Juncture 2.6

A long thin face appeared in the brush about fifteen feet away, closely followed by a long neck, and a low, saurian body. The lizard appeared to shimmer in varying rainbow colors as it ran toward Major General Siegfried.

I had time to think “Holy shit, it’s a velociraptor” before the lizard pounced. Major General Siegfried ducked out of the way, sending the lizard toward me. I stumbled backward, scrabbling to get as far away from the dinosaur as possible. It skidded toward me, made an about-face, and charged Major General Siegfried once again.

To his credit, he was unperturbed. He had one hand in his jacket pocket, and he swayed left, just far enough to avoid the dinosaur’s snapping jaws. As fast as lightning, he struck the lizard in the cheek.

I can’t emphasize this enough.

Major General Siegfried.

Punched.

A velociraptor.

In the face.

The powerful blow added to the velociraptor’s momentum, sending it slamming face-down into the muddy ground. He pulled out the hand that was in his jacket pocket, it was carrying a small gun. His face was remorseless as he looked down on the lizard and shot it in the back of the head. Its head bounced against the ground, blood spraying from the bullet hole. Siegfried shot two more times, and the lizard stopped moving. Its legs and arms twitched, then fell still.

I stood there, open-mouthed. I didn’t know what to say. While Siegfried seemed like a kind, genteel six-and-a-half-foot-tall monster of a person before, he seemed terrifying now. There were some blood spattered on his well-creased pants, and he was calmly putting the odd-looking gun back in his jacket pocket.

I slowly walked back up toward the lizard then knelt down next to it, making sure to avoid the blood. I was borrowing clothes from the OST, and didn’t know if they would take too kindly to bloodstains.

On closer inspection, the lizard’s skin wasn’t a shiny rainbow; rather, it was covered in hundreds of thousands of small feathers, overlaying each other to form an almost protective coat. I made sure that it was dead, by the age-old tradition of waving my hand in front of its face. It didn’t move, so I plucked several feathers out and looked at them.

Even closer up, they still had that shimmering quality. When I turned the feather back and forth, it changed colors across the surface, going from a light turquoise to a deep crimson.

I stuck them in my pocket, being careful to not bend them, and stood to face Major General Siegfried. The eerie calm look on his face was gone, replaced with his normal, mildly entertained look.

“Holy fuck, man,” I said to him, “I mean, what the shit!?”

His eyebrows creased.

“No need for such language. You didn’t think I came here just for the beauty, did you?”

The fact that he had a response prepared threw me for a loop. I nodded my head, waiting for him to continue.

“I bring new recruits here to demonstrate two points. One is, yes, there is a lot of beauty involved in what we do. We get to see all the best parts of human history, and the world in general.” He knelt down, and ran two fingers through the blood on the ground, and rubbed them together, as if demonstrating,

“But there’s also danger. We go to times of war, times of sickness and poverty. We deal with human filth, with monsters. We must be prepared for any scenario.” He looked me directly in the eyes, the calm look was back as he addressed me directly.

“We may even need to kill. That is why I bring new recruits here. The wilderness is beautiful, but it’s also wild, untamed. Dangerous. One last time, I want to make absolutely certain that you understand what you’re getting in to. You need to take this seriously.”

A lump had formed in my throat, and I swallowed it nervously. He stared at me, unblinking, waiting for an answer.

“I-I think that I need to think more about it,” I said.

We were both silent for a very long time, probably around ten seconds, but it felt much, much longer.

“I’d like to go back now, though.” I continued, “To take all of this in.”

He nodded, “Okay. Back in the office then.” He pulled out the small phone-like device, and the office materialized. It was much closer than I thought it would have been, as somehow I felt as though we had gone further than we actually did.

We stepped inside, and Siegfried went behind the desk and sat down. He busied himself with typing and pressing buttons, and while he did so, I went over to the bookshelf.

I needed to calm myself down, I was frazzled. I was tapping my hand against my leg rapidly, making the soft noise of impact against fabric.

I focused on the various media on the shelves. There were rows of books, and stacks of disc cases. I looked at the book closest to my eye-level. After several seconds I was able to decipher the title written on the spine. It was a hard-cover copy of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

I pulled it off the shelf and brought it over to the couch, where I sat down and opened it. I wasn’t going to read it, I wasn’t calm enough to even try. I just wanted to make it clear to Major General Siegfried that I didn’t want to talk to him.

The rest of the trip was silent, with a slight shudder when the office righted itself into position, and Siegfried escorted me to the quarters I had been living in. He departed once I entered, and I sat on the bed with the lights out, still in the clothes I was wearing.

Did I have it in me? Was I prepared to take a life, even for my own safety?

Those thoughts swirled around inside my head as I stripped off the clothes and got under the sheets.

I didn’t sleep.