 “Are you just going to stand there gaping or are you going to ask me some questions, pendejo?” General Hugo Valdez said. The reporter jerked back, surprised by the strength in Valdez’s voice. Valdez was, quite literally, on his deathbed: his head split open with tubes and wiring coming out, and part of his brain exposed. Trying not to stare, the reporter felt his stomach turn in revulsion at the sight. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just… trying to collect my thoughts and—” “Do you know,” Valdez said, “what my last thought was, when I pulled the trigger on myself? Worrying whether the missus would approve of the fresh coat of blood that would paint the walls.” Valdez began to laugh, a bitter edge to his voice, then he coughed. A horrid gurgling sound erupted from his throat and blood oozed out of the corner of his mouth, which the general apparently did not care to wipe. “Ask your questions now, reporter,” Valdez said, his voice now raspy and raw. “You may not get another chance.” Deciding to remain standing, the reporter placed a holographic video camera on the table and began the interview. “All right, let’s start with that day,” the reporter said, “the day you tried to kill yourself years ago? What drove you to it?” Valdez looked at him, and even with the general’s bloodshot eyes and decrepit condition, the reporter felt himself shudder at that cold stare. “She left me then… my wife,” Valdez finally said. “Took the kids to some off-world colony somewhere. I didn’t think I’d see them again and I guess it was too much for me to bear at the time.” “I thought you were incapable of feeling in your… state?” the reporter said, again trying not to look at the machinery hooked up to Valdez. Valdez shook his head, then cleared his throat. “This was before that. Back then I did feel—a lot actually… too much. And I needed to silence the pain. But to my surprise, the medics managed to put me back together again. Ironic, isn’t it? The very technology I would be destined to destroy was the very thing that saved my life when I tried to end it.” “The medical nanobots used to fix you,” the reporter filled in. Valdez nodded. “Without making me a vegetable, even. They actually managed to piece together the pieces of brain and skull that still littered my apartment when my wife and kids returned. How I wished I could have seen her face when she found me like that.” “But after the surgery, something was… lost?” the reporter asked. “Yes, a piece of me was gone for good. I couldn’t feel anything anymore. Oh, I still laugh and smile, but it comes from a different place than for you—a cold, bitter core that rots in concert with my body.” “There is no sense of joy or love. More like… hate… or anger, maybe. I don’t know. Beyond that… no compassion, no fatherly instincts. All those emotions were gone and replaced with what was left.” Valdez looked up at the ceiling, his eyes seemed lost in thought for a moment. “In the end,” he said finally, “I guess you could say that I got what I really wanted: to silence it all.” “But some of you—your individual persona—did survive?” the reporter asked. “You have—and had—your memories… and they did enlist you, after all.” “Yes, of course, the passion to wage war and cause destruction to my enemies was intact. As were my memories… and skills as a military man. No, I didn’t lose any of that. So, when they enlisted me into the war, I suppose you could say that it was a no-brainer.” The last words he said with a laugh—again, bitter—that rumbled the walls. “Did you know that by killing Majesty, you would eventually be killing yourself?” the reporter asked. “Don’t use that word,” Valdez spat. “‘Majesty’ is too honorable a word for that bitch.” “I… I’m sorry,” the reporter said, lowering his voice. “I’ll just… I’ll just call it A.I. then, and we can… ” A cold stare from Valdez made the reporter look away. “Life is full of ironies, reporter,” Valdez continued. “Yes, of course I knew that killing the bitch would eventually be my demise. The medical nanobots keeping me alive had to be reprogrammed every year or they would cease to function. Killing the A.I. was committing suicide all over again for me—but that was fine. Killing her had become my only purpose in life.” “How long did the doctors give you to live?” “Sixteen months before my brain would dissolve into mush.” “Yet you’ve lasted three years.” “More than long enough to complete my mission,” Valdez said. “Some say you had to rush the offensive, though,” the reporter said. “That maybe unnecessary lives were lost because of the accelerated timetable you put in.” “Maybe I did,” he said, his voice rumbling as he sat up. “But if I hadn’t, you—and the rest of the population of spineless maricons we were fighting for—wouldn’t be breathing right now!” The reported took a step back, then looked around to make sure he had a clear line to the exit if things got out of hand. “Nobody else had the cojones to do what I did,” Valdez said, his voice