"<1M" is what my radar altimeter said. Engines whining, temperature too high, bouncing between yellow and red. Running for all we were worth, through canyons, down riverbeds, below treetops. Scouts don't run as fast as attack craft, don't have the ordnance capacity, can't stay on target as long. But then, attack craft are noisy, and can't get as low, tend to be seen early and haven't ever managed to sneak up on anyone. So there's that.

Someone on Satcom 1 was screaming. He was being overrun and needed help. We were close. The moving map had us within 3k, straight-line distance, but to get there at a useful angle, to be able to shoot and help him, we had to go around a mountain and get behind the guys that were shooting at him. It was more than 7k. Even so, we were the closest. Attack craft had been told to go, we heard it on Satcom 2, but they were at least an hour out, maybe more. It would take them 45 minutes to get off the ground, then flight time, no chance of being involved in this fight. It would be done in less than 30 minutes, one way or the other.

4k now, engines at the limit. Running for all we were worth, weapons ready, left-seaters talking on Satcom 1 and updating the moving map. Headquarters talking all over Satcom 2, telling us to wait, to let Attack get in there. A short discussion on FM 1, and the flight turned off the transponders. Headquarters could no longer see us, at least in theory. Of course, orbital assets could always see everything, hear everything, but prosecuting us would require admitting that capability, and our gamble was that nobody was going for that hurdle in this particular war. When the call came, we both denied turning them off. Mountains obstruct line of sight, and even orbital assets have trouble unless they are directly overhead. More protests, and we switched off Satcom 2.

2k, and the poor bastard being overrun had gotten desperate. He'd called in everything he could get locally, and it wasn't enough. We were less than a minute out and asking for targets, actually climbing so that we could start our dives, which was standard for a scout attack profile. He was trying to hold us off, afraid he'd have to stop his other fires to let us attack. We weren't stopping. We knew the risks, we knew that there was a chance we get hit with his other fires, but we also knew he died if we didn't go in. We went in.

We crested the ridge, and the targets popped up on our screens. Firing, breaking, climbing and bumping to fire again, and again, and again. It was easily five hundred men attacking our twenty. We took fire when the enemy realized we are there, more as he understood the threat we represented. We took hits. We continued to attack. Within the first few passes, we were "winchester", out of ammo for our primary weapons. The enemy was still assaulting, despite serious casualties, and the issue was very much in doubt. Doors got jettisoned so left-seaters could lean out and fire carbines, despite the loss of performance. It made all the difference in the world.

It had been thirty minutes since we got to this valley. The fight was mostly over, and certainly won. Satcom 1 was blowing up with two more Ground Force Commanders screaming for help.

We ran for the Forward Arming and Refuelling Point, the FARP, to take on fuel and ammo. Transponders came back on, and Satcom 2 miraculously worked again. The FARP monkeys didn't bat an eye when we asked for carbine ammo and grenades with our other ordnance, they'd seen it too many times. We launched again toward the sound of the gunfire and the cries of the desperate. This was our day, every day, for years.

Sometimes we couldn't save them. Sometimes no matter what we did, or how many passes we made, the enemy won. It was part of the war, part of fighting so far from home with so few assets. We ran as fast as we could to save as many as we could, it's the Sacred Trust, and we could not violate it.

We still can't, even if you at home can. Scouts. Out.

For thirty years I fought for you all. I carried the burden. I pulled the weight. I made the sacrifice. You enjoyed Starbucks, and went to college with tuition assistance, and took jobs as checkers in head-shops. I came home from time to time, and you said dumb shit to me. Dumb shit, like "I hope you weren't the guy that did such and such, cause if you are I'll kick your ass." That from some random kid working in a record/CD store the first time I came home, a million years ago from my first war. My mother saved your life, just by being there. You had no idea.

Time went on, and I came home less and less. You kept saying stupid shit, and the longer I was gone fighting for you, the more removed your statements became from my reality.

Thirty years, and now I can't tell whether you're from my homeland, or some kind of enemy infiltrator, or infil-Traitor. I fought for you. I sacrificed so you could be better. I came home and you're some kind of weak-hearted version of what I swore to fight. I know I can wipe you out. I've killed and killed and I sleep just fine, because my cause was (and is) Just. Yet here you are, weak and crying, corrupt and serving the enemy. You sound like little Hitlers or Stalins. Pick one, they were the same.

