A little bird told me, long ago, that whiskey works better than beer.  I consider it one of my life's accomplishments; figuring that out.  I've stuck by that solid piece of advice ever since. Addled with a variety of substances, I can tolerate just about any situation.  I remember learning that the highest users of meth aren't truck drivers or the poor, it's middle class white women in the mid-west.  Talk about a statistic that speaks for itself.  All of this was crossing my mind that night at the bar, while I slowly, by surely, ebbed away at my IQ.

I sat there, across the table from one of the most boring and pretentious conversations that I have ever heard.  Well, that might be an exaggeration.  It was definitely top ten material.  I took a sip of my whiskey-coke.  I was the picture of demure.  I noted, dimly, that asshole number three to my left was offering me mary jane.  He had a Senator's smile: big, fake, and seething sleaze.  People like him are just snakes.  At least they do the world a favor by being the brightly colored kind.  I didn't smoke marijuana anymore.  At some point I had decided it was unwise.  That, and I had done my time as a dealer.  People say marijuana isn't addictive, but if you'd seen some of the people I'd seen, you'd say otherwise.  Of all the things I'd picked up, and just stopped, marijuana had been one of the hardest ones.  I was still struggling with it.  Tonight I gave in.  Asshole number three's name is Matt.  He grinned his big ugly grin while he simultaneously tried to smoke me out and pick me up.  All in front of my boyfriend who is both allergic to marijuana and, of course, standing right there while this guy puts on his peacock feathers.  I detested this dude, but I was on the verge of hanging myself if I didn't find a passable distraction.  

I took a couple of hits and it became immediately apparent that I was, once again, a total fucking lightweight.  It wasn't even any good.  I knew I was in trouble.  I excused myself to get some water.  I wanted to linger in the bar and just watch the TV until it was time to go, but I knew I reeked something terrible, and I was pissing off the bartender.  So, I went outside with my newly acquired H2O, over which I would ponder the many poor decisions that led me to this place. Let it be known that self flagellation is my specialty.

At some point, I had gotten it into my head that I should enlist.  Maybe it was out of some abstract sense of obligation, but more than likely, it was out of sheer curiosity.  What did they look like?  How could something that had once been exactly like me be so totally alien now?  It didn't make sense, and I wanted to know.  I always wanted to know everything, no matter the cost.  Curiosity killed the cat, right? 

Anyway, this is the way the dream started.  Just a crazy thing.  I figure I'll describe it, probably use it as reference material for later. 

So it began that I was an enlisted soldier, and that I was fighting in some desert landscape.  The warring factions were between those who had advanced technology (i.e. advanced robotics, war machines, etc.) and those who had genetically altered themselves to a rather gross extreme.  Those that had genetically altered themselves had, at one point in time, been like those who had the advanced technology, however, they had taken their science a different direction, altering their composition at the genetic level in order to make them more suitable for the position which they served in society.  At least, that is what their soldiers were like.  These soldiers were physically better suited for the desert environment, could cover more ground, were either shorter or taller that the average human given what kind of weapon they were wielding (as a side note, their weapons would actually adhere to their arm, face, whatever.  Their weaponry connected with them on a subcutaneous level, where they also had machine bits.  Essentially, it appeared to me that not only were they genetically altered, but they had a computer processing system that was linked directly with their brains so that their aim was more accurate.)

As far as my position goes in the war, I was part of the airborne division.  However, the airborne, in this case, is not like the airborne of our army, but rather that it was my job to be on one of the larger planes (we called them boats) which were a lot like helicopters, but I think easier to maneuver and a little more reliable and basically rescue troops that were in no win situations.  So, like the airborne of the army, we were intended to drop into the midst of heated battle, but to try and do it was quickly and efficiently as possible to try and save as many as we could.  I'll explain why it was so important to save people, despite all the danger involved.  We had all kinds of cloaking devices and fancy weaponry in order to make this happen. 

At any rate, there were a few scenarios where I had to rescue people, but then after one of my missions, I was told that I was being reassigned to another unit temporarily, or I suppose lent out to.  I was flown out to the middle of nowhere, coming from an established FOB, where I was informed that in order to join the unit to which I was assigned, I would have to go through a series of rather difficult tunnels.  The entryway was cloaked, but I was given specific coordinates, and was able to find my way in with relative ease.  After crouching through tunnels for at least an hour (of course, REM is only fifteen minutes, but bear with me, it's dream world) I came upon a vast opening in which there were forty to fifty soldiers all crowded around one man, listening avidly to the speech their commander (sergeant?  The proper terminology for the chain of command eludes me..) was giving.  Of course, that wasn't all that greeted me.  Directly in front of me was one of the smaller genetically altered soldiers that the unit, or commander, or whoever, had chained to the wall.  Every time the speaker made a point, he would shoot at the the thing and it would squeal and carry on, until it eventually settled on whimpering.  It was actually pretty distressing.  Disgusted, I made my way to the back of the crowd without the commander even addressing my existence, or entrance to their little hideout.  The men were all agitated, and I realized I was the only female there, which was disturbing.  I began to wonder, as I was the only one seemingly not caught up in the exuberance of the speech, why there were so many men in one area, knowing that there were other units in other enclaves nearby.  It was at that moment that it dawned on me that the reason was because their troops had just been replenished, and that they anticipated heavy losses.  At that moment, I knew I was going to die.  Then we were all told to get some shut eye.