THE GRAVE OF MANKIND
—Sudipta Malik
6th Semester
Department of English
The sky over Liporous was not blue; it was the color of a bruised lung, choked with the soot of incinerated dreams and the heavy, metallic tang of blood. Major John de Michael—once known simply as John de Michael before the uniform consumed the man—stood atop a ridge of rubble that had once been a cathedral. In his hand, his pulse-rifle felt less like a weapon of honor and more like a parasite, heavy and draining. Below him, the "grave of mankind" stretched toward a jagged horizon.
John remembered the day he donned the charcoal-grey uniform of the elite Apozylum troops. He had looked in the mirror and seen a savior. Though his family had strongly opposed his decision—fearing the darkness of the world would dim the spirit of his soul—he had been immovable.
"This is something I have always lived for and dreamt of," he had told them. He saw his life as a ship caught in a tumultuous storm, battered but never losing its direction. To him, the call to service was the sweetest fruit. But a year into the campaign, the fruit had rotted. The war wasn't a clash of ideologies; it was a harvest.
The "devil" had sprouted its hood furtively, and the nakedness of greed now unleashed itself openly upon the earth of Liporous. Wherever the eye could travel, there was only the skeleton of ignorant people and the heavy scent of slaughter.
John found his commanding officer, General Vane, staring at a holographic map. Not a map of terrain, but of extraction rates.
"Sir," John’s voice crackled. "What is the meaning of waging this war? They never attacked our country. They were farmers, Vane. Why are we here?"
Vane didn't look up; his eyes were reflected in the amber glow of a nearby fuel cell.
"It is for the sake of their lives that we sustain ours, Major," Vane replied coldly. "Apozylum isn't just a country; it’s a standard of living. Do you think history is written in blood? No. It’s written in ink, and ink requires a stable economy to buy the pen. If their death buys our children a decade of comfort, then their death is a bargain. We live our lives on their part."
Colonel Drax, standing nearby, laughed—a hollow, metallic sound.
"Don't be a poet, de Michael. 'Humanity' is a luxury for people with full bellies. My interest is narrow because the world is narrow. They are the soil, and we are the scythe. It’s the natural order: the clever survive on the parts of the ignorant."
The realization hit John like a kinetic blast. The "oil of Liporous" was the only truth here—the fuel of modernity that Apozylum craved. His patriotism was merely the velvet glove on the hand of a thief. He wasn't a soldier; he was a debt collector for a civilization that had overspent its soul.
He watched the massive extraction pipes plunging into the earth, sucking the lifeblood from the soil to power the "illusions" back home—the neon advertisements and climate-controlled malls of a people who chose not to know the price of their ease.
At dawn, the order came for a final bombardment of the remaining civilian quadrant to make way for a new refinery. Vane’s voice crackled over the comms, dripping with a false sense of glory.
"Initiate the strike, Major. For the glory of the hearth and the fuel of the future."
John stood at the central control console. He looked at his reflection in the glass—the Major, the Patriot, the Destroyer. He didn't target the city below. Instead, he slaved the targeting computer to the base’s own massive storage vats—the millions of gallons of stolen Liporous oil.
"You're right, General," John whispered into the open channel. "History is a ledger. And today, I’m wiping the debt. Patriotism is not the love of one’s government; it is the refusal to let one's country become a monster."
"What are you doing?" Vane screamed as the sensors locked onto their own supply.
"Ensuring the garden dies," John replied. "If we cannot live without devouring others, then we have lost the right to live at all."
He triggered the ignition.
The explosion turned the sky white—a blinding, honest light that stripped away the shadows of the bruised atmosphere. In a single, roaring instant, John incinerated the fuel of modernity. He chose to let Apozylum go dark, preferring they sit in the honest cold of night rather than live by the warmth of a stolen fire. As the fire consumed the ridge, John de Michael finally felt the weight of the rifle vanish. He was no longer a tool; he was, at last, a man standing in the light of his own truth.