I'm done fighting, I think. I want to come home. But I need to pass the ammo to someone. I need you to take the ammo, but you won't. I'll pass it to my own children, if you make me. They at least know who their Father is and understand what it means to take up their Father's Sword. If you won't, they will. We'll keep it in the family for this generation, if you refuse to stand.

But what about the next thirty years? My children will grow to hate your children, because you'll raise them weak, or worse. The enemy is coming, and if you aren't very careful, your own children will join them. And if they do, will there be an America worth saving? Will your grandchildren be the poorest of the poor to make the world fair? Will they join the enemy to make the world fair? Will they be slaves to make it even? If they will, why am I fighting for you? I bought you the time, the space. Will you use it? Will you save my great Nation? Or will you piss it away? I want to pass the ammo. I've paid and paid again for the chance to make a better world, but who among you will take the ammo and finish the job?

A better world isn't going to be even. It isn't going to be equal for all, because that means everyone has to be slaves and poor as hell. A better world, a chance to be something great, has to be based on America, because that's the best thing going. Want to stop the suffering? Me too. Make everyone and everyplace American. It's the best chance we have, I promise. With the American model, anyone can become more than they were when they started. You can try to argue, but I am the evidence that refutes your false and subversive attempts. I started poorer than you, and now I'm not. My existence is proof that the system works. I believe. Take the ammo I'm trying to pass you. Take up my sword. Make the world better. Believe.

You idiot.

Masking your hate with lies about your love.

You idiot.

Claiming from below that your goals are from above.

You unbelievable idiot.

Your hate and your intolerance claimed to be justified.

My own position somehow vilified.

Yet...

I'm the one preaching tolerance.

I'm the one talking about a future for all.

But...

I'm the villain, I'm the intolerance in your world.

And you...

You're the future.

You liar. You charlatan. You idiot.

What do I care about wiggling a finger puppet? What's the worth in that? Leave that to the lesser animals. It's not about possession, it's about influence. It's about orchestration. A pull there, a little push over here, an idea inserted and a suggestion to a few thousand and I get a movement. Get a few more ideas out, a little tug, and I get a counter movement and a riot, or better yet, a whole war. If I get it right just once, I get millions of Souls to feed on. You want to believe in something? Believe I'm out here, moving you. Or don't. It doesn't matter. I get you to move anyway. I harvest your kind like you might get wheat in a field. Go ahead and pray. Try some hope. It's the flavor of the day. It's your purpose. It's what you were created for. It's why you can't actually DO anything. You fight and you fail to achieve anything other than more failure. It's the best flavor, when you have such high hopes and in the end you lose it all. The sense of abandonment in you, the failure and the loss...

I'll tell you a thing or two about "liberating experiences". You've had one, maybe two that you can think of. You center on them, you focus and say to yourself that was THE moment. But it probably wasn't. I'm betting your "liberating experience" was just another notch in your record of "learned something". Sure, it opened your eyes to something, it might have opened something up for you, or made you see something you didn't see up until then. Sure, you may have changed some of your behaviour, maybe. But "liberating"? What did you discover that set you free?

You maybe had an orgasm for the first time? Discovered you could manipulate someone close to you and get away with it? Ran a red light when no one was looking? These are normal learning experiences, not "liberating experiences". Being liberated is a concept that smacks of freedom, meaning you got more options and had some choices to make, consciously.

Let me take you another step. If you're thinking you're liberated, or free, you're going the wrong direction. The more you know, the less choice you have. That's a fact. You may have the freedom to choose, the freedom to decide what you do or even say (that's going away), but when you KNOW a thing will happen, do you really have a choice? Maybe, assuming you have zero conscience. What if you know your actions will result in your death? Choice? Sure. The death of a hundred. The death of a thousand. Extinction. You see it? If you know an action will result (eventually) in something really bad or really good, what choice do you have? Knowing, are you liberated?

The trouble with being liberated is the assumption that it absolves us of responsibility. Somehow, we all want to be free without realizing that true freedom is actually a lack of responsibility. Liberating experiences, then, can't be things that set us free. They have to be things that are, in essence, lies. If not lies, then selfish motivations with no value outside the self. Lies. Deceptions. Evil.

