Search Results
4/30/2025, 2:55:33 AM
[1/3]
You got hit in the head pretty hard during the landing. The wound, somewhere on your scalp, still occasionally sends a trickle of blood down your face. You make a conscious effort to collect your racing thoughts and recall important details in order to see how badly off in the cerebral department you truly are.
You are Stanley Harper, twenty-nine years old, formerly of Hendersonville, North Carolina. Alright, you got that much. Buzzing is what you remember next. A nearly decade-long experience of rebellion and unrest has solidified an intense aversion to the telltale signs of aerial drones and an unhealthy dose of general paranoia.
You went into the Appalachians with many others all those years ago with visions straight out of several old movies and paintings. Romantic flanks of grey-clad riflemen under a waving, defiant flag, well-known actors playing the role of guerillas against a foreign invader, and the songs and aesthetics of rebel groups from across the globe danced through the minds of many, but the realities of modern guerilla warfare made themselves known painfully quickly. The woods wasn't where you went to fight, it was where you went to hide, to squeeze yourself into a ball underneath a thermal-insulating tarp while the drones buzzed overhead, hoping they didn't detect a hint of human warmth and drop a bomb straight into your lap. You hate the buzzing with a passion, and that fact will likely follow you to the grave.
The pain you feel right now unlocks further remembrances of your recent past. The sores, blisters, and fatigue as you marched dozens of miles through the backcountry. The hunger, while always being on short rations. The scramble after your team fires off their mortar or buries a mine or two. The sight of the houses and businesses you left burning after one of their occupants offended one of the officers you seldom got to see. The occasional flash drive with payment in crypto. Finally being able to return (though always incognito) to civilization for a brief respite to soothe your soul and burn that payment away, only to get a knock at some motel door days later calling you back up into the hills.
You got hit in the head pretty hard during the landing. The wound, somewhere on your scalp, still occasionally sends a trickle of blood down your face. You make a conscious effort to collect your racing thoughts and recall important details in order to see how badly off in the cerebral department you truly are.
You are Stanley Harper, twenty-nine years old, formerly of Hendersonville, North Carolina. Alright, you got that much. Buzzing is what you remember next. A nearly decade-long experience of rebellion and unrest has solidified an intense aversion to the telltale signs of aerial drones and an unhealthy dose of general paranoia.
You went into the Appalachians with many others all those years ago with visions straight out of several old movies and paintings. Romantic flanks of grey-clad riflemen under a waving, defiant flag, well-known actors playing the role of guerillas against a foreign invader, and the songs and aesthetics of rebel groups from across the globe danced through the minds of many, but the realities of modern guerilla warfare made themselves known painfully quickly. The woods wasn't where you went to fight, it was where you went to hide, to squeeze yourself into a ball underneath a thermal-insulating tarp while the drones buzzed overhead, hoping they didn't detect a hint of human warmth and drop a bomb straight into your lap. You hate the buzzing with a passion, and that fact will likely follow you to the grave.
The pain you feel right now unlocks further remembrances of your recent past. The sores, blisters, and fatigue as you marched dozens of miles through the backcountry. The hunger, while always being on short rations. The scramble after your team fires off their mortar or buries a mine or two. The sight of the houses and businesses you left burning after one of their occupants offended one of the officers you seldom got to see. The occasional flash drive with payment in crypto. Finally being able to return (though always incognito) to civilization for a brief respite to soothe your soul and burn that payment away, only to get a knock at some motel door days later calling you back up into the hills.
Page 1