[ WP ] A warrior from a planetary culture with literally no concept of surrender or quarter sits detained in a POW camp .

`` I know he's not from here, but does he have to sit up all night, staring at the Goddamn wall? I know this is a picnic for most of us, but a few these scatterbrains here are just a little on edge as it is.'' 
 
 It was confusion. No one knew what it was, maybe not even the man himself, but each night he would look up at the stars, or even just at a colourless patch of darkness and think and think and think. The wheels would turn inside his head until they lost traction, and every night would end with the bland blue and black canvas, dancing with imagined colours, long after the gears came to a grinding halt. The days were n't so hard. Two Summers had passed already, and everyone knew by then there was n't a soul coming to get them. So in a way we were all like him, though some of us did n't like to see it that way. But shooting hoops out on the dirt, or planting cabbages to pass the time, well it was all the same really. This war ended, we would be the first to go, the burned out scum from a victory pyre or the messy attempts to destroy the evidence as the enemy closed in and thoughts of criminal war courts started to set in. Win or lose, we were stuck on the bottom of the barrel somewhere, it was just a question of how soon you wanted to check out before that time came. 
 
 Sgt. Joseph Miller, that was the first bit of fire and majesty to enter into this camp. He was a legend among the Air Marshals, shot down 13 enemy planes on the attack on Astra Romana, an attack that none of his comrades, God rest their souls, ever made it out of alive, but he sent the Luftwaffe on their way. Took out the refinery too. Yeah, he was the first one. Got out of two POW camps before arriving at this one, and could n't wait to add a third to his list. Why they did n't put a bullet through his head the second they got him from the second attempt had a little to do with notoriety and value, as such, as a prisoner, but had a lot to do with embarrassment over the penetrability of their camps. That's how we saw it anyway. We dug the tunnel, we hid the dirt, got half of us through on the day of and the whole bloody thing collapsed on him. 
 
 There were a few of them to come through like that. It's not hard to remember their names, but it gets harder to remember how soon they come in, one after another. You'd like to think that a lot of time has passed, and that you're deadset against helping them not because you think there's no chance at all, but just because enough time in a place like this does take the fight out of you. A man can only watch so many bullets being shot through the chest of his friends, even through his acquaintances, eventually even through his enemies. There's a set number you can tolerate in a lifetime. No one knows how much that number can climb to, but when you're through, you're through, and there is n't any going back. And yet you'll still see it, the universe has an indifference to it like that, does n't matter how much you can tolerate when there's more coming, but you can choose how much of it you'll participate in. 
 
 There were a few of them like this, but none like Clark Wilson. Officially, he had no rank, and he was iconic alright. You look at his record and it's astonishing the feats he's accomplished, and there was n't a green soldier in here did n't know his name. Yet no rank. Why do you suppose that is? Let me tell you a story. It's a story that I hold personally important as it's one of the few I can verify beyond all the rumors that went floating around getting swollen by feverish nights and boredom, horror, and hearsay. One I was actually there to see. There was this shipment of tires making it's way down the coast of the Mediterranean, out to the old desert fox making his campaign into Benghazi. There was a warehouse in that desert city with several trucks stocked to the brim with our payday, ready to be shipped out that morning. Go in, kill the guards, blow up the trucks, get out. Real simple stuff so long as you knew how to set a bomb off without losing your head in the process. We get to the factory at 20:00 and see the whole thing as this towering mass of flames and ash. No word on a mission abort, no influx of the Kraut scum picking through the rubble and rallying death squads. Just the crackle of fire and the smell of burning rubber on an empty night. Great. Terrific. We were about to abort, give ourselves a pat on the back for a job well done, when we heard this feint sound coming through the roar of the building. Keys on a piano, and you could just barely strain your ears to hear it, Bach's Partita No. 6 in E Minor. Now, this is the time to go. Either it's some onlooker with a death wish singing these notes to the beauty of the night, or someone with a great sense of the bloodshed to come and wanting to savour it preemptively, or who knows what in the fuck because none of this scene makes sense anyway and it's time to get the hell out of there. So we go in. We're looking for the sound of this piano through back alleys that weave along close to the warehouse. There are jeeps piled up on the main road, but no one's inside. People sure got out of them in a hurry by the looks of it, and while I never make a claim to any preternatural insight into the state of the world, you get a sense that they were n't being returned to any time soon. We walk further into the streets, still slinking along the shadows, and another sound comes a little into earshot. Something like a wheezing sound, but it's impossible to describe, almost like it's turned metallic, like your inside of some damp cell with a thousand rats breathing in a single breath and tweeting in between. It's strange. Inside this small room at the top of this apartment building is this thin copper pipe attached to a weight at the bottom that held it upright. There were three kids tied together and bound with the pipe going through each of their throats, one by one, with the sound of their breathing amplified at the top by this cone. They were still alive, even then, when we got there. At the end of the room was a man sitting at the piano and playing. We shot at him, but nothing happened. He just kept playing, did n't phase him. When we could n't kill him and he had no apparent interest in killing us, we asked about the kids, he told me, `` They were n't Americans, and they were going to die anyway. This way they make a good distraction for my team here waiting at the door beside you.'' And he pointed out two men in black completely, ducked down in the darkness. When I asked them why they were `` Going to die anyway'', he looked back down at his keys and said to me, `` Everyone has to.'' 
 
 And now he stares at walls. You are probably wondering about the bullets bit, or why he has no title and still we do n't lodge a bullet in the back of his head that might sit. Two answers that are n't probably going to sit too well. The first is, they say anyway, he came from the sky. No one knows a day before this where he came from, but the story is he floated down here one day, been fighting ever since. And thankfully on our side of the fence. Top brass does n't give a shit who they keep on payroll, so long as they do n't have to pay them or give them credit for the crimes against humanity they commit. Must be for him that we're something more like livestock, I do n't know, but he plays nice with us, and we have a war to win. No one is going to bargain for this one, either, the whole world wants him, but no one wants to say they bailed him out. 
 
 I looked at him one night, I never wanted to think of a person like this again, reminded me too much of the people I work for, and the soft underbelly I'm rotting here to protect. But I opened my eyes to look at him one night to find that the sparkle was pointing right back at me. `` You want to know why I'm here, is that it?'' A soft voice called out in the darkness. `` Do n't flatter yourself.'' And I closed my eyes, but I could n't get the thought out of my head, `` Why do n't you leave? Does n't seem like bullets add much in the way as deterrents.'' I waited, but I could n't tell if he was even thinking about it anymore, he just kept staring at me, without blinking, and smiling blindly into the darkness, `` I will, I'll leave. I thought there was some value to gaining knowledge and insight, or that the Germans had given up in some way.'' he was twirling his fingers together, getting visibly more anxious with his shoulders screwing up as he talked, `` I did n't know you could n't hurt each other because you all experience it, this is what I've figured out here. Since I know that, I have to get ready to leave. Leave everything.''
