For the War Effort
It was a civil war of the most bloody, brutal sort, not East vs. West, or brother vs. brother. But rather: Past vs. Future.
They (the Future) had a staggering technological advantage. Our skies were filled with weapons that we did not understand; our cities pillaged and brutalized by invasions for which we could devise no shields. But our position gave us another kind of advantage. Just one, really. So, for there was no other choice: none at all.... We exploited it.
To our hands--violently, unnaturally--we transferred bundles of our own flesh: uprootings of potentialities that many of us, at one time, had wanted very much. (That I, too, had wanted so very, very much.) So it felt like more than war, this sacrifice. But we were members of the Great Generation. The Final Generation.
We could not let them win.
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Around the fires we gathered, in our public squares: heat and whoosh and flicker, in long long lines, extending through cities and countryside, and we roared as the smoke ascended, for we could see it--Yes! Yes! Yes!--the count of our enemies/descendants, diminishing across distance; the shrinking phalanxes of their armies in the sky; the dots of their ground troops, viewed through our spyglasses: fewer and fewer; and we, yes, we, determined and resourceful we (and here the roar went up again!), reducing the numbers of this superior force at this clever remove, as we could not in direct combat.
Into heat; into plumes of smoke; into Never-Was. Attrition and annihilation.
To the front of the line--my turn--I pushed at last, with thousands still behind me; thousands upon thousands, each with our bundles of flesh: compatriots-in-war, each of us hunching for pain, hobbled by the recency of our surgical scars.
"'U' is for victory!" I intoned fiercely.
And I cast my uterus onto the fire.
The End
This story was first published on Monday, January 11th, 2021
We hope you're enjoying
For the War Effort by
Rachel Rodman.
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