poem25 Jul 2022 05:54 am
Michelle Muenzler
It's not really a gun unless it's loaded, your father said which doesn't make much sense the more you think about it what with the silent zzzt of your rifle whining in your ear, battery charger dangerously low and your opponents those octopodal bear-backed who-knows-whats slinging shells from tubes that increase in speed the further they fly as though inertia has no meaning and maybe for them it doesn't because where is the meaning when it's just you and them and their closest galactic ally some species you have yet to even identify but mostly reminds you of a bathtub gone to rust and trundling about on five legs, towing behind it a half-ton rod and if the rod intersects space and time, disconnects and when it reconnects evaporates your companion beside you who was only clinging as best he could to the laws he knew to the weapons of familiarity then yes, if said rod should break physics as well and then reappear all handwavium aback that awkward creature once more then is it not also a gun? Did it not speed its target to an unlikely end there and gone in a flash of powder as the dust of your mate collapses behind the bulkhead Maybe it did and maybe it didn't it's hard to say in the chaos of combat but if it did then maybe you can too simply appear like a bullet, lodged in the soft appendages you think might be your enemies' hearts or whatever is most important to them your fist a precision rifle, death reloaded, 18 plasma charges a minute melting your opponents and turning them into so much slick paste running down your fingertips And maybe you're all guns here on the battlefield whether loaded or not or maybe, like your father's words none of this really matters because the battle is now your aim is poised and the intent to kill is etched against your finger a bullet of its own
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[…] poem, “A Bullet Your Own”, Polu Texni, July 2022, http://www.polutexni.com/?p=10857 […]