By Phillip Berrie
He’d had a life once, a real one.
Through the pain of the mortal wound to his stomach — or perhaps because of it — the ersatz soldier could remember some of what that life had been.
Fragments. Images of people he felt he should know — feel something about. A stern older man. Battered women — two of them, one old and one not. And then there were the memories of people, his enemies… screaming and dying under his own blood-stained hands.
They were not necessarily good memories… But at least he believed they were his.
“I almost got the bastard.”
“Yeah… right,” he groaned sarcastically, turning painfully to look at his fellow casualty. “No way. That was the hero. No way is someone like you going to take them out.”
“And I suppose you could do better?” was the harsh reply followed by some wet coughing that did not sound good at all.
He shrugged and then winced as pain coursed through his body. “I’ve almost given up trying,” he said to no one in particular, once the pain had subsided. “I can’t seem to hit anything anyway.”
“Any idea what they’re doing?” asked another of the fallen. “The hero?”
“No idea. No one tells us nothing,” another bloodied body replied.
“At least we’re not dead,” another voice said, both pain and hope apparent in their voice.
There was silence for a moment before he said, “You must be new.”
“… What do you mean?”
“It’s going to happen again and again and again,” he said, remembering. “Different places. Different times. Same ending… For us.”
“Why?”
“Suitable punishment for the violence of your life,” came a voice that rightfully sounded like it had ascended from the very depths of hell.
-O-
Author’s Note: This story is an attempt to bring some meaning to those nameless characters who die just to increase the body count in video games and action movies.
About the Author
Phillip Berrie
Phill Berrie has had a lifelong love affair with science, speculative fiction and role playing. It was his love of role playing that led him to start writing in the spec-fic genre and his attention to detail (read OCD) that helped him fall into editing.
A life member of the ACT Writers Centre, he is the author of two published speculative fiction novels: The Changeling Detective, an urban fantasy, detective noire story set in and around Canberra, Australia; and Transgressions, a high fantasy tale about life changes, sex changes and petty gods. It is his sincere hope that he can get back to writing both these series as soon as his current magnum opus, an episodic, electronic choose-your-own-adventure story called Choices: And Their Heroes Were Lost(produced by Tin Man Games in Melbourne), is finally completed.
Phill now lives in semi-retirement in Yass, New South Wales. As well as his writing and editing, he commutes to Canberra three days a week to help science teachers teach science in his roles as the digital projects officer and pro tem publications manager for the Australian Science Teachers Association. Despite all his attempts to do otherwise, he has never worked harder in his life and dreams of retiring almost as much as he dreams of the fantastical worlds of his imagination.
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