SwivelSkittle

The Man and The Automaton

The Man and The Automaton It’s early morning, after breakfast, and a cavalcade of news is rushing down to our unit. Our boys across the border are struggling, they don’t have a consistent supply of rations, ammunition, meds or any combination of the three to keep soldiers afloat. Before I make my way out of the mess hall I take note of a locket, my locket. Its warmth and affectionate shape, a cartoonish heart, provides comfort as a striking contrast to the weight I feel while holding it, an unyielding mass almost buckling my knees when pondering about its burden. I proceed through the strain and move outside. After receiving that fantastic piece of info letting me know I’ll be deploying three days earlier than expected, I see lots of people, soldiers like myself. Some I recognize, K-jay's defining features, unkempt facial hair and rust covered prosthetic makes it easy to pick him out of a crowd, but there are lots of people here who I’ve never seen before. Now, “never seen” doesn't mean they’re strangers, I know all of them, or at least the majority, it's a pretty tightly packed unit. They just look different, I don’t know how but it's something with the eyes, how they twitch at a moment's notice, switching up and down, across every axis. It's the strangest phenomena, it's like a phase or a transformation that occurs for the older sergeants. It's almost robotic in the way they navigate the barracks, not willing to make eye contact with anything other than their current objective. In an effort to get out of people watching I decided to make my way to Robotics to get acquainted with our new guests.