternium.
“It is necessary, isn’t it?” Alek asks.
“I don’t know.” She admits. “But there are somethings I wish that never could be.”
The wind howls across the field.
“I’ll starve now if I know there is more ahead.” Markov coldly replies. “I am willing to make that sacrifice.”
“Are you willing to make that choice for me?” She stops dead.
The Pilot crashes the world with his words. “You aren’t even real, what does that matter.”
For a second the universe splits, tumbling across the emptiness of the cold void.
“Alek…” She begins softly.
“I’m sorry.” He quickly replies. “I-I…”
“I know…” Her eyes look into his, the blank red irises unmoving in fiction.
Alek looks away, taking a deep breath of air. “I’ll make a promise.”
“A promise?” She tragically smiles.
“In this coming battle, I’ll keep alive.”
Surprise enters her frame, for a moment she is unsure how to answer.
Her light laugh, rare and soft, comes across the field. She stands, handing him the book within her hands. “Alek…”
The wind blows, fluttering bleak white hair against her red eyes. A smile spreads across from her as she clears the strands from her face, her voice in a tragic chuckle. “Don’t ever make a promise that you know you can never fulfill.”
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