Corps283_-_Chapter_3.pdf

[ShaVeK HaChaver 814]

III.
​

That night, the platoon was graced with an unusual, unusual sight. There were many sounds that evening, like the crackling of little green orbs of lightning in the distance, signalling to us that another greenback or headhumper had arrived to be shot in the morning. I heard the distant and garbled vocoders of the unlucky sons-of-bitches that got dumped here to supervise our cleanup. After them, gunshots. I heard that every night. What I was surprised to hear was the familiar low rumble of an engine approaching our tents. I hadn't been in Norway long, but I knew that sound like I knew it back across the sea. It was a real-life car, not an APC, or a M-P-F transport vehicle, but a car. I rushed out of my tent.
⠀⠀⠀⠀I was met with a newly-painted jalopy. It sputtered a bit, then the engine groaned, and it came to a rest. A gaunt, diminutive man stepped one foot out, struggled a bit, then stepped out the other. He was Sven Dårliksen, a funny-looking man dressed from head to toe in black, with a funny-looking cross dangling from his neck. It kind of looked like this:​

⠀⠀⠀⠀Father Dårliksen (I think he was called Father) was familiar to a few of us. Last Unification Week, he showed up on our televisions and talked about his new religion, and now he was here with us, to tell us about it too. He came pretty late, but that didn't stop the cops who came with him from waking everyone up and getting them in formation. The entire time, the Pastor seemed uncomfortable. The platoon didn't like being woken up after a long day of fighting extradimensional biohazards. He didn't seem to like waking them up either.

⠀⠀⠀⠀When everyone was accounted for, Dårliksen introduced himself. He spoke shakily, not at all like the priests I remembered, and with a very heavy accent. I don't remember what he said. He spoke too fast. I don't think anyone else paid much attention as well. We were exhausted.
⠀⠀⠀⠀After a whole lot of talking, Dårliksen got to the good part. 'As a member of the Universal Communion,' he said, 'you will be afforded a day of rest on Sunday, when we hold our services.'
⠀⠀⠀⠀The sleepy crowd burst into energy, hooting and hollering like jackals. Dårliksen smiled crookedly. His eyes, like ours, were tired, but unlike ours, he'd been tired for a long, long time.

⠀⠀⠀⠀Dårliksen stayed with us for a few days. He gave us crosses, like the funny-looking one he wore, but smaller. We signed some paperwork that made us confirm we were now Universalists. My Father was a Unitarian Universalist. I didn't think this was much different.
⠀⠀⠀⠀The short, easily-startled, Pastor, who was often played pranks on by some of the crueler members of the platoon, seemed to melt around Twenty-Three, the androgyne from Poland. I found it funny. The priests back home were very, very celibate. They concealed stuff like that well, until they didn't, like when the pastor from my hometown had to move for having an affair with my Uncle's wife. The rest of the platoon found it funny as well. Twenty-Three got teased a lot for it. He killed himself a couple of weeks later. My sort-of-friend, Nineteen, called his corpse a dumb fag. We weren't that close after that.

⠀⠀⠀⠀Dårliksen left after those few days. For the rest of our deployment, fighting xenofauna in the outskirts of Oslo, we wore our crosses. Some of us prayed to our new 'Multiplicity of the Godhead,' whatever that meant. A lot of us came back without those crosses, some didn't come back at all. I kept mine for the rest of the Occupation.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Father Sven Dårliksen vanished after the Citadel's explosion, the Universal Communion was forgotten, not important enough to be dissolved by the powers-at-be. Its last pious member renounced it sometime thereafter.

And that was that. ​