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Words cannot encompass my hatred for my mother's laptop.
It has managed to get Writemonkey to eat one of the few portions of Soldier's Daughter I've ever tried to put to paper. Writemonkey has never ever eaten a draft of a story ever.
Rest in peace, "(she has a secret, and the secret is her name)". Thou willt be much mourned.
Instead, have something significantly longer and more depressing.
Funnily enough, the world-shattering horrors generally stay put. The winking, I am here, I am alive lights of the ships and the space stations keep those particular memories at bay. Awake, she doesn't have to worry about the dog vomit-burnt hair-roasted pork smell of a thresher's acid spit eating away at Private Tudyk. Doesn't have to fight back the sight of sand swimming, dancing, craters caving in on themselves as the dirt falls away into some subterranean hole.
No, those flashbacks save themselves for when she's asleep.
Awake, alive, ambulatory, she has to remind herself not to see reflections of the platoon she lost in '77. On the Emden, she has to remind herself that she's not looking at people surely dead by now.
When the light reflects wrong, she sees snatches of Jones's face in Navigator Greene's. She catches sight of Harker in the mess, in the early hours when she's got no reason to be awake, and for a moment sees Toombs. They hold their coffee mugs with the same grip, duck their heads down to watch the steam rise, and for an instant Akuze never happened.
That's the worst of it. She can live with seeing ghosts. Plenty of Marines see worse. It's the disjointed fragments of time she spends doubting her own memory, doubting her own identity, that she can't take.
Shipboard life is too much the same. So when that placement is up she requests a stationary posting, and the Emden is glad to be rid of her.
Arcturus isn't the same. Too many faces pass by her. Totally nameless. Often without even station IDNs. She loses herself and her fucked-up, jumbled, careening memories in what feels like a sea of people. Cleanses herself in it; the anonymity frees her to disconnect and the disconnect frees her to do her job without being reminded every waking minute of the forty-nine men who died when she didn't.
One day, she wakes up to find that her CO has flagged her for special forces training.
Two days later, she wakes up to find her suitcase packed. Photo albums and her battered hard-copy of the Qur'an will stay with her father. More substantial mementos, like art prints and ceramic mugs, she sends either to her mother or her storage unit. Everything else she sells, or slates for disposal (other). Which means that in forty eight hours, some underpaid batarian workers are going to unlock her quarters, sort everything into "safely inflammable" and "do not light this on fire if you don't want to poison the space station," and trash everything accordingly.
Nothing in her Arcturus quarters dates back to '77. The universe is still working on 2178 and she cannot account for a single thing she owned until then. She does not realize this until she's on the shuttle from Arcturus to her assigned SF training grounds. By then it's too late.
It's been too late for a long time. This, she does not realize until after she graduates.
As if catalyzed by consciously realizing that she got rid of everything from her lost unit, she discovers during SF training that she no longer remembers the faces clearly. Not the dying faces; she still wakes up from time to time seeing Private Hartman's nose disappear into his skull and his skull disappear into the acid. But the whole faces: she knows what Hartman looked like dying, will never forget that, but she couldn't shape the face he smiled with in their platoon photo. Couldn't forget the expression that flickered across Private Birch's face when he fell into one of the craters, right before he didn't have an expression at all, or a torso (and that right before he ceased existing), but she doesn't remember how he smiled.
She has cleansed herself of the small memories.
She will never be free of the big ones.
She accepts her N7 certification with all the grace her mother and then her drill sergeant pounded into her. And the epiphany comes: whatever she owned then is gone as none of it was ever there at all. The small memories have been fading away in droves. She can ask for no more. She will receive nothing back.
She can live with that.
It has managed to get Writemonkey to eat one of the few portions of Soldier's Daughter I've ever tried to put to paper. Writemonkey has never ever eaten a draft of a story ever.
Rest in peace, "(she has a secret, and the secret is her name)". Thou willt be much mourned.
Instead, have something significantly longer and more depressing.
Funnily enough, the world-shattering horrors generally stay put. The winking, I am here, I am alive lights of the ships and the space stations keep those particular memories at bay. Awake, she doesn't have to worry about the dog vomit-burnt hair-roasted pork smell of a thresher's acid spit eating away at Private Tudyk. Doesn't have to fight back the sight of sand swimming, dancing, craters caving in on themselves as the dirt falls away into some subterranean hole.
No, those flashbacks save themselves for when she's asleep.
Awake, alive, ambulatory, she has to remind herself not to see reflections of the platoon she lost in '77. On the Emden, she has to remind herself that she's not looking at people surely dead by now.
When the light reflects wrong, she sees snatches of Jones's face in Navigator Greene's. She catches sight of Harker in the mess, in the early hours when she's got no reason to be awake, and for a moment sees Toombs. They hold their coffee mugs with the same grip, duck their heads down to watch the steam rise, and for an instant Akuze never happened.
That's the worst of it. She can live with seeing ghosts. Plenty of Marines see worse. It's the disjointed fragments of time she spends doubting her own memory, doubting her own identity, that she can't take.
Shipboard life is too much the same. So when that placement is up she requests a stationary posting, and the Emden is glad to be rid of her.
Arcturus isn't the same. Too many faces pass by her. Totally nameless. Often without even station IDNs. She loses herself and her fucked-up, jumbled, careening memories in what feels like a sea of people. Cleanses herself in it; the anonymity frees her to disconnect and the disconnect frees her to do her job without being reminded every waking minute of the forty-nine men who died when she didn't.
One day, she wakes up to find that her CO has flagged her for special forces training.
Two days later, she wakes up to find her suitcase packed. Photo albums and her battered hard-copy of the Qur'an will stay with her father. More substantial mementos, like art prints and ceramic mugs, she sends either to her mother or her storage unit. Everything else she sells, or slates for disposal (other). Which means that in forty eight hours, some underpaid batarian workers are going to unlock her quarters, sort everything into "safely inflammable" and "do not light this on fire if you don't want to poison the space station," and trash everything accordingly.
Nothing in her Arcturus quarters dates back to '77. The universe is still working on 2178 and she cannot account for a single thing she owned until then. She does not realize this until she's on the shuttle from Arcturus to her assigned SF training grounds. By then it's too late.
It's been too late for a long time. This, she does not realize until after she graduates.
As if catalyzed by consciously realizing that she got rid of everything from her lost unit, she discovers during SF training that she no longer remembers the faces clearly. Not the dying faces; she still wakes up from time to time seeing Private Hartman's nose disappear into his skull and his skull disappear into the acid. But the whole faces: she knows what Hartman looked like dying, will never forget that, but she couldn't shape the face he smiled with in their platoon photo. Couldn't forget the expression that flickered across Private Birch's face when he fell into one of the craters, right before he didn't have an expression at all, or a torso (and that right before he ceased existing), but she doesn't remember how he smiled.
She has cleansed herself of the small memories.
She will never be free of the big ones.
She accepts her N7 certification with all the grace her mother and then her drill sergeant pounded into her. And the epiphany comes: whatever she owned then is gone as none of it was ever there at all. The small memories have been fading away in droves. She can ask for no more. She will receive nothing back.
She can live with that.