A couple of weeks passed. No one visited me. The doctors went at me. When the modern medical science got done with me, I looked the same as when I arrived in Safun. They reconstructed my face, healed the wounds and erased the scars. Bastards!
I was kept in a separate section and unable to interact with anyone. So I spent my days thinking. I was appalled at what happened and what I did. I thought a lot about R'lok. And Edlon. And Ort. And everyone else. I was a war criminal. Their deaths haunted me. All of them were on my conscience due to my recklessness and stupid ideas. Stupid me extrapolated my cartoonish concepts of "noble savages" and "evil businessmen" on the living people. I accused other people of puttering while I had a severe case of it.
I toyed with the idea of suicide for a while. That would have been easy. I was in a hospital after all. Too much morphine and bye-bye, cruel world. I got better, eventually.
The realization came that we all had fallen victims of the same thing. Edlon, R'lok, Ort, the sawmill workers, the natives, even me. We lived in a world created by fear. That needed to be changed. I didn't know how yet, but I had a goal in life at last.
Then one day a balding man came to visit me. He was an army official and treated me with respect. He told me everything I missed on and made me an offer I couldn't refuse.
Remember the secret thing under Ort's house? That's what saved me. When my cabin blew up, an army satellite registered the explosion. This small metal box suspended in emptiness sent the signal to the high command. They thought that there was a massive attack on their "thing" and ordered their troops to protect it. So they dropped on the scene in force and searched the area. Obviously, they didn't find terrorists, but they stumbled upon Ort's body. Other cabins were checked and discovered to be empty.
After that the brave soldiers arrived at the sawmill. There they found bodies, more bodies and some natives who were eliminated on sight. They suspected an alien insurrection and started to comb the area. Eventually, they caught my signal. You already know the rest.
The village was leveled to the ground. As was the surrounding forest. Someone up there decided that the incident was too much and some measures had to be taken.
First, complete cleansing. All surviving aliens were rounded up and culled. It took some time, but nothing compares to a determined soldier. I'm literally the sole survivor. However, they didn't get satisfied with just shooting the natives.
Second, a complete hush-hush. Someone up there decided that incident was too much for the public. About a hundred humans died at the hand of the "savage" aliens - that information would have led to outbreaks of violence against all non-humans. About six hundred Safunians died at the hands of the army — the brass would have been eaten alive by mass media and rights organizations, and I'm not even talking about ghetto riots. So they made it look like a natural catastrophe happened. In other words, they burned the whole area. A forest fire at the end of winter. What a long shot! No evidence survived. That included the bodies of my friends.
I got a whiff of a rumor that one general K.P. Aster pulled some strings and removed the sword of Damocles from over my head. Not far, like five inches to the right. Instead of life imprisonment I got a medal for "heroism in the face of adversity," was stripped of rank and discharged from the army. They promised to give me a monetary compensation, which I got just a week later. I signed a non-disclosure agreement. I was never to talk or mention the incident, to distance myself from the people involved and never approach their relatives.
In the end, I've lost everything I had except for the flashlight. No one deemed it evidence or anything important. Lucky me.
Three months after the incident, I was released from their web, a clean-slate man with nowhere to go. That was when I decided to write this book.
I holed up, lying low, and got to work. Fortunately, all my files were in the cloud, so I easily restored them. When I had doubts about making all of this public, I'd look at the flashlight and at the photo of Edlon holding that fish. People must know the truth. I hope that this story will show them both sides, and they'd come to right conclusions. Maybe I'm wrong, and I just wrote a bomb that would start a widespread riot. I don't know, I'm a mere human.
So what happens next?
I'll go to Loting. Visit Edlon's parents and tell them what happened to their son. While I'm there, I'll maybe call on Ned and check on his house and the pug. I hope he realized his dream.
After that, I'll acquire a new ID and a new face.
After that, I'll upload this book on the Web.
After that, I'm gone into the ether. I won't disclose here what I'm going to do and where I'll be; they'll come after me, sure as death. But I'll be there. Maybe you'll even pass me in the street and won't know it.
This book is my last courtesy to those who died on Safun.
For all the natives and the sawmill workers.
For that guy who kept wiping his nose.
For Lutice Morkan.
For Fomas Pimock.
For Ort Kloburn.
For R'lok.
For Edlon Tepesh.
Wealder out.
Under the Canopy Page 20