Casualties of War

I call myself Cell.
It is who I am. It is what I was made to be.

A cell, as you know, is a tiny, miniscule part of the body.
Working together with billions upon billions of other cells in endless synchronity, it accomplishes its goal:
to sustain life.

But that is where we differ.
I was a tiny, miniscule part of a whole, working together with billions upon billions who were identical to myself.

But my - our - purpose was not to sustain life, but to eradicate it.

We were created in the year 400 A.D.
Only two factions remained in the world: the Americans and the Japanese.
All other countries and nations had merged with one side or another.
Now was the time of the final confrontation, and American needed soldiers.
Lots of them.
The best that money could buy.

So a single man was chosen.
A high-quality soldier who was ruthless, yet fiercely loyal; indomitable, yet willing to take orders.
Someone who would kill without a second thought, yet who would kill only those he was ordered to.
From this man was made thousands of identical copies.

That man was me, or rather, my predecessor.

You might say I do not sound like a cold-blooded killer.
You would be right. I am not a cold blooded killer. But I was made to be one.
I was made no differently from the tens of thousands of other MEs, the tens of thousands of other Cells,
who were created to fight and win the AmJap War.

I WAS a cold-blooded killer. I fought in Monsaka with all the rest of my fellow Cells;
we killed over a million Japs before the great city fell.
And then we killed some more.

But then, something went wrong.....

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Last Modified: 5/2/98
Wendy Elizabeth Kemp