Please. Tell us all about the lies you've swallowed to justify your selfish behaviour.

(fiendish grin)

It is in the village of Syn-de-Fyr that our story takes place. The village itself is nothing more than a stopover for weary travelers on the road. Northwest forty leagues are the Staining Three, but they have little Power, here.

Syn-de-Fyr has only the one Inn, The Red Barrel, so known for the painted barrel that its proprietor keeps outside the front awning at all times full of rum. The rum is generally good, and so is the proprietor. Barnaby Jack is his name, and for only a trifle and a kind word he will put up even the most cantankerous ass. It is said widely that Barnaby Jack hasn’t a mean bone in his body, no, not a one. For only a trifle he will give the sagest advice, be it on the harvest or on the way to some endeavor. Yes, always a straight talker, Barnaby Jack.

The mistress of The Red Barrel is none other than Patti Fey May, largely known as the town gossip, and even so, just largely known, eh? She and Barnaby have run the Inn for as long as anyone cares to remember, and that is all that anyone will say on it.

The first night saw us in the commons at The Red Barrel, where we were observing the local venue of music and drunken hilarity. The harvest had come, and most of the crop was in. The weather turned, and a rainstorm blew in as darkness fell. Several of the locals hurried out to beat the rain home, and Patti Fey May began to mutter to herself darkly as she cleaned the tables, “It is an ill wind which blows this eve, yes, an ill wind indeed.” Ah, wives, we said. She moved away and into the kitchen, leaving us for just a moment. Barnaby Jack then appeared from the upstairs, and called down to see if we might have any needs before he went abed.

"Nay, Barnaby, nay."

And just as he turned away, the front door burst open and one of the local men ran in screaming, “It got Del, it got him, it got him!” The man was wild with fear, showing the whites around his eyes and scampering to get near the fire. Barnaby Jack rushed down the stairs and leapt to bar the door, just before the latch lifted up and the door rattled fiercely, then boomed once mightily, but the frame and bar held. A deep, echoing laughter then rolled into the room from outside, drowning the sound of the heavy rain, and Barnaby went white and shook like a leaf by his own door.

We spent the night together in the common with a watch posted, though what good that might have done we could not say. None of us slept well, but nought else happened.

Long searching in the morning, well after the sun had risen, at last revealed the body of Del, a simple farmer who lived on the outskirts of the village. He had been one of those locals to try to beat the rain home. We found him off the road in a ditch, not a stones throw from his own door. His eyes were missing and his exposed skin was finely cut to ribbons. All of his clothing had the look of hard use, as if he had spent days working the fields, yet we had seen it was new last evening…

I'm not mentally scarred or broken by what I experienced. I don't get scared by loud noises or freak out for no reason. I'm not disabled, or PTSD'd, or having difficulty reintegrating with society. I get along just fine. There just isn't any way around the fact that I'm different from anyone that hasn't fought a war.

The first time I came home, I thought I might be broken. I thought that maybe I was injured and I needed to get better. I thought this because that's what professional people told me to believe. I tried to talk with them, and they encouraged me to explain what I was thinking and feeling, but they couldn't seem to relate. They couldn't understand, and so their advice was all wrong. They always tried to get me to go back to what I used to be like, but it felt like trying to unlearn how to walk. I understand why so many of my Brothers and Sisters can't seem to reintegrate, the trust they place in "professionals" is the root cause.

The only people that ever understood were others like myself, those who had similar experiences. I recognized a deeper truth as I thought more about it: I wasn't broken, but I had changed. I had grown. I had firsthand knowledge that most people, even very professional people, simply did not have. I remembered something I had read once, some piece of scripture which mentioned "secret knowledge". Suddenly I knew that we had it, every one of us that had fought had some bit of that secret knowledge.

We're not broken, we're evolved. We're evolved, and that's scary to those who aren't.

