---Act I. ---
As my dead CO used to joke: “A war every ten years is great for business.”
We were their spear. The first and most perfect weapon, designed to perform the deed while keeping as much distance as possible. Hands are kept clean, and the tool is discarded when its no longer of further use. My men, they’re good men, they’ve more than earned a quite life with a nice lady, a handful of brats and a warm hearth. We’ve earned that, but we don’t deserve that pasture, not until the work is done. Theres not a man among us who’d be told to go home before we marched through An-Lao
It is for that reason that we stand here: Not in some god forsaken jungle fighting someone else’s proxy war but here in front of the apex of possibility and ambition. We stand now before the gates of hell after having taken the grand circle tour. We stand before this ancient temple to Pluck the threads of fate for our own design. It was a pipe dream so grand in its edifice and machination that surely anyone hear uttering its steps would be laced in a straight jacket and wheeled off to an asylum. Whether we were bound for a white jacket or the Abysses of Abaddon there wasn’t a man before me that was going home, that’s for damn sure.
I looked out into the courtyard, behind me the radios crackled with empty static. Knelt before me were fifty PAVN each with a barrel stuffed to the back of their heads. Side by side my men stood behind them; Excepting one. There was a Charlie on his feet starting straight down the barrel for the m16 trained on his forehead. Now, we may have third-rate translators in the unit but the situation should have needed no clarification. The northern Soldier’s nose cracked as pvt. Tux beat him with the rifles stock. Blood steamed across his swollen face, and yet the man did not fall. The greenhorn kid beside me raised his rifle towards the man, but my firm grip on his shoulder lowered his shaky hands. I walked towards the man and lit a cigar from my vest. I motioned for our most capable translator to interpret and I spoke to him. “You’d rather die on your feet. Is that it?”
The translator spoke and the man looked me dead in the eyes and nodded. I breathed out a cloud of smoke and offered the man the same. He chewed on the cigar while I cut his bonds with the machete at my waist. I took twenty paces back and threw the machete at the man’s feet before slowly drawing my boot-knife.
The man grabbed the machete and stood tall with a thousand-yard stare, but not a sound came from any in attendance. I bowed my head to the man with a quick nod, he gave a quick nod in reply and dashed forward his eyes unflinching and utterly focused. When he was barely a yard from me his blade made a wide sweep, but my heavy kick broke his hand and the blade clattered to the ground. I prepared to deliver the killing blow with my knife at his exposed neck but his broken hand interceded. Caught off-guard the plucky bastard used all his strength to knock me my feet out from under me. With nothing left to lose the man struck my torso several times with his good hand while I scrambled to my feet. I flourished the knife and threw it past the mans head into the mossy mess of creeper vines coming out of the ruins to his rear. With one ultimate haymaker to his temple, my fist pushed the back of the man’s head through the knife handle and he died on his feet: his head pined to the wall.
With two fingers, I saluted the man and his efforts, but before either my men or the rest of the PAVN could get riled up from the results of the duel, the radio man shouted over them all: “COLONEL!!”. I stared over in the direction of the sound and the look on the mans faced along with his shaky voice, told me all that I needed to know, and all that I had feared.
I wiped my bloody knuckles with a rag. With no orders left to disobey, I signaled the demolitions expert standing beside the radioman. With one plunge of the wire, the temple behind me crumbled with the dull thud of shaped charges. As the cloud of dust filled the ancient courtyard, I turned and addressed every man present.
“As of this moment, each and every one of us are out of a job. The papers were signed just this minute. I don’t know about you boys, but I refuse to leave a job unfinished. We were all sent here to end the war, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do…. But we won’t stop there! In that temple behind me is an ancient relic with the power to end ALL wars for good. We can undo the needless suffering that’s been endured, for all of us here, and for all of our brothers in arms who never made it here. We will fight to stop fighting, kill the people that need to be killed, be at the right place at the right time...---” I paused for a moment because I must have started hallucinating.
In the distance I saw a man walking backwards down the stone walkway towards me. He walked erratically, and after a moment I came to the realization that he was not walking backwards but wholly in reverse! His cadence and stepping pattern were that of a man walking forwards in a straight line. I was ready to write it off as madness from exposure to the defoliants, but several of my men were pointing directly towards the inverted man and muttering: “c-c-Colonel??”. I gazed at the man, he was clutching something in his bloodied right hand: A stone half-circle with a spike pointed straight upwards. I met eyes with the man as he passed me by and went into the temple. Cold, focused, and full of determination. It was a light of hope that had been missing from my own eyes for a long time. After a moment of silence, I turned and walked into the cloud of smoke bellowing from the demolished stone wall. The backwards man disappeared into the darkness and smoke and I followed him with reckless abandon.
Casting aside the curtain of smoke my eyes began adjusting to the low light filtering in through cracks in the ceiling, and in the center of the room stood an ornate altar. The altar gave off a glow of sickly green neon and appeared to be made of pure jade. There were spiraling patterns carved into the walls and ceilings, but the silhouette of the backwards man drew my attention towards the altar again. The man placed the palm sized stone relic from his hand onto a pedestal set into the glowing green obelisk before vanishing into thin-air!
I pondered to myself a moment “That man had my face; No… not just my face, that man… was me?” I stared ahead of me dumbfounded, the Last Grain lay before me and I laughed in relief. My Lieutenants voice called me from behind: “Sir, have you found the target?”
Without bothering to respond, and without any hesitation, I grabbed the stone artifact and drove the stony point into my own heart.
--I saw then what would transpire and how far we must go; I knew that we must prevail--
--I saw the island lost from time, the grain first and last; I knew it would not end there--
--I saw the breadth of the tree we needed to prune; It terrified me--
--Time is a river with many eddies, and to fight against it is to walk against the current--
--With a clear view of what must be done, and the scope of the power granted to me:
--I waded into the river--