Day 138 - Societies Story

Societies Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

The tide of battle was turning. Jack knew it. Everyone in his unit knew it. They looked to the ground instead of each other. Their spirits were low, nearly broken. No one wanted to signal surrender, but retreat was nearly as bad. A decision had to be made. They had been outflanked and cut off and lost in the woods. They were in danger of being encircled. If that happened it really would be over. But no one wanted to retreat. No one gave a signal or moved.  Jack was a second commander – it wasn’t his decision. But no one knew where Robert was. He was MIA.  Everyone hoped for the best, but feared the worst.

All eyes fell to Jack. It had now become his decision. He looked around at his crew. These were his friends. Some of them he considered family. He didn’t want the responsibility. Whatever he chose he was faced with failure and loss. History would judge everything he did right or wrong, protected behind hindsight with the ability to ignore the human elements and mistakes and desperations. He was no hero, but he was no quitter either. Surrender wasn’t in his veins. It wasn’t how he wanted to be remembered. He didn’t think anyone else here would have a problem with that. They were here for the chance to live and breathe free. Retreat just felt too much like compromise. But charging headlong at the enemy? That was suicide.

Jack decided a breakout was the only option. A small force would act as a distraction, hopefully buying time for the rest to concentrate their power and make one large push. Jack had read plenty about the blitzkrieg warfare and the Battle of the Bulge. If he could use that knowledge, if he could learn from the mistakes of the past, if they could break through and move fast enough, if they could avoid getting bogged down in battles they couldn’t win, if they could just keep moving, they might still have a chance...

The battlefield was a strange sight to behold. It was like a strange adolescent nightmare, mixed images and times and places and people. It made no logical sense. The charge was led by a combination of Confederate Nazi soldiers with bio-enhanced bodies and equipped with nano-infused weaponry. Jack had a pirate eye-patch, an old west duster, and his body armor looked like it was half from the dark ages and half from the far future. No one imagined the Battle of the Bulge full of soldiers from throughout history and a dozen different genres, with a time traveling Robert E. Lee leading one attack while vampire Spartans led a counter charge.

It was a strange battle, but all of their battles had been strange recently. They had done Civil War reenactments. They had tried medieval tournaments. But all that got boring. Somebody had the brilliant idea to reenact the famous battles of alternative history. It was a chance to rewrite history with no boundaries or sense of historic accuracy. Jack hadn’t been there when the idea was first suggested, but he embraced it quickly as did most everyone else. They were all cosplayers anyway. Most of them loved science fiction or fantasy of both. It was really a perfect idea. The ultimate chance to geek out in far too many ways all at once.

So they began to mix things up. Early on there were a lot of more realistic (if such a word could be applied to such a fictitious driven endeavor) battles. People wanted to be Vikings or Spartans or some other famous fighting force from throughout history. There were lots of ninjas and Samurai warriors. Apparently there was a great need to determine just who the greatest warrior society of all time really was.

But then people really started to embrace the fantastical. Some people wanted to be robots. Some wanted to be aliens. Some wanted to be superheroes. It devolved pretty quickly from a well thought out re-imagining of history to something closer to a costume party in the park. But that was okay, everyone had fun.

Pretty early on there was one major debate and battle of the very nature of the characters and creations. Some demanded that they had to be original. Others just wanted to play dress up as their favorite fictional character. There was pretty much a fifty-fifty spit. One argument was for originality and creativity and imagination. The other was for fun. Hard to argue against fun. So the battles became mixes. Usually one team ended up being characters from Star Wars or Firefly. Another team might be made up of all variations of vampire fiction. Another would cling to the premise of alternative history and each month they came as a different revised timeline – they were from a land where Rome never fell, or as Nazis in space, or from a world where Tesla technology revolutionized everything. Not everyone was that inventive. Some people just did things like wear an eye patch or draw a scar on their face. Those were the type that didn’t come every time. But usually there were at least 3 or 4 teams to do battle, enough to at least create some interesting strategies and battlefield alliances and betrayals.

Jack had a lot of friends on a lot of different teams. He usually tried to play on the side with his best friend Alan. Alan liked to dress up as an Alien Menace Thomas Jefferson. Jack didn’t understand that fascination, but who was he to argue.

Usually there was some sort of get-together afterwards – dinner or drinks or catching a movie, or something. Eugene from the Steampunk Hitlers made a good glass of mead, and sometimes he would have people over to his house to sample one of his latest concoctions. Jack didn’t always go out, but if his team won he usually tried to find the time to celebrate. Tonight he didn’t feel like it. Tonight there was a get-together of a totally different sort. There were those that reenacted other types of rituals. Tonight was Lupercalia. Jack didn’t go in for those sorts of things. He wanted nothing to do with any of that. There was a girl Linda from the Pixie Hunters, and if she went to an event, he usually went to the event. He didn’t know what she was doing tonight. He didn’t want to ask. He was afraid to ask. He didn’t want to face the answer either way. Sometimes it was easier not to know.