Prisoners

 - Why do you do it?

- Do what exactly?

- Well, you know.

- Oh, that. Why shouldn’t I?

- You get nothing if you do it.

- True.

- There’s a big change you get in trouble.

- True as well.

- Might even get yourself killed.

- There are worser fates than death.

- Then why do you do it?

- Someone has to. Might I as well be me.

- But it’s pointless.

- After a while it does seem so, yes.

- It’s no like things will change if you do it.

- I might have to contradict you on that. If you don’t mind me asking, why do you do what you do? Why would you become a soldier?

- To protect!

- Protect who exactly?

- My family, my friends.

- Is your family anywhere close to the battlefield?

- No.

- Are your friends?

- No.

- Then how are you protecting them?

- By defeating the enemy.

- Have they attacked your loved ones?

- No, but…

- Have they made any move to be perceived as a threat? 

- No, but they might. We’re defending by making sure any possible future attacks won’t happen.

- I see. The ol’ best defense is a good offense.  

- You got it.

- You’re not protecting, you’re conquering.

- That’s not true.

- Are you sure? Please remind me, for how long have your people been living on that rock? How many millennia? Five? Ten? Or maybe you’re brand new to the neighborhood and it’s just for about a couple of centuries.

- About seven years. We were dispatched here to prepare everything for the colony.

- Seven years?! And you still say that you’re protecting? Seven years is not even long enough to become a footnote on the history of that planet.

- We’re out here to explore, to expand our knowledge and survive.

- I don’t think you understand the meaning of those words. If I remember correctly, curiosity and fear were at opposite sides of the spectrum.

- We still need resources to go on.

- Of course, but how much and at what cost? Last time I checked, humanity wasn’t on the brink of becoming extinct or in a position to not be able to sustain itself. What is causing this fear?

- It’s what’s out here. What if,

- What if, what if. You’re busy thinking so much about what might happen instead of focusing on what is happening. 

- And what is happening?

- Murder! Mass-murder masquerading as exploration for the advancement of the collective knowledge. Just because they have a different number of extremities, a different kind of skin or vocal cords, doesn’t mean they don’t feel fear. Did your tiny mind ever pondered that they might be in the exact situation as you?

- You wouldn’t understand.

- I wouldn’t understand? You don’t have even the slightest clue of what I would be capable of understanding.  I did unspeakable things in my past, far beyond your imagination. Things that would make a grown man quiver like a small child just at the mention of them.

- I was just following orders!

- So was I! I told myself that every day. The same wonderful lie we always tell ourselves to distance ourselves from our actions. After a while you start believing them and you go on, desensitizing yourself. But I couldn’t go on with it. It became too much. Tell me, do you hear them?

- Hear what?

- The screams. The gut-wrenching screams of everyone you ever kill, the agony they go through as their life slipped away, the entirety of what ifs becoming never will. It’s not something you can just forget with therapy, drugs or even death. There’s no escape. It haunts you in every waking moment. It haunts even your dreams. Well, that would be true if you are able to sleep. The screams get louder and louder as they increase in numbers.

- That’s why you do it? As a way of changing the balance?

- You think I go to war zones as some sort of penance for everything I did? Oh, you foolish man. Nothing in this universe could provide forgiveness for what I did.

- Then why do you do it?

- Because I want to stop the killings! I want to make sure that there won’t be any kind of screams out there. Wars serve absolutely no purpose and I had my fair share of them. 

- You’re crazy if you can do that. It’s not possible.

- I might be. It’s been a long time, but you can’t change things without having some crazy in you. It doesn’t take too much. Everything starts with a small idea, in the back of your head, whispering in your ear to go against the status quo, to think about the other person, to put yourself in their place. Funny thing about ideas. The moment they enter someone’s mind they stick there for a while and get passed on to others like a virus. I promised myself that there will be a patient zero for every conflict, until my last dying breath.

- And did you succeed this time?

- I hope so. I did my best.

- Until you got captured.

- Someone in my position might say it’s a calculated risk. As you said yourself, there is a big chance of getting in troubles.

- I wouldn’t call stealing the admiral’s nuclear codes and keys as just trouble. You’re lucky you weren’t shot on site.

- I have been described as something along those similar lines before. Maybe on not so friendly terms

- To bad you’re stuck in a cell.

- My dear boy, I was never stuck in here. I was just needed someone to listen. Oh, wow! Look at the time.

- Hey! What are you doing to the lock? Move away from it.

- I do what I do best. Run!