Kristine Rusch - The Observer

And so we went in.

Combat formation, all five of us, me first, face masks on so tight that the edges of our eyes pulled, suits like a second skin. Weapons in both hands, back-ups attached to the wrists and forearms, flash-bangs on our hips.

No shielding, no vehicles, no nothing. Just us, dosed, altered, ready to go.

I wanted to rip somethings head off, and I did, the fury burning in me like lust. The weapons became toolsI wanted up close and I got it, fingers in eyes, fists around tentacles, poking, pulling, yanking

They bled brown, like soda. Like coffee. Like weak tea.

And they screamedor at least I think they did.

Or maybe that was just me.

The commanders pulled us out before we could turn on each other, gave us calming drugs, put us back in our chambers for sleep. But we couldnt sleep.

The adrenaline didnt stop.

Neither did the fury.

Monica banged her head against the wall until she crushed her own skull.

LaTrice shot up her entire chamber with a back-up shed hidden between her legs. She took out two MPs and both team members in the chambers beside her before the commander filled the air with some kind of narcotic to wipe her out.

And me. I kept ripping and gouging and pulling and yanking until my fingertips were bone. By then, I hit the circuits inside the door and fried myself.

And woke up here, strapped down against a cold metal bed with no bedclothes. The walls are some kind of brushed steel. I can see my own reflection, blurry, pale-skinned, wild-eyed.

I dont look like a woman, and I certainly dont look like me.

And you well know, Doc, that if you unstrap me, Ill kill the thing reflected in that brushed metal wall.

After I finish with you.

You ask how it feels, and you know youll get an answer because of that chip you put in my head.

I can feel it, you know, itching. If I close my eyes, I can picture it, like a gnat, floating in gray matter.

Free my hands and Ill get it out myself.

Free my hands, and Ill get us all out of here.

How does it feel?

By it, I assume you mean me. I assume you mean whatevers left of me.

Heres how it feels:

There are three parts to me now. The old, remembered part, which doesnt have a voice. It stands back and watches, appalled, at everything that happens, everything I do.

I can see her toothat remembered partgangly young woman with athletic prowess and no money. She stands behind the rest of us, wearing the same clothes she wore to the recruiters that daypants with a permanent crease, her best blouse, long hair pulled away from her horsy face.

There are dreams in her eyesor there were then. Now theyre cloudy, disillusioned, lost.

If youd just given her the money, let her get the education first, shed be an officer or an engineer or a goddamn tech soldier.

But you gave her that testbiological predisposition, aggression, sensitivity to certain hormones. You gave her the test, and found it wasnt just the physical that had made her a good athlete.

It wasnt just the physical.

It was the aggression, and the way that minute alterations enhanced it.

Aggression, a strong predisposition, and extreme sensitivity.

Which, after injections and genetic manipulation, turned her into us.

Im the articulate one. Im an observer too, someone who stores information, and can process it faster than the fastest computer. Im supposed to govern the reflexes, but they gave me a blocker for that the minute I arrived back on ship, then made it permanent when they got me to base.

I can see, Doc; I can hear; I can even tell you whats going on, and why.

I just cant stop it, any more than you can.

I know I said three, and yet I didnt mention the third. I couldnt think of her, not and think of the Remembered One at the same time.

Im not supposed to feel, Doc, yet the Remembered One, she makes me sad.

The third. Oh, yeah. The third.

Shes got control of the physical, but you know that. You see her every day. Shes the one who raises the arms, who clenches the bandaged and useless fingers, who kicks at the restraints holding the feet.

Shes the one who growls and makes it impossible for me to talk to you.

You know that, or you wouldnt have used the chip.

An animal?

Shes not an animal. Animals create small societies. They have customs and instinctual habits. They live in prides or pods or tribes.

Shes a thing. Inarticulate. Violent. Useless.

And by giving her control of the physical, you made the rest of us useless, trapped inside, destined to watch until she works herself free.

If she decides to bash her head against the wall until she crushes her own skull or to rip through the steel, breaking every single bone she has, if she decides to impale herself on the bedframe, Ill cheer her on.

Not just for me.

But for the Remembered One, the one with hopes and dreams and a future she squandered when she reached for the stars.

The one who got us here, and who cant ever get us out.

So, you say Im unusual. How nice for me. The ones who separate usually kill themselves before the MPs ever get into the chamber. The others, the ones who integrate with their thing, get reused.

You think that the women I trained withthe ones not in my unit, the ones who didnt die when we got backyou think theyre still out there, fighting an enemy we dont entirely understand.

I think youre nave.

But youre preparing a study, something for the government so that theyll know this experiment is failing. Not the chip-in-the-brain thing that allows you to communicate with me, but the girl soldiers, the footsoldiers, the grunts on the ground.

And if they listen (ha!) theyll listen because of people like me.

Okay. Ill buy into your pipe dreams.

Heres what everyone on Earth believes:

We dont even know their names. We can call them The Others, but thats only for clarity purposes. There are namesSquids, ETsbut none of them seem to stick.

They have ships in much of the solar system, so were told, but were going to prevent them from getting the Moon. The Moon is the last bastion before they reach Earth.

Thats about it. No one cares, unless they have a kid up there, and even then, they dont really care unless the kid is a grunt, like I was.

Only they dont know the kids a grunt. Not until the kid comes home from a tour, if the kid comes home.

Heres what I learned on our ship: Most of the guys never came home. Thats when the commanders started the hormonal/genetic thing, the thing that tapped into the maternal instinct. Apparently the female of the species has a ferocious need to protect her young.

It can beit istapped, and in some of us, its powerful, and we become strong.

Mostly, though, no one gets near the ground. The battle is engaged in the blackness of space. Its like the video games our grandparents usedwhich some say (and I never believed until now)were used to train the kids for some kind of future war.

The kind were fighting now.

What I learned after a few tours, before I ever had to go to ground, was that ground troops, footsoldiers, rarely returned. They have specific missions, mostly clearing an area, and they do it, and they mostly die.

A lot of us died that daywhat I can remember of it.

Mostly I remember the fingers and the eyes and the tentacles (yes, theyre real) and the pull of the face mask against my skin.

What I suspect is this: the troops the Others have on the ground arent the enemy. Theyre some kind of captured race, footsoldiers just like us, fodder for the war machine. I think, if I concentrate real hard, I remember them working, putting chips places, implanting stuff in the groundgrowing things?Im not entirely clear.