un: oland | text | war relief

[toten_sie]

War is complicated. It's hard to decide what to do, where to point your gun, if you should.

But war relief is not complicated. And even now, we should think about what will come after, what will happen to people this fight are going to hurt.

I'm not very smart. And I don't know much. But there seems to be a lot of smart people here who were saved by the Natha just like me. I don't know how many of them know what it's like to be in a war, or know what happens after a war, but that part is almost worse. So I'd like to ask if we can start planning for that. I'll help, as much as I can.

Comments

[toten_sie]

We don't disagree, though. Those people are still on the battlefield.

And how can you be so sure that that's the best way?

[ukase]

Those people are huddling in what they call what's left of their homes. To them, it ain't a battlefield. It's their home.

Because if I wasn't sure, I'd be making planning posts like this one before the battle is even done and that's not productive. Pick your battle, fight, win and then recover when it's over.

[toten_sie]

One doesn't mean the other isn't true. When your home becomes a battlefield, it changes the reality of what home means.

To ignore that is to ignore the truth of their experience.

And you think fighting is always productive? You think the only way to make things better is to kill more people?

[ukase]

You speaking from experience or watching kids starve?

I'm not a complete savage. I understand where fighting does little good to a cause, and there is a time and a place for politics. Besides, not all war is about killing.

[toten_sie]

Both.

I don't think you're a savage. I'm not asking because I think you're wrong. I've never found an answer that felt totally right.

Everyone's justice is different.

But war kills people.

[ukase]

[Okay, he might respect you just a little.]

There is no totally right answer. We all just seem to do the best we can surviving from one battle to the next in our own way, playing on our strengths.

War kills lots of people. War brings out the best and the worst of humanity.

[toten_sie]

War makes things more. More suffering. More desperation. People respond to the extremes. And afterwards, they're different.

A lot of people never really leave the battlefield.

[ He certainly hasn't. Even though he's been trying to for what feels like forever. ]

Right now, a lot of people are fighting. And they can't focus on anything else. But I know there are a lot of people who aren't fighting. And the people who aren't fighting, who are trying not to fight, they could try and start working on it.

I don't want to fight if there's something better I can do to help people.

[ That he would is unspoken, but clear enough. ]

[ukase]

A lot of people walk away from the battlefield determined to make the world a better place. If they have the strength of self, they might even go somewhere.

Some people revel in war. It's the only place they feel alive.

There are also people who aren't fighting because they don't want to choose a side in a battle they aren't personally committed to. They just have to stand back and watch and not be in the way of those that choose to fight.

Nothing will change. There will be another battle soon enough. Our worlds were consumed by the Storm and instead of taking that brush with death as a need to be better and live better, there's just more fighting. Maybe the Storm was right to consume everything.

cw for mentions of immolation

[toten_sie]

I know.

[ 'The only place they feel alive' rings inside of him a little painfully, thoughts of Hans, of that blank glass helmet and rumpled suit, the almost innocent way he spoke, the desperation, as he burned people alive to feel some warmth in his unnaturally numbed and decaying body. ]

Whether things will change, whether there'll be another battle is too big for me. I'm just a soldier.

But the suffering don't have a side. Or they shouldn't. If people here don't want to choose a side or pick up a weapon, they can pick up a blanket or start setting up a soup tent. That's what my message was about.

[ukase]

You have to want something more than the next battle. Even a soldier can want that.

You are quite the optimist in your own way. Let me know how that works out for you and your pledge for humanitarian assistance.

[toten_sie]

It's hard to see something outside the next battle sometimes.

And I will.

[ A pause, then- ]

My name's Randel. I'm in Olympia.

Good luck.

[ukase]

Then you need to work on that. Be more than a soldier sometimes.

I go by Frag. I don't need luck; I've got skill.

[That's just his codename for the network. He knows better than to give out his real name.]

[toten_sie]

I'm working on that.

And sometimes it's nice to have something you don't necessarily need.

[ukase]

Everyone needs life goals.

[toten_sie]

I have a few of them.

Do you have any?

[ukase]

I did when I was on my home world. Still working on it here.

[toten_sie]

That sounds like something to work on then.