The Death of Nostalgia

I’m not nostalgic about my past. That would be too easy. I’ve been thinking recently. About everything. About how the Determiners came. Their swords of light tearing through the night sky. And while no one in the Frayed Districts can be said to have had it easy these past few years, I’m the last person to be nostalgic over spilled milk.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Bena. She was the love of my life, my commanding officer. Colder than a salamander’s belly. But she understood things that no one else did. Things about duty, honor, Transpendence. She knew how to fight a war. Though she was only 5-foot-6 and a hundred and ten pounds, I’ll never forget the lessons she gave me.

Back in those days, I was the fresh face, the only unwashed grenadier to wash up into Harrowers Squadron. My guys had been telling me for months that it wasn’t going to be easy, but what did they know? If I wasn’t planet-side, sucking Shilkas out of coral reefs like the rest of my family, I felt as though I had the opportunity to stretch my wings a bit. No one and nothing could change my feelings that day. I felt as though my life had been altered forever.

Being a grenadier at 23 was part dream, part nightmare. I can remember so many squad mates thinking that it would be easy. Just press this button. Just aim and shoot. But so many of them never made it through. It was the barrel door. Like a lens protector on a camera, this thing was tough. Just tough enough to allow my brothers to go on extended vacation in Valhalla. They just couldn’t remember to pop that thing off before firing. I barely remembered from time to time.

And then came the war. The Determiners were all blind, but they could smell and hear better than any humanoid. They could smell our fear. And while they weren’t accurate with their fire, they knew things. Things that we didn’t. For instance, they could fight. But they didn’t fight like Cormier or Pep. It was this strange, invisible art. They couldn’t find you. But if they got their hands on you, it was lights out. I couldn’t believe the things that I saw.

I remember a young kid came to me out of the blue, asking me if I had ever slaughtered a Determiner in cold blood. A normal question for a young boy to ask. My only response was that I couldn’t be bothered to kill them. After all, they were terraforming the planet for us. Shouldn’t I just let them go, see them about their own business? I never knew how difficult things could be until that one day. The day I’ll never remember to forget. I’m not nostalgic. I told you that before, and I mean it.

Nostalgia isn’t a soldier’s ration. It leads to rusted metal. Rusted hearts. A feeling of desperation to escape. I couldn’t fathom the amount of pain that one could experience in life. But I was young. I didn’t know any better. The Determiners, however, were about to show up in a real way. Yes, they were terraforming the world for us. Yes, we technically had them on the payroll. And yes, we are technically related by blood. But that’s all unimportant when you understand the concept of an enemy.

If someone shows themselves to be untrustworthy, you have almost no choice but to change your networks. Change your space. It’s like fly fishing. If the fish don’t like your flies, you’re not going to like your fish. And so, it was. We came together to fight the Determiners for all they had. They weren’t going to just open the door and step on our spleens. But what were we doing here, anyway? This planet, this earthly realm that we had endured – Shella’s planet – what was there in it for us?

We knew that we weren’t getting the oil. The Determiners had the infrastructure. They had the security. They had us by the throat. And if any of us doubted what would happen during the inevitable, we knew now. We knew that something was going to happen, but we didn’t know when. And more so, we didn't know where we fit into the entire deal. Here we were, traveling through the ravages of space. We were no more human than we were Determiner. We’d been through this situation so many times. What would we do when the Determiners finally got tired of us and went on an all-out assault?

Expasa 3^rd, 5820 was that day. On Shella’s planet, there was a saying: “The sun rises, but it then falls out of the sky every day.” Does it crack? You be the judge. On that fateful day in Expasa, we came together, knowing that most of us wouldn’t make it past “Go,” or even play a game of Go, ever again. No one knew more than us the amount of pain that could be harnessed for victory. We’d been battle-hardened, but that battle-hardening was done without discipline, without resolve. We had developed so many bad habits, cut so many corners, that we were staring down the face of a fate that none of us wanted to see.

It was about 3:01 am when the Determiners touched down – Remember, on Shella’s planet, the days are 30 hours long, not 42 like usual. But it was the Winter Nights and the sun was up all day and all night. We saw them coming. We even knew what tactics they would use. It wasn’t hard to figure out: Artillery, airstrikes, tanks, halftracks, the rest. It was standard practice in this universe. I’m not nostalgic because, even though I’d do it again and I have no regrets, I still don’t want to get caught slipping, caught stuck in the past.

When I received the Medal of Danger and the Medal of Most Improved, both in the same year, I was staring at a load of trouble. I had fought valiantly in the war. Got quite a bit of shrapnel that I don’t want to talk about. I’d been injured and re-injured. Had fallen from the sky, gone deep into enemy territory. Sometimes on top-secret missions. No one tells you how hard it will be. No one tells you the pain. The suffering. I wish that I could’ve been there to see the Determiners surrender.

But they didn’t surrender. They went easy on us. We knew we weren’t at their level. Now our lives are intricately linked up.