Jay Allan - Tombstone

My first few years in the Corps hadn't been easy and, though I didn't know it yet, the next few to come would be even more difficult. But as I sat there and took stock, I came to realize that I had indeed found a home. Yes, we fought and struggled, and some of us died, but there were things on the frontier worth fighting for. When I was discharged from the hospital on Armstrong I spent my month's leave on the planet. I had the time to just look around, and what I saw amazed me. The people were busy, industrious…and free.

They were having local elections when I was there, and half a dozen candidates were running. I stood one day and watched a live debate in the main square. I was mesmerized - they were actually arguing issues and hurling pointed questions at each other. It was nothing like Earth, where the elections were a farce and the government controlled every aspect of its citizens' lives. These people were building a future, for themselves and for mankind, and we were here to protect them.

It made me think about Earth and wonder why the people accepted the system that oppressed them so badly. It was a nightmare, a grotesque, a hideous perversion of the human condition. But it worked, after a fashion. The Cogs were ruled by deprivation, by the need to focus solely on the basics of survival. The middle classes were governed by the fear of losing what they had. They could see how the Cogs lived, and to them, not born to such deprivation, it was a terrifying prospect. Part of me resented that they, mostly educated and vital to the functioning of society, meekly accepted the system when they could have agitated for change. I wanted to despise them as cowards and blame them for the plight of the Cogs, for the reality that my parents were forced to live.

But it is easy to make such judgments, and far more difficult to be honest with yourself. If my father had been offered a middle class life, if we’d been able to live in an apartment in the Louisville Downtown or the Washbalt Core instead of some miserable leaky hut on the farm…I’m not so sure I wouldn’t have been ruled by the same fear of losing it. I like to think I would have fought for change, but I’m not so sure. I would now, of course, but then, never having seen what was possible? I just don’t know.

But none of that mattered anymore. By a bizarre road I had found my path. For the first time I felt my life had purpose and I knew the sacrifices were worthwhile. I was finally home.