Weather wasn’t always funny. Used to be, you didn’t hafta run for cover any time a bit a’ thunder rolled over your head. Or hole up in the house all day and wait for the sun to settle. Used to be—way back when I was a lil’ girl—snow would cap the top a’ that mountain and the ol’ cow pond would freeze over and your Uncle Jean and Auntie Sheeny, they’d skate through the reeds poking through. Ice so cold and clear you could catch sight a’ the fish swimming underneath, not a care in their heads about nuthin going on up in the world.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking: here goes Grandma Jo on another one a’ her rambles. But I called ya out onto the porch for a reason. Now, don’t get up and make like one a’ your friends just texted ya. Go on, plant that skinny butt a’ yours on the steps, and listen.

Now, I know you just itching to get up outta the countryside. Ain’t nuthin but a buncha old farts hanging around here, amiright? And all any of us do is sit in our rockers and flap our gums about the good ol’ days, the golden-green days before the weather went funny, before the war. Yes, right you are—same war your grandpappy fought in, rest his soul. Don’t think I didn’t notice you scrolling through his ol’ snapchats and pictures and things from when he was out on that ammo boat in the South Pacific. Don’t I remember your eyes that one night, coupla years back… The fits had left your grandpappy alone a hot minute, and the peepers were singing down in the pasture pond, and your brothers and sisters were out in the yard snatching fireflies, but you, you sat your skinny butt right there, listening with a raptness to your grandpappy jabber on about how he once seen a machine. How he watched it veer up and turn and dismember a whole squadron a’ destroyers, one after the next. How his captain steered their lil’ ammo boat around, though if an ammo boat does anything in a fight it blows up, and your grandpappy just looked off towards those pines over there, and he said he can still hear ‘em: all those boys in the water; faces, arms, bodies slickened with diesel; the waves heaving with flame. You remember? He said even as they burned they cried for help. He said seeing a machine, for real, with his naked eyes, right there in the neck a’ the sky, nuthin ever terrified him so, or since.  

Now I know you’ve gone and put your enlistment papers in. Don’t matter how I know. Grandma Jo knows. Lil’ birds been whispering in my ear ever since you stepped foot outta that recruitment office. Mercy, your mama and papa gonna flip a lid, and I won’t blame ‘em. Might be no more machines in this world but there’s those water insurgencies down in the Southwest, eco-defenders blowing up this or that pipeline, and I hear those secesh up in Idaho ain’t taking no prisoners. You understand me, girl? Cuz ya need to. You need to understand what you’ve gone and signed yourself up for. And you didn’t join the Navy, like your grandpappy, did ya? What d’ya join? That’s right, you joined the Marines. Goodness gracious, girl. Swear there’s more a’ me in you than I’d hoped.

What do I mean by that? Alright, I’ll tell ya, about time I told ya, kicking myself I ain’t told ya sooner. Maybe it woulda changed things, telling ya sooner, or maybe it woulda made things worse, or maybe it wouldna changed nuthin, but here goes anyways: you know your grandpappy, he didn’t talk much about his warring days, but he did mention ‘em from time to time, and we got his ribbons and things in that lil’ case up in the hall, in case anyone happens to forget. What you don’t know—what even your mama and papa don’t know, never learnt, cuz nobody never told ‘em—listen now: I fought in the war against the machines, too.

What d’you mean your Grandma Jo can’t have fought in no war? Why’s that impossible? Oh, you just surprised is all. Well, lemme tell ya, ain’t no accident you going and joining the Marines.

Why?

Y’see, there’s something in you, girl. Something I swore I wasn’t seeing, but I was, ever since you was this tall. Saw it when you came home after beating up Cecil Johnson on the playground, remember? Saw it, whenever you fought with your brothers and sisters though they all bigger than you. You’re a fighter, baby girl. Ya always have been, and damned if I didn’t see that part a’ myself in you, and hoped, just hoped, it wa’nt gonna lead to… to…

Now look at me, Grandma Jo’s watering daisies. Go on in the house and fetch me a tissue, go on… Thank you, girl.

Anyhow, since I’m in the business a’ spilling beans might as well spill ‘em all: your grandpappy wasn’t my first husband. No, he wasn’t. My first husband was Sergeant First Class Toni Rodriguez.

Toni, now that was one good-looking hunk a’ man. He had a smile melt the shine off your boots. We met in the Stan. And just like the dumb soldiers we were, we married, right there in front a’ the chaplain on-base. Swore ourselves to each other on the eve a’ battle. And don’t ya know he went and died jumping into Peshawar. People called it just The Drop after that, cuz that’s how it felt. A hole dropping open in the pit a’ your guts. A whole airborne regiment—chutes, bodies, trucks, burned outta the sky like embers sweeping up outta campfire. They said Toni’s boots never so much as touched the ground. They said the machines knew we were coming. They always did.

