A question
The following are E775's personal thoughts, not a part of the current story
So... wow. A lot has been going on lately. Reassignments, deployments, readiness exercises. Demolition of the older Deep Spatial stations, and doing security for construction in Coruscant. I've been damn near all around the galaxy in the past few months, all at the expense of the lovely taxpaying citizens of the Republic, and I've seen just about everything there is to see, all the way out to the Outer Rim. Sometimes I feel like I'm losing touch with what I'm supposed to be. I mean, I'm a clone trooper. What mentality am I meant to have? What am I supposed to do after I'm unfit for combat? I heard a rumor circulating the barracks at Terrestria Novata (one of those planets waaay the hell out in space) that because of our "growth acceleration" used to make us ready to fight earlier, we would be dead before the Republic had a problem with us. Are we then no more than the simplest of battle droids? It would seem like a bad idea, then, making droids that need food and medpacks, and may the gods forbid that someone in the Senate ever question the morality of this whole thing.
I grew up under the harsh fluorescent light of the surveillance robots. They watched me and my fellow clones grow up. The Kaminoans did their best to ensure that not too many of us died in training, but if we did, who really cared? It was only a matter of slapping another development pod on the incubator. I raced through my first ten years of life, having them compressed into the span of just about 2 years. None of us ever really knew what was going on. There was nothing out of the ordinary. We didn't know any better. When they started training us with "live fire" it was common to see the guy that you just ate midday food with get shot in the faceplate by the guy who you ate breakfast with. Death was ever-present, and doled out in generous helpings, by your own friends, whom you would gladly place a round of plasma through. It was as if we didn't know what we were doing. We were rewarded for killing people, and though the Kaminoans thought we were all the same, we could tell when someone never came back from a training session. Then they had the wonderful idea of splitting us up into two massive divisions. Red and Blue. We ate only with our team. We were trained to truly and deeply hate the other team. They were not like us, we were told, they were different, THEY were the enemy.
After a few more years of this, they sent us out into the field, being particularly careful to never deploy any former Reds on a mission with any former Blues. They messed up once, as was inevitable. A whole legion of former Reds was working away at a city center on Felucia, when the "reinforcements" of former Blues showed up en masse. Someone found out that the two were "enemies", and as one thing led to another, the battlefield was scattered with hundreds of dead clones and destroyed gunships. It wasn't that any of them had consciously thought to kill the others, it was ingrained in them, along with the obedience and unwaveringly loyal cooperation. I say all of this with an air of contempt. "How could they have been so foolish?" But the truth is, I am no different at all. We are all clones, bred for battle, without thought to the consequence. We were meant to be the perfect warriors, the Republic's answer to the armies of battle droids hoarded by the Confederates. The problem that no one saw was this: We had minds.
The question that I ask myself every day, the question that plagues all of my thoughts is one that seems so basic in it's concept. Do I really have a mind of my own?I think, therefore I am. But do I really think if I have things so driven into my mind that they avoid conscious reasoning or emotion?
Am I really alive?
-Epsilon 775 (Sev)
So... wow. A lot has been going on lately. Reassignments, deployments, readiness exercises. Demolition of the older Deep Spatial stations, and doing security for construction in Coruscant. I've been damn near all around the galaxy in the past few months, all at the expense of the lovely taxpaying citizens of the Republic, and I've seen just about everything there is to see, all the way out to the Outer Rim. Sometimes I feel like I'm losing touch with what I'm supposed to be. I mean, I'm a clone trooper. What mentality am I meant to have? What am I supposed to do after I'm unfit for combat? I heard a rumor circulating the barracks at Terrestria Novata (one of those planets waaay the hell out in space) that because of our "growth acceleration" used to make us ready to fight earlier, we would be dead before the Republic had a problem with us. Are we then no more than the simplest of battle droids? It would seem like a bad idea, then, making droids that need food and medpacks, and may the gods forbid that someone in the Senate ever question the morality of this whole thing.
I grew up under the harsh fluorescent light of the surveillance robots. They watched me and my fellow clones grow up. The Kaminoans did their best to ensure that not too many of us died in training, but if we did, who really cared? It was only a matter of slapping another development pod on the incubator. I raced through my first ten years of life, having them compressed into the span of just about 2 years. None of us ever really knew what was going on. There was nothing out of the ordinary. We didn't know any better. When they started training us with "live fire" it was common to see the guy that you just ate midday food with get shot in the faceplate by the guy who you ate breakfast with. Death was ever-present, and doled out in generous helpings, by your own friends, whom you would gladly place a round of plasma through. It was as if we didn't know what we were doing. We were rewarded for killing people, and though the Kaminoans thought we were all the same, we could tell when someone never came back from a training session. Then they had the wonderful idea of splitting us up into two massive divisions. Red and Blue. We ate only with our team. We were trained to truly and deeply hate the other team. They were not like us, we were told, they were different, THEY were the enemy.
After a few more years of this, they sent us out into the field, being particularly careful to never deploy any former Reds on a mission with any former Blues. They messed up once, as was inevitable. A whole legion of former Reds was working away at a city center on Felucia, when the "reinforcements" of former Blues showed up en masse. Someone found out that the two were "enemies", and as one thing led to another, the battlefield was scattered with hundreds of dead clones and destroyed gunships. It wasn't that any of them had consciously thought to kill the others, it was ingrained in them, along with the obedience and unwaveringly loyal cooperation. I say all of this with an air of contempt. "How could they have been so foolish?" But the truth is, I am no different at all. We are all clones, bred for battle, without thought to the consequence. We were meant to be the perfect warriors, the Republic's answer to the armies of battle droids hoarded by the Confederates. The problem that no one saw was this: We had minds.
The question that I ask myself every day, the question that plagues all of my thoughts is one that seems so basic in it's concept. Do I really have a mind of my own?I think, therefore I am. But do I really think if I have things so driven into my mind that they avoid conscious reasoning or emotion?
Am I really alive?
-Epsilon 775 (Sev)
posted by Epsilon 775 at 8:01 PM
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