KRASINSKY'S MONOLOGUE

“KRASINSKY'S MONOLOGUE”

Brooklyn, New York, USA

2180

He holds the rifle as if it were the only part of him still capable of following orders. A bar on the lower levels of the megastructure pulses with neon reflected in the wet floor. Implants along his forearms flash red in a rhythm no one else can hear.

The colonel reaches for the weapon slowly, as one might approach an animal that has already bitten once.

Tears spill before he can stop them.

“Nothing is over! Nothing! You can’t just switch this off in my neural interface! This wasn’t my war! You asked me to fight it—your fucking command, your corporate committees! You sent us to the other side of the galaxy, to those godforsaken frozen moons in the Gliese system! And I did everything I could to win! I held the line when the tactical algorithm gave us a zero percent chance of survival!

“And then I come back to Earth… and what do I find? People on orbital platforms who don’t even know we were dying out there! They think we’re monsters. Corporate cannon fodder! Who the hell are they to judge me, huh? They weren’t in those poisoned trenches. They don’t know what it means to watch your targeting system mark your buddies as ‘asset neutralized’!

“Out there, in the combat zone, we had rules! We had a code! When the AI cut off our support, we watched each other’s backs! One man stood by another! But here, in this civilian world? I come home and all I see are empty faces staring into their holophones! No one will lend a veteran a hand once his credit chip runs dry!

“Up there, in Gliese orbit, I commanded an armoured squad worth MILLIONS of dollars! I had a combat mech under my command, support drones, orbital systems that could turn entire enemy bases to dust with a single click! I controlled technology people on Earth can’t even dream of! And here, after demobilization, what the hell do I have left?! I can’t even get a simple security job watching scanners at the docks because automation wiped out every position! My implants are obsolete. No one wants to service them. The corporation wrung me dry and threw me out onto this filthy pavement!

“I’m looking for the guys from my platoon. I search for them online, and all the system gives me is: ‘Profile inactive. No financial associations.’ They’re either dead or drinking themselves to death in the slums! You think your precious order is safe? You think your Artificial Intelligences, your mighty servers that calculate every second of our lives, will save you from the darkness?! No! They’ll abandon you too, just as they abandoned us at the front! Nothing is over… This war is only coming, and you have no idea what it means to be left alone in the dark!”

USMC TACTICAL FILES: PSYCHOLOGICAL REPORT — CLASSIFIED

```plain
Subject: Corporal George Krasinsky, USMC
Specialization: Powered Armor Operator
Unit: 3rd Expeditionary Space Infantry Division, Gliese Sector
Recording location: New Pearl Orbital Transfer Complex, Dock 12
Date: Day Minus Three Months (c. 2180, according to Union historians’ estimates)
Neural interface status: Critical sensory overload. Permanent synchronization failure with the tactical network.
```

```plain
Unit: 3rd ESID, Gliese Sector
Neural interface: Synchronization failure — permanent
Status: Inactive asset
Platoon search results: Profile inactive × 41
```

How many of you know someone the system has classified as an inactive asset?