They sent me a picture of a shoe, I thought. But there was more to it, there was always more than the obvious in these. I just had to look. There was bamboo, some of it fallen about, and a sort of green branch lying nearby. All of it looked to be freshly cut, cleanly snapped, no rough ends or long strips of fibre hanging off. I realized I was looking at the edge of an orchard, I could see the edge of a mud wall and the tree branch had some little fruits or something on it. The shoe was in the middle of the picture. It was black with black laces and reminded me of a those non-slip shoes you see on restaurant staff. You know, the black-soled shoes you can't wear on a gym floor because they leave streaks. I zoomed the picture a little. There was hard packed dark earth under the leaves and branches. I had first assumed it was just shade, but had been only partly right. The earth was wet around the shoe, a rough oval shape, maybe, probably not more than a foot at its widest. It looked like someone had spilled a cup of water. There were coordinates with the picture, so I ran them and pulled up a satellite map. There wasn't any water source within a hundred feet or so. I zoomed the picture again. There were little blood spatters on the ground. I saw it, then, I knew. I zoomed out and looked, and could all but see the impression of where he had fallen. I pulled a new satellite image, hours old, of the site. I mentally made note of the fact that it had become a site in my mind while I examined the new image. I could see the snipped branches over the site, bright almost-white scars over the shaded ground just inside the wall. A fresh divot on the top of the wall, and a few feet away a long black length of local cloth on the ground. A gate in the mud wall just past the scarf was open. A scuff in the earth halfway to the structure outside the gate, long and uneven, pointed to the structure. So. I tapped on my controller, entered my code and pulled up the live imagery. Nothing changed but the position of the sun. Wait. There was a change. In the courtyard of the structure there were some dark rags. No, not rags. A black shirt torn and blood on the ground under it. Fresh blood. I tapped again and a little over a minute later the structure erupted in an orange flash and disappeared under a pillar of dirt and smoke. I logged off and went for a coffee.

I told my girls there is magic in the world. I told them to watch softly for the Fae, to be mindful of the Oak, and to hide their minds when the Gulk are lurking. They didn't ever believe me, not really. I told them they would see the future, they would know before anyone else what would happen. They looked at me and shook their heads. I described to them the feeling they would get when danger came looking, and what to do. I taught them, or so I thought. So I hoped. I read to them, and made them read stories that were old, so old that they had become myth. I showed them the patterns in the grass, in the leaves, in the wind. All things connected, I said. They never did fully believe. Too busy, maybe. Too much city, I thought. And then there was that Gulk in Arizona that fed often. I saw it as a Red Man, most times. My second daughter saw it, too. It would be near one of the intersections, tilting the senses if you weren't very alert. Cars straying through the red light once a year in a small town like that, okay. Cars and trucks speeding through every week or two, people dying in numbers not to be believed in such a small place. A hundred a year, in a two block area. A hunded a year for two years in a row in a town of five thousand. She saw it standing on the corner as we drove through the intersection. She saw it, and it saw her looking at it. She hadn't remembered to hide her mind, to go neutral. My son was nearly killed when someone ran a red light and T-boned him in the intersection. My eldest daughter saved him at the scene, holding off the Gulk with her anger, though she never saw it or really believed it was there. My son recovered in a hospital a hundred miles from there. My wife got sick and doctors couldn't tell why. Allergies, they thought, but nothing tested positive. I moved us rather than fight it. The Red Man had been there for a very long time, maybe ten thousand years, and who am I to end that? It's an old place, anyway, and there are some things in old places that should be left to their own devices. When we got more than a hundred miles away, my wife wasn't sick anymore. Allergies, of course.

The world is full of magic, but we aren't allowed to acknowledge it. We do that, and there are people who make a living telling us we're crazy and need treatment. They'll give us drugs and teach us to disbelieve what we see. We'll be tainted for the rest of our waking lives in the eyes of everyone else if we get caught noticing the magic that rules the universe all around us. Stray sights or feelings are delusions or illusions or dreams, not reality. We are a people of rules and laws grounded by scientific facts which are rooted in physical laws which are in turn dictated by the natural order of the universe. Deny this, and pay. But in the back of your skull you know that if the Fae come out one night and catch you, they're just as likely to play with your guts as they are to kiss you. You know to be quiet around that old tree in the glade, especially if it's an Oak. You know there's a Gulk lurking because your heart gets all racey in the dark for no good scientific reason. Yes, you know. It's a double dangerous place, this world. A place of fear so thick we deny reality and cover it with our science, which we enforce like zealots at the altar. Albeit with good reason. Don't get noticed, don't pull the shroud. The things behind it are always hungry, and you're the food.