subsiding and again raspy. “I had a date with that bitch, and I wasn’t going to be stood up by her.” At that moment, a nurse came into the room and studied them. “Sir,” the nurse said to the reporter, “we can’t have you disturbing our patients—” “Don’t worry, mami,” Valdez interrupted. “If this pendejo was really bothering me, I would jump out of this bed and snap his scrawny little neck like a chicken before he could even make it to the door.” Valdez then turned to look at the reporter. “I killed a lot of chickens in Cuba,” he said to him with a grin. The reporter rubbed the back of his neck and began to wonder if he should cut the interview short. This wasn’t exactly going where he wanted it to. “Ask the rest of your questions so I can hurry up and die already,” Valdez said. “I’m just… ” He looked at the nurse shaking his head and then at Valdez. “I’m not sure what I should ask anymore. Maybe I’ve asked all I should… ” “I guess I’ll be doing your job for you, you fucking traga-leche. I’ll answer the questions you should be asking.” Valdez made a gesture to the nurse. “Lárgate, mami. I promise I won’t kill him on your watch.” The general’s cold stare seemed to push the nurse out of the room. Valdez waited until they were alone before continuing. “As I said, life is full of ironies,” Valdez said, his voice calming down again. “The only reason I was able to kill her is because, in the end, I was just like her: alive, but dead emotionally. “I had no feelings of loss, or fear. I couldn’t cry over the deaths, or what I had lost as a person. I made the tough decisions and sacrifices that others were too afraid to make. And in the end, I became less human, and she became more human—and that’s why I beat her.” “I don’t understand. How did the A.I. become more human?” “She had to learn the way we think. And you can’t do that without having to become a little bit more human yourself—so I helped her with that. I sicced my commanders on her to throw her off my real plans. “Didn’t take long before she began to anticipate our moves, and we simple humans became predictable to her. She succeeded in killing us on multiple fronts, but in the process I let her get cocky—if you could even call it that, I guess. We lost a lot of men, but it was a necessary sacrifice.” “You mean, you knowingly sacrificed them? Knowing that their plans would fail?” Valdez smiled, and the reporter felt a chill run down his spine. “You maricons are all alike, so concerned with the moral high ground. Did I sacrifice millions of soldiers to save the entire human race? Hell yes, that’s exactly what I did. “But, no, I didn’t sabotage their plans. The other generals had a chance, but I knew they would ultimately fail. After the sacrifice of millions, she finally dropped her guard,” Valdez made a grabbing motion with his hand, “and that’s when I had her by the chocha.” The general leaned back in his bed, eyes staring up at the ceiling. “In the last battle,” Valdez recounted, “she was so preoccupied with attacking that underground medical facility we were defending, that she didn’t bother to notice the small recon force we were sending right up her skirt—right into the bitch’s conduit.” “But all those civilians and soldiers in that facility… ” the reporter said, feeling a stab of anger within. “You… you were supposed to protect them!” At that moment Valdez’s eyes began to close and he became silent for a moment. “Collateral damage,” Valdez muttered, his eyes still closed. The reporter watched the general, but Valdez didn’t open his eyes again. After a few moments, the reporter began to wonder if the old general finally slipped away, but then he spoke. “I’m going to see you now, Papa,” Valdez whispered. “You better run… ” And then the general’s lips closed for the last time, and his body lay still. General Hugo Valdez was gone. The reporter shut off the camera and stared at the dead general. Despite having a great interview, the reporter felt a sense of uncertainty on how to publish it. Just then a doctor walked into the room and approached Valdez. He checked the instrumentation next to the bed, then turned to look at the reporter. “Are you family?” he asked. The reporter shook his head no. “I’m with… with the press… I’m here to conduct an interview.” The doctor raised an eyebrow. “An interview? With whom? This man? His brain hasn’t been functioning for days. He’s a total vegetable. You wasted your time coming here.” The reporter stood up and looked at Valdez, then back at the doctor. “But I don’t… I don’t understand. The nurse that was just here… she said—” “You need to leave,” the doctor said. “Only family are supposed to be in here.” The reporter stuffed the camera in his pocket and nodded, not really paying attention to the doctor. As he walked out of the hospital room, the reporter pondered what had just taken place. Yes, he had his story, but the question now was whether anybody was going to believe him. | 
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