Chapter 3 – Routine

It was the same old routine. Shoot them all down, and shoot them all down i did! I asked myself why i was shooting them all down. I couldn’t come up with an answer but somehow i was still satisfied by that. Wich made me even more thoughtful.

We were at Jupiter now, one of the beasts last resources. They had started creating experimental weaponry here using the poinsonous gases in the atmosphere. They were quickly evolving from uncivilized beasts to smarter creatures, now with the ability to make bombs more powerful than the halfatom bomb we used. They were not even using machines to create their weapons, they used their hands. To split the atoms in 13 parts and to cut metal plates from solid rock. We had recieved the message from the control a couple of hours ago to immediatly put a stop to their production before they had a chance to attack us, and so here we were doing just that. We were low on ammunition and we were low on troops, but this was our mission and it was something we must do.

Another one of the plasma cannons exploded, the reactor hit by a metal arrow. The beasts certainly were becomeing more and more civilized, and i didn’t like it. They weren’t as ugly anymore either, they now wore strange looking clothes made in a strange soft material that didn’t even repell bullets. They were also organizing their attacks more and more and attacked in waves and groups instead of alone and instinctivly. When i stopped shooting i noticed the silence, there were no beasts infront of me. I looked around, there was a beast to the left, i faced it and prepared to shoot when suddenly a beast jumped from behind me and shoved me over the edge we were standing by. I grabbed hold of it and we tumbled down the steep mountain. I tried to make out what the bottom looked like, but i was spinning around quickly and i couldn’t concentrate. The motion made me feel dizzy and i think i lost consiousness for a little while, but then we reached the bottom. The beast hit the surface first and i landed ontop of him, crushing most bones in his body and my heavy chaingun breaking his neck. I slowly stood up, feeling faint, i stumpled around through the debris and dead bodies until i eventually passed out.

The beasts gathered around me. Blocking the bright sunlight, covering me in complete darkness. One of them stepped forward. He was bigger than the rest. They were all big, way bigger than me, almost twice my size. This monster was three times as tall as me. It seemed he was thier leader. He stared at me. They all stared at me. Ugly. Ugly. I looked into their eyes, their evil red eyes.

Then i saw something, something i had never seen before, or maybe i had just ignored it, i saw sadness. Suddenly i realized that i had never thought about anything from their perspective. All this time i had been fighting for Control. I had been selfish. My country had been selfish, or was it even my country? I couldnt remember them ever doing anything for me. Never complimenting me for what i had achieved, never praising me, never even raising an eyebrow, never even looking my way. They had been using me, giving me orders, telling me to kill monsters, telling me they were monsters that i was killing, brainwashing me. Had i never even thought about the saying “its the inside that matters”. I didnt even want to think about what these monsters looked like inside. It was ugliness once again. I fought against the ugliness, i tried to think in a different way from what i had been ordered to, it was hard, i had never though this way before. I realized i knew nothing of them. I didnt know who they were, what they wanted or why. All i knew was what i had been told by the control.

5 years of hard training, 5 years of brainwashing. I understood. The leader smiled. He turned around and walked away, as if he had understood that i finally understood. I wondered what he was thinking … and all the other beasts followed him. He didnt look that ugly now. I wondered how they though humans looked like, we were probably just as ugly to them as they were to us. Were they even the ones who had started to attack us? This reminded me of something i had read about in history. About when the British first came to America. When the Native americans, their considered savage indians welcomed them with open arms, and they shot them down with closed hearts.

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