Rebirth

[Zardoz]

​

"You seek-- repaaairr ... Yes?"



"Looook at yourselfff"



"Brokennn... Beatennn. /Abused/."



"Youuu... Seeek... /Repaairrr/."



I want to be free, free again.



"For what prriceee?"



Anything. Everything.



What did I think life was before? Ranked privileges. Promotions. Non-sterilized credits. Continued on-world assignments. Family cohesion preservation. Enhanced augmentations. Even when joining this group of escaped convicts things hardly changed. I was a lab assistant. A scavenger. A martyr. A sacrificial lamb. A prisoner. Giving everything up for a dead end.



How empty and meaningless that life was. I feel like a new man now... I have found a sense of purpose. Even though my body changes and the pain is more than I can bare at times... sometimes the sensation feels like pure ecstasy. I am drunk with this newfound life in my system. They showed me how to make a better man of myself.



Hardly anyone questioned that I was gone or my renewed vitality, few cared as little as they had before my death. Serving them did not matter anyway, not in their own short-sighted trajectories. This will have its advantages as they sleepwalk through life as I had done before my awakening to a new dream, if only they could share in that vision.



Somehow one of them knows this but rejects such a proposition. I will not let him undo what I have done... what we have done.



I will protect them properly this time and show them a new way of living, our way of living.



I will show them a true way of living.



Whatever the cost.