Swore I’d never marry another man. Ain’t worth it. Ain’t worth the loss. To think it’s gonna be easy, that you gonna win and go back home and live happily ever after. To dream like that, then lose it, in the flick of a flame…  

No, I wasn’t in The Drop; I was cavalry. We had no chutes, we had Rudras—or did till our choppers were blown to bits and we had to go back to earning our spurs the ol’ fashioned way: with horse and saddle. Machine can’t hack a mule, people used to say, if you can believe it.

Your grandpappy was a good man, he was, but I learned not to talk about the war with him, or anybody else. Loved your grandpappy top to toe, but even on our first date together, after victory and everyone came home and we was all just trying to pick up the pieces, figure some way to live again in a world that felt so all of a sudden—empty, even then I knew he wasn’t the type a’ man to suffer no woman talking about her warring days.

I know, I know. Believe me, I know. Different times now, ya say. Been nearly a hundred years since they let women into combat, and women been fighting in combat even before it was officialized, but, y’see, there’s just something in some men.

Toni wasn’t like that. He loved me cuz I was a fighter. Sometimes I wonder if he wasn’t my one and only. Still, I loved your grandpappy. He wasn’t the best-looking in Vesper County, but he was the only man ‘round these parts I could see myself marrying, and once we were both of us back from the war, he with his scars, me with mine, and we went out on that first date together, and he counted the ribbons on my uniform and realized they outnumbered his own, well, it just irks some men, ya know? But in those days, there weren’t many men left and if I ever wanted a family and kids and a real home and if all I had to do was shut my trap, then, I figured that wasn’t too much to ask, now, was it?

Maybe it was.

Funny thing is, after getting used to not talking about it, I kinda liked no one knowing. Like it was my own lil’ secret. Plus, your Grandma Jo ain’t the type to go ‘round on VM-day dusting off her ol’ uniform and marching in some parade. I like people thinking I’m just another grandma setting her folding chair out on the curb. I like that no one ever so much as guesses at what I seen, or done, with these hands right here. Things I ain’t never told nobody, till you.

Now, lean in close a minute. You know one a’ my first memories, from when I couldna been two, maybe three years born?

Smoke.

Plumes of it just rising into the sky like, like burn pits for giants. I think it was the ash clouds—you know the ones they got pictures of in your textbooks? All those people, in all their gray itty bits, scattering up into the atmosphere and settling all over the face a’ the Earth. All my life, up until I was sixteen, and finally able to join up and fight, all I knew, all any of us knew, was that we were at war, and it wasn’t no war to stop a dictator, or claim some new slice a’ land, it was war of survival, the end of civilization as we knew it, a war of this is it, and it was a war we weren’t winning.

They say, ya know, all that ash actually helped cool things down a degree or two, and a’course that’s why your Auntie Sheeny, why she gets her bronchitis every year, since she wasn’t but a baby girl, too, up there in Denver where the smoke hung around real bad, they said. Real bad. I remember being lil’ and sticking my tongue out to catch the flakes falling outta the sky, just like I’ve sat out here and watched all you kids playing in the sometimes-snow, only, for me, it wasn’t no for-real snow. And after Shanghai, and then the whole Seoul-to-Busan scorch, and Manila, and the Sydney strip, and finally Rio, and New York to Boston, and Houston, and Atlanta just… all of it… all those people… goin’ up… and the machines, they were only getting stronger, tougher, remanufacturing themselves faster than anyone could knock ‘em out, that’s when I joined up. When the machines came out with their latest and worst. That’s when the reapers showed up.

Have I seen one, she says.

Lord, have I seen one…

I seen formations a’ reapers swarming up and surrounding whole refugee camps, and the people, it’s—it’s like a brushfire. Flames licking over the grass. Curling each blade black. You seen the videos, huh? Your teachers, and the edumacation people, they make sure no one forgets how close we came. Memory, it keeps the war machine running, don’t it? What you don’t know, what none a’ your textbooks never talk about, and believe me I’ve read them, is that most a’ the fighting wasn’t man against machine, but man against man.

Y’see, the machines had this other weapon. They called it New Eden. Couldn’t open your phone. Ads everywhere for it. Oh, it was a beautiful, beautiful dream. Imagine it—growing up all your life the way the world used to be: everything run by generals and corporations, people hungry for more than food, hungry for hope. And the machines, they knew, knew how to tempt us, knew how to hack into our hearts and force-feed us that fat, sweet hope. A dream where all a’ humanity and all a’ nature live as one again. In peace. In beauty. A promised land. A paradise. But in the machines’ version a’ the story, humanity, itself, is the serpent, and the machines, they’re the savior. They said if the Earth was ever gonna be saved then humanity needed to be managed, cultivated, whittled down to what they called a State a’ Sustainability, like that wisteria-vine growing up that maple over there: you gotta cut it back before it chokes the whole dang tree to death. Cull the herd for its own good, y’see? Hard to figure nowadays. Lotta people knew the population was falling, just a matter a’ time, but it wasn’t falling fast enough to do nuthin about the funny weather. Lotta people figured life under the machines was gonna be better than under the greedy generals and crooked corporations. Lotta people bet on the machines to win. And a lot just wanted to get on the machines’ good side before it was too late. Can’t blame ‘em, can ya? Can’t blame people for being confused, or afraid, or losing faith in their own kind, whole world on fire like that.  

