Chapter 2: Spine

About six months after I was thawed, after completing basic training, my spine was replaced with one made of reinforced plastic.

The faint green crystal embedded in my left hand served as both my identification and my portable terminal.

And so, starting today, I officially joined the ranks of the modified humans.

***

“…I renounce my humanity—”

“Why is it that a bunch of sleepers from your generation say that line right after surgery?”

“It’s a spell to make the pain go away.”

I replied half-heartedly, then bowed my head to the doctor who’d come for the checkup.

“Thanks for everything.”

Most of my original spine had been preserved, just in case. A small piece, though, I was allowed to keep as a memento. I had it made into a necklace. Touching it calmed me down. It was a little sharp, so when I gripped it, it hurt. I figured I’d sand it down smooth someday, if I got the chance.

With an artificial spinal cord, a personal identification crystal, and a spine necklace in place of dog tags, I had finally become a half-fledged infantryman.

Infantry. Yeah, infantry. In six months of training, I became infantry.

The reason I’d been awakened in this world five hundred years in the future was simple: manpower shortage. Well, to put it bluntly, this era needed slaves.

Ah—now that I think about it, I should probably mention: right now, Earth is at war with aliens.

Insectum, the bug people.

Bubble, the floating spheres.

Tooth, the beastmen.

Those three races, and us humans, are at war. Maybe because we’re fighting on home turf, we’re holding our own—for now. But even so, we’re still being pushed back bit by bit.

That’s why I was thawed.

It’s faster to turn an adult into a soldier than to raise one from a baby—that’s one reason. The other is that, among us sleepers, there’s sometimes a jackpot.

I wasn’t one, but occasionally there’s a genius among us, someone frozen in preparation for a future crisis. Even if they’ve lost their memory, they’re still talented enough to be useful.

Of course, thawing costs money. Living costs money. So naturally, our owners tell us, fresh out of stasis: “This is how much you’re worth.”

Eighty percent of us are amnesiac debtors. A hundred percent are in debt. And that debt is used to force us into the war. That’s what it means to be a sleeper. There’s no salvation. But there’s no point resisting either. If you do, they turn you into “educational material” for sleeper training. And that… really, truly, isn’t salvation.

So I became infantry. Infantry for Company × Company—sometimes called “Double C” or “Dub-C.”

Our main job was resource extraction and eliminating the risks that came with it. Among those risks were hostile aliens. Naturally, that meant Dub-C’s operations included combat.

That’s right. As infantry, my job… was that combat.