The Community Meeting

The twin moons shine brightly through gaps in the cloud cover, illuminating the ground in a heavenly hue. Bright alabaster shimmers opalescent, making the monolith community hall seem like a jewel fit for royalty. Inside two outsiders sit at the back, dressed nondescript. One, ashen faced, reclines backwards, her head looking upwards at the rafters, her legs crossed. She picks at her nails absentmindedly. Her companion, pale faced but covered in a thick beard, leans forward with rapturous attention. His hands clasped beneath his chin holding his head up, as if the words being spoken were too heavy a burden for sheer will alone. His companion has noticed the twinkle in his eyes. Those dead lifeless things never twinkle. To those in the room with them, it is a typical community meeting. Usual topics, old topics, repeated topics. SPARTAN-G024, Joshua Heroux to those he’s met, is giddy with unease. 
“Thank you, Comrades,” the speaker says, “this concludes our meeting. Thank you for coming, rest easy tonight, and labour hard tomorrow.”
“Goodbye,” the group says as one by one as they get up to leave. 
A cacophony of chairs scraping along the floor, shoes knocking and good natured arguments rings out in the hollow room. It is agonising. Josh and his companion remain seated, waiting for the room to empty. They receive warm nods of the head, a few smiles and a handshake or two as people head past. In a moment, they are alone and silence intrudes oppressively. 
“Come on,” his companion says, “let’s head back.”
“You go on, Amy,” he says softly, “I’ll meet you there.”
She doesn’t ask. She doesn’t respond. Amy is used to this, hardened by it. She leaves like an echo. It is not the only echo inside Josh. He leans back, letting his back rest against the chair, soothing the soft ache he hadn’t noticed. There is an ache in his head too, the mission brief, burning red in his brain, is cooling against the realities of life here on Kropotkin. We cannot let this revolution spread further, it must be stopped, Frendsen had said solemnly. Josh cannot remember ever seeing Frendsen look so concerned, so robust in his instruction. Josh had dealt with insurrectionists numerous times, more than he cares to remember, but Kropotkin had been singled out, it had felt like Frendsen had pushed his finger into his chest. 
Having been here for three weeks, Josh feels confused by the order. It is difficult to understand. The rebels here, Communards in their own parlance, are driven, determined - more human. What they’ve built, he thinks, shines in contrast to the dull grey that permeates the walls of his own existence. Indeed, even as he sits out of armour, he feels weak; unprotected, fully exposed to the experiences on offer on this discordant rock far from the core of the World. Why am I here, he asks himself in threes. 
Josh understands, abstractly, why he is here, the threat this place, its people, poses. He understands that the new galactic order is fragile, a shorn spool of wool battered by the cosmos ready to unravel at the slightest change. He wants to believe in that preservation, needs to, in some ways. His life has to have meaning, purpose. What I’ve done, he thinks, needs to matter for something - anything. What if it doesn’t matter? What if everything he’d done, every heinous act, every execution he’s undertaken, every candle snuffed out in his gauntleted hand, had been wrong? Been a travesty that perpetuates a way of being that is no longer fit for purpose? 
Josh has been reminded what he knows is what must be, a statement he has been all too willing to swallow. To believe otherwise would be too much. A profoundly grotesque refutation of what he exists for. And yet, here he sits, under the God and his twin moons, seeing first hand an alternative that exists. He does not know if this is the best future for humanity, but it is worth trying, is it not? Is it not worth giving them a chance? The decision is not his, the response to that decision will be his. He looks at his hands, calloused and covered in a mosaic of cuts and scars. 
“Coffee, Comrade?” a small man he has not noticed says. He has dark skin and well-rounded, broad shoulders. His face is full of sun-spots and worry lines. He has bent down to Josh, a soft, welcoming smile reaches out to him.
Josh bares his teeth and takes the steaming cup from the out-stretched hands. His calloused fingertips gently brush against the rock hard knuckles of his companion. He nods in thanks. 
“Need an ear?” he is asked, “you look lost in thought.”
Josh shakes his head and looks away.
“No,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. 
Josh’s brief companion squeezes his shoulder and says nothing else as he begins to tidy up the chairs. It’s an act that brings tears to the young Spartan’s eyes, lost as he is to the stars. He is unused to kindness; communion. His unease deepens. Josh stands to go, to leave the man in quiet vigil. 
He steps outside and looks up to the twinkling heavens. Josh thinks of the man’s hands, equally work worn. The bricks laid by those hands will inevitably be torn down by his own. The two are dichotomous; Hephaestus and Perses together. He thinks of the souls that live on this earth. The warmth, the community he is ill-equipped to understand, persists in rebellion to all he knows. 
He does not wish to leave and return to his old life, but he knows, should he stay, the World will return and engulf all around him. 
Finally, he sobs. His coughing cries burst out into the city around him. Snot runs down his nose, he can taste it on his tongue. 
“No more,” he beseeches to the God he struggles to believe in, “I can’t do this.” 
The wind picks up and pushes him along, further and further away from the community hall behind him and back towards Amy.