Max: Brain Dump 10110

The drums beat. We marched forward. We lost.

Victory or death sounds good in theory, but it's not that easy to suppress the instinct to survive. I knew what would happen if I survived. That damn lizard brain convinced me it wouldn't be so bad. So I lived.

*

I don't remember the last time I slept through the night. My brain, my damn backstabbing brain, cries out for sleep. It makes every moment excruciating. It makes me long for the concrete floor in my cell. Come night, I may drift off for a few moments but most of the time it is so short it doesn't even interrupt my thoughts.

*

"You are scum," the Commandant said over the loud-speaker when the few of us who were too stupid to die were brought here. "You are murderers, rapists and, worst of all, traitors. You set yourself above your fellow travelers. You felt it was you who should decide the path of civilization. But you are fortunate. You have the opportunity to set right what you have set wrong. And you have the rest of your lives to do it."

*

We all quickly came to regret surviving. Charlie was the first to try to do something about. He was looking at the guard's blaster when he made his move. The guard didn't even raise it. They just piled on him and threw him to the ground. When he tried to get back up, they let him get almost to standing when they grabbed him and threw him back down. You would have expected them to hit him or kick him. But no. They just kept throwing him to the ground until he stopped trying to get back up. He tried again the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that. Each time it ended the same way. He kept getting tossed to the ground until he stopped trying to get back up. Finally, he just stopped trying. I guess I am supposed to tell you I could see in his eyes that they broke him. But I don't think I have seen his eyes since. He just keeps looking down, quietly doing what he is told.

*

Would you believe I used to be a mathematician? I never called myself a "Professor". I hated teaching. It was an interruption. Why would I want to waste my time explaining basic equations to people who wouldn't be there if they weren't required when I could be exploring the beauty of combinatorics? I used to joke that my students combined intelligence was "negative infinity factorial". If you don't get that, you can consider yourself in the same grouping.

If you worked with combinatorics you would be laughing your ass off right now.

*

There isn't too much math involved in cutting trees, digging ditches and carrying concrete blocks. The mathematician I was would have scoffed at that remark. But these days I am more concerned with my stiff, blistered hands and the burning pain in my back than I am with equations.

*

Government wasn't my concern. I never registered to vote. As long as I had my equations, I didn't really care about much else. It turned out that the "Protectors of Democracy" who "won" the "Final, Perfect Election" don't much care for people who study too much.

*

The only thing I cared about outside of mathematics was Shakespeare. He appealed to my "Societal Dysmorphic Alienation." What we used to call "elitism." Despite what you may think after seeing a performance of Henry V, there aren't too many speeches about St. Crispin's day just before a battle. The two most popular pre-battle activities in my battalion were praying and vomiting. I'm an atheist, so I did far more of the latter than the former.

*

I didn't even blink when they shut the University down. I saw it as parole from my teaching duties. I suddenly had all the time in the world to play with my equations. That lasted about a week. When they hung the Poli Sci department from the street lamps in front of the Campus, I felt a need to leave town.

*

I always imagined battle as being disorganized, an orgy of panic and violence. Once it started, I felt a focus I only ever used to feel when I knew was close to a proof. Around me people were dying, shit was blowing up. But the only thing I had room for in my mind was "stay alive." Kill them before they kill me. I managed to take a few of them out before they took me down.

*

Everybody knew about the roadblocks. I didn't even try to take my car. I just headed for the woods and then walked in whatever direction seemed most likely to keep me hidden. I didn't see another human being until I stumbled into the rebel camp. After a few days in chains and some light interrogation, I was recruited. At first I thought a brilliant mathematician would be given a position far from the battlefield. I quickly learned that Ph.D.'s were as common as lice in the rebellion and that engineers were more valuable than mathematicians.

*

I don't know how long I have been here. I haven't known what day of the week for years. Or months? Decades? Have I been here that long? They don't call the days of the week by the same name anyway. The days and months now have more "instructive" names that never managed to take hold in my brain. It's not like I need to know one day from another anyway.

*

I figured I was another corpse. I was just waiting for the blast, part of me clinically wondering what it would feel like, the rest of me screaming. I shit myself and I am pretty sure I was crying. At first I thought it was pity that kept them from killing me. It turned out they were under orders to take as many prisoners as possibly. They needed slave labor and there wasn't a big enough slave pool on their side. Sure there are some of their guys amongst us, convicted for meaningless crimes. But they needed more. Those of us who were too stupid to get killed in battle provided them they warm bodies they needed.

*

I keep waiting for my body to break, but it just gets stronger. I keep waiting for my mind to snap, but it just keeps getting duller. I eat their gelatinous, plastic tasting, nutritionally perfect "food". I do what I am told. That's about it.