Worlds War One

xx [Autumn]

Autumn stopped. The soldiers flanking her on either side halted. She leaned over, staring at hands that flickered in and out of existence, feet that were there then not. Her vision went blurry, and she staggered dizzily. One of the soldiers asked if she was alright—the blonde woman told her to watch her breathing—who's some white girl to tell her what to do?

"I'm a Ghost," Autumn huffed between breaths. "Do I even need to breathe?"

"Technically," Saanvi interjected, "no, you do not."

"Sit," Badia Robinson commanded. Like Autumn was a pet. No one ever minded bossing around a Native. Or maybe now that everyone knew she wasn't Human, they all thought of her as some sort of animal. Autumn Loloma had grown up on a Reservation. She was used to being treated like something other than a person, only usually by people whiter than Badia.

Autumn didn't have any choice but to obey. Her feet were only sometimes visible, and she found the effect disorienting. Compounded with hyperventilation, Autumn felt in no shape to be walking. A felled cedar lay near enough that the blonde Marine could steer Autumn safely to a sitting position.

"What did we do?" Autumn asked. "What happened back there?"

"This is war, Miss Loloma," Saanvi said. "Things die in war."

"Those weren't things. They were people," Autumn gasped, trying to regulate her breathing. The breathing that she didn't need to.

"They were the enemy," Saanvi corrected.

"Weren't they just protecting the Key?" the Airman interceded. At least someone was on Autumn's side. Brown people gotta stick together. "They were trying to keep us from stealing it."

"We're the bad guys?" Autumn asked. "And those were the good guys?"

"I'm not sure what that was," Airman Fox admitted. "There was nothing good about it."

"Good or bad?" Saanvi sighed. "You sound like children tattling to the teacher. You don't understand."

Autumn checked the blonde Marine beside her for her reaction. Callie stared at Saanvi, waiting for an answer. Seaman Choi and Private Ramírez looked frazzled. Drill gazed off in the distance, surely daydreaming of the most boring place he could imagine to take his mind off of Bird people and Ghosts and ideas like Johnny Rotten. Badia Robinson stood her ground at Saanvi's side, arms crossed, expression cross. But she hadn't interrupted her underlings in their challenge to recent events. Yet.

"I fully understand those in power killing others to steal what isn't rightfully theirs," Autumn said.

"The Key belongs to no one," Saanvi argued. "It is beyond the claim of ownership."

"You sound like the white man marching westward."

"Do you disagree with the mission?" Saanvi asked.

No one said a word.

"All of you?" Saanvi challenged.

Badia stood resolute at the civilian's side and no one challenged Lieutenant Robinson. Their ire was directed solely at Saanvi. But Badia finally stepped forward, between the accusers and the accused.

"As the Princess said, this is war," Badia said softly. "Imagine if a group of fanatics had the cure for cancer and decided not to share? Maybe they make some excuse about a religious stance or a moral code. Should a small group of zealots have power over the lives of millions of suffering sick people? What would you do to secure that cure? You could save many, many people. What sort of means would justify the end?"

Autumn saw the other soldiers considering Lieutenant Robinson's words. She was an instrument of white imperialism. She was an officer in the oppressor's Army.

"These Birds had the Key," Badia continued. "The Key is the way to get to the enemy. To make a stand against Mot. If we fail to stop Johnny Rotten, maybe millions will die. Billions. And they refused to give us the means to stop that. They sided with the enemy. By refusing to share the Key, they protected Mot. Our objective was noble. Anyone who stood in the way was the enemy.

"Am I clear?"

"Sir! Yes, sir!" agreed all five subordinates.

Autumn didn't answer. She didn't have to because she wasn't a soldier.

Black or white. Here or there. Maybe Autumn was somewhere in between. She flickered from substantiality to invisibility with each inhale and exhale, breathing herself in and out of existence. Perhaps the nature of a Ghost was to slip between the real and unreal—between something and nothingness.

Perhaps this situation was something else, also. Autumn knew that it wasn't good. People had died back there. But maybe Autumn and the others weren't the ones that had made it so bad. Badia was right. If many scientists had figured out how to cure a disease and did nothing about it, they would be as terrible as the things that made people sick. The Birds had held something ransom that ought to be free. Saanvi didn't want to own the Key—she wanted to use it. It should be free for anyone who needs it. That made Saanvi and the soldiers liberators instead of thieves.

Yet couldn't they have managed a way to take the Key without leaving everyone dead? Maybe the Wider World didn't allow for more subtle methods. Maybe the Way Things Really Were was all violence and death.

They made it back to the starcraft. Saanvi studied Autumn as the soldiers boarded the alien plane. She seemed to see Autumn even when Autumn winked out of view. Even if Autumn moved while invisible, Saanvi's eyes managed to track her progress.

"Do you want us to take you home before we go on?" Saanvi asked.

"No," Autumn said.

"I need to make sure you're still okay with the mission."

"I want to find my sister."

"This isn't the last ugly thing that you'll see, Miss Loloma. I guarantee there will be more dying before we get to Johnny Rotten. Other factions will be more dedicated to protecting their piece of the Wider World than saving the whole thing. Power makes many people selfish, and they would rather doom everything than give up their something."

Autumn turned back toward the place in the forest where a cult had held the object of their faith too closely, where obsession had trumped objectivity. Selfishness over selflessness. Autumn gazed again at Saanvi, holding physical form so her eyes wouldn't wink away and her sight became blind. Saanvi had an objective that could become an obsession. She led the battle to bring Johnny Rotten to his end. Could her quest become focused to the point where she didn't see the effects of her intentions? Maybe Autumn should come along because she could see the things that weren't there.

"I'm alright," Autumn said. "I get it."

"You don't need to get it. You need to start looking for the parts that you can't see. You're a Ghost. You have to stop thinking like a Human. There are other ways of looking at things."

"Where are we headed next?" Autumn asked.

Saanvi started up the steps to board the starcraft. There was no more time to waste. "We're going to the Lost City."

"Is that one of the things normally unseen?"

Saanvi smiled. "Now you're getting it."

Autumn flickered away for a moment as she crossed the doorway into the starcraft. Instead of darkness, like a long blink, she peered into the other place when she winked out. There was something in the dark. A world existed all around her when she went away. A secret place. A whole universe as big as the one when she had her eyes open.

Autumn was beginning to see.