The Perfect Revolution

by Oscar Deadwood

March 19, 2013

We hadn’t been disarmed yet; Tanya and I still had our weapons. I wish we’d been disarmed.

I really wish we’d been disarmed.

Tanya screamed and fired at the robots, but of course her bullets were impotent. The bullets just bounced off the Perfect Soldiers, sounding like raindrops falling on a tin roof.

So she turned her weapon on Captain Flanigan, who had taken cover behind me, his head peering over my shoulder.

She shot him right between the eyes, and I could hear and feel the wind and heat of the bullet as it almost singed my left ear.

Captain Flanigan fell backwards immediately, and blood poured out of his forehead in a furious gush. I could hear it gurgle.

The robots all pointed their hollow index fingers at Tanya and fired silent bullets, bullets that tore her body to shreds, making it an unrecognizable montage of flesh and bone and hair and blood.

And the journalists, their already anguished faces spattered with Tanya’s blood, closed their eyes as they screamed, terrified. They looked so pathetic and helpless. I lost it.

I’ve always wondered what a nervous breakdown looks like — I mean, do you just collapse in a heap, or do you just start freaking out and blabbering incoherently?

I think I have an idea now.

So many emotions came rushing at me in the tent. You’d think fear and anger would be at the forefront of those emotions, but I know now that my soul is a twisted one.

I was jealous of the man Tanya had been with, some other soldier that I didn’t know. He got with her, so to speak, and I didn’t. Now I never would.

And that in turn made me furious, and the whole insanity of the situation erupted in me.

I started firing my weapon randomly and rapidly across the tent.

I deliberately killed all the journalists.

Now, I keep reassuring myself that I put them out of their misery—and they were indeed miserable—and I keep telling myself that they would never be released, and what would have happened to them once we crossed into Iran? We wouldn’t have taken them with us. I suspect a robot would have left them to die or perhaps would have killed them all, as I had just conveniently done.

The Perfect Soldiers were pleased.

“Well done, Sergeant Benson,” said the one who had escorted me. “You have passed the test. Your loyalty will never be questioned. You performed the task we were going to command you to do. You are free to go.”

Numbly, I walked out of that tent and across the camp to my berthing tent, where I sit now, shakily writing away.

I was played, as they say. Played for and like a fool. But what can I do?

Nothing.