by Kali Wallace ‘01

Claimation iv : introduction

The survivors are abominations, dull gray man-machines kept alive only because the half-hearted victors were weary of death. They replaced soft limbs and organs with ashen, angular machinery, and our eyes became still, our voices flat, our movement stilted. I wondered—I still wonder, in quiet moments—whether their lifeless stare is reflective of my own, whether their wired minds ache with the same maddening pain of half-deadened nerves and barely-glimpsed memories. I wonder if whole men, when they watch me, behold the same inert shell that is the other survivors.

Our inhumanity, of course, was the reason we were chosen. Each of us could sit straight and tall at the conference table, facing the committee with a steady and fearless gaze. We could say to them, honestly, that we would miss nothing of what we left behind. We were not prisoners, but we had been the enemy. I recalled only broken hints of the final hours—screams in black smoke, blinding light, the unremitting pound of footsteps on polished stone—but I remembered enough to know that my battle had been lost and all that remained was half-charred limbs with no will to fight. They didn’t expect much; we were few in number and incapable of cooperation. They kept us warm, promised menial jobs, provided food we could not taste. There wasn’t much reason to grant us our lives—if it could be called life—but there was no reason to destroy us. So we waited in awkward limbo, unable even to frown in disapproval. A handful of spectacled physicians were perplexed by the curious side effects of large-scale artificial body replacement, and they poked at us from time to time in an effort to see beyond the pasty skin.

In the tenuous internal peace of the postwar government, every person has his place. Our place, they found, was on a mysterious speck of iron-tinted light in the night sky. The end of the war had allowed them to shuffle ancient records, and a crooked old man with a dry, dry voice found some strange documents labeled: Claimation iv: Implementation and Error. He read the countless pages because he was weary and sought to chase from his mind the echoes of a lifetime.

The old man is dead now. I think sometimes that if he had known what he read, he would have destroyed the documents the moment he found them. I do not want to believe that he understood and still turned them over. I want to believe that every person at every step misunderstood, misread, and misinterpreted. Perhaps they understood the experiment; perhaps they understood the failure. Perhaps they even understood the purpose. They knew enough to send us, mechanical survivors, and that it was better to keep themselves at a safe distance.

I have not seen the other survivors in days, perhaps weeks. The corrosive atmosphere does not favor our metal parts, but knowing that they have probably fallen dead not far from here does not disturb me. We never spoke; I do not know if they saw what I saw. Soon, I too will be disintegrated and dead.

The only time I feel anything other than anger and frustration is when I look out upon what might have been and see it filling with a soft, wind-driven red dust. Of course the Planet nears victory; could they have doubted it? I report daily and there is no reply. They receive my warnings or they do not, they comprehend my desperation or they do not, they plan to follow—or they do not. The Planet will win regardless.

Perhaps they feel they have mastered the art of conquest, and that the shambles left by ancient explorers will be easily revived. Even I, looking upon the ruined city and grotesque landscapes, can see that this Planet is far superior in all forms of battle. Whatever weapon they impose—physical, chemical, fierce, subtle—this Planet will meet, impenetrable, the always truthful god of war protecting it.

And if they follow, what then? Do they not believe my reports? I am merely half-man, after all, although I see and touch and smell the rancid nature of this world as well as they shall. They could have—should have—foreseen the wretched outcome. This is no place for mankind, and in trying to rid itself of cruelly injected winds and crawling green matter, the world has become a monstrosity. What was meant to begin with slow grandeur exploded upon the surface in clumsy forcefulness. Life and not-life clash continually; there is no easy cooperation of bartering and sharing. And the chasms and volcanoes and windstorms are prevailing, steadily. The living are fleeting, but the patient drift of stone and dust is perpetual.

Claimation iv: a survivor’s reply

Strange that after all this time, alone on an unwelcoming red planet, I feel most acutely human when the only indication of life is the ache in my own meager flesh. And I feel most thoroughly alone when I track their ambitious missions through sky. What they never learned has not kept them grounded; they do not fear ill-directed arrogance. They will call me victorious. All across the surface, to the jagged crimson horizon, there is nothing so frail as my humanity. I survive by redly corroded machinery, dull gray mechanisms they lack. To alter by coercion—or to adapt—it is the choice they were unable to recognize, the decision they made blindly.