Sometimes, you just had to look away. Stop looking in your phone and just have faith. Faith you was fighting the good fight. Faith in humanity. Faith in—in yourself, before ya lost it, cuz when ya lose it, ain’t no guarantee you ever gonna get it back.

Now listen, listen close, girl.

You listening?

There was… this one prisoner we took. I see that prisoner’s face now clear as yours right here in front a’ me. I was squad leader, by that point, already seen more than my fair share a’ loss and ruin, already lost Toni. We were doing this fighting-retreat, trying not to lose too much of ourselves, still fighting like we was squabbling over territory but no machine never cared about no land, and the reapers, they just kept coming on, and on, some swooping overhead, or  rolling on treads, didn’t matter how they got around anymore, a reaper was a reaper, and they had infantry moving among ‘em—people, cleaning up the scraps. Berserkers. Turncoats. This prisoner we took, turned out, he was one a’ those, but also one of our own. A green-on-green, they called it. He was a new recruit, not six weeks outta basic. It was dumb luck we got to him—that Markey, my grenadier, got to him—before he could detonate himself. The machines had shown the kid, online, how to use your own issued munitions to wire yourself up. But it was more than that, it was in his eyes. We had him zip-cuffed and kneeling and Markey said we should just shoot him. You could hear the reapers bearing down on us just the other side a’ the hill. Nuthin but a stand a’ rock, and smoke, and air, between us and—I said no. I said there’s rules about this sorta thing. He’s got rights—human rights. He’s gotta stand trial. Markey said ain’t no hope for turncoats like him. Just look at him, he ain’t human no more. Funny, ya know, that recruit—I can’t remember his name. We went through so many, too many. But that one we caught, and made him prisoner… I looked down at him and he looked right back at me with those ocean eyes a’ his. I swear I saw no soul in him. Markey was dead right: kid was gone. Still, I told Markey to put his pistol away. He hollered at me, but I told him: Holster that weapon, sergeant! Now. He put it away. Step back, I said. He stepped back. And I aimed and shot that kid myself. Once, in the head. Through his left eye. He flopped forward then sorta wheeled back and laid there, and he was still, the back a’ his head come open like a busted-up watermelon, meat still sticking to the inside a’ the rind, bits all over the grass, strands a’ cells unwound all over the place and inside those cells, ya know, those blueprint helixes and proteins and mitochondrias and things, the nuts and bolts of any living thing, the juices of him leaking out onto the ground, summer sun beating down on ya and your lips just kinda water a lil’ bit, looking at it, looking at what’s left a’ him, and you know the flies and ants and things gonna come sup on some a’ that sweet stuff themselves, before the reapers come through and burn it clean, burn it like it never was.

It ain’t human, that feeling. You ain’t human, anymore. It ain’t just the training: the left, right, left; the breaking down and building you back up into a lean mean bullshitting whatever. It ain’t just the serial number they stamp on ya, it’s the way you end up looking at things, the way you look at other people, enemies, friends, comrades-in-arms even, like they ain’t really human, anymore, like they exist only to serve a purpose, or they shouldn’t exist at all. Like they’re just a threat, a nuisance, to be blown away and done with, forgotten. It ain’t human. Till, years down the road, sometime late at night, when you least expect it, think you put it behind ya but it creeps up on ya, and you see ‘em: those ocean eyes glaring at you outta the dark, and you’ll wonder, too, you’ll wonder whether you ain’t worse than any machine could ever be.

We let the kid lay where he was and got our butts outta there. Didn’t tell nobody. When somebody did ask we said the machines got him, which was true enough. Machines wouldna never got the upper hand without brainwashing whole populations over to their side. Some a’ those turncoats still in prison to this day, you know that? Can’t let ‘em out, not for one second. Ain’t no rewiring ‘em once they’re that far gone. Maybe no rewiring any of us.

What? You knew? Oh, you just knew it was something. Grandma Jo couldn’t slip one past you grandkids, huh? Well, I’m glad you knew, glad you guessed there was—something going on with your  Grandma Jo. Never thought it was gonna be fighting in no war, now did ya? Murder on these hands, I tell ya, these, these hands right here. Wiped baby butts with these hands, soothed all a’ya to sleep, carried ya, shushed ya, touched ya with these hands can’t ever wash clean… never.

Dark now, see?

Peepers chirping down by the pond. Fireflies up outta the grass. C’mon now, baby girl. C’mon over here and give your Grandma Jo a hug. Oh, that’s a good one, that’s a good one. Thank you, child. Thank you for listening. I thought I was done with war but turns out war ain’t done with any of us. No, you don’t hafta say nuthin. I just needed ya to know before you shipped off. Never knew how much I needed someone to know. Just don’t—don’t let ‘em make ya too hard, baby girl. Don’t let ‘em make your mind into gears and switches. Don’t let the world, or the way people are, don’t let’ em, just… just don’t lose it. Ya hear me? Don’t ever give up that part a’ yourself. You human, ya hear? You always human. No matter what comes over that hill.