Grinding the Humanoids

Once you got the snow out of your eyes, the opponents were easy to see. They were all lit up and dancing around, while we had chosen all-white uniforms to blend in. The wind was howling so loud you couldn’t hear us as we crunched their bones in our hands and disposed of them in the van, carefully noting each one’s tag as we did so. It was all done without much talk because of the noise. By noon we had worked our way through half of them but they kept dropping from the copters into our midst on suicide missions. After a while you started to feel sorry for them. They were just grunts like us, who signed up for combat duty because it beat working in one of the fast-genetic-makeover storefronts that dotted the landscape now, if you could call it a landscape what with so little land and practically no scape.

It’s a living, says Fraggard when we’re done and the sun is setting and we’ve got our tea and crumpets in the quonset hut.
You call this living? says Rumi, in a bad mood again. …

The thing is, Ma, the reason I’m writing, is I don’t know how much longer I can go on grinding the humanoids before something starts to sink in about the basic immorality of it all. I mean, I’m happy with the retrofit. But at times it seems I could be put to better use.

Thanks for the cash, and the bandages. It all came in handy. Sometimes some of the bots aren’t done fighting even after a full day on the field, and things can get a little testy in the quonset hut. So I’ve been able to make a little extra taking strategic positions on our futures market. Still, things are tight, and any more you can send will always be appreciated. Plus, I’m running low on poison. Some of these fuckers take a lot to die. You wouldn’t believe how resilient they’ve become. I think, as the geneticists predicted, they’re evolving and adapting. Which is a grim thought indeed, but we don’t have to think about that now.

The snow is getting lighter and the wind is dying down. I think soon we’ll be able to go out and count the wounded and dispose of the dead, and then, if there’s time, there’ll be poker.