In the sunset haze, Paige’s brilliant voice becomes our subscribers’ lighthouse, beckoning them gently to hear her story.

“Hello, audience,”

She says, staring into my mixed-reality glasses, which are automatically recording at my mere thoughts. The revolutionary eyewear enables me to look and not see, to remain pristine behind a glass wall.

“Can you hear me?”

I nod, and she continues. “Daisy and I are in the Viewing Lounge tonight to celebrate the Sweet Sixteen of the War of 2035." Nowadays, the atrocity of war has atrophied into normalcy, letting us celebrate these robotic gladiator fights. Paige naively throws up a trendy peace sign, and then extends her goblet of vermilion wine. 

“We toast to our eternal war and inevitable victory.”

Behind Paige, the walls flicker with dramatic timing as they refresh the scenes from the War as broadcasted by drones. As the ads loudly proclaim, the Lounge is the greatest theater for a war watching experience. As I swivel my head to film everything, my glasses adjust for light quality and my myopia, filtering society. 

We’re filming the War and our commentary on it today to hopefully gain subscribers. Recently, people have only been watching the War, sidelining streamers like us. 

Everything about the war is meant to be entertaining. The flags on the robot’s chest, although designed for more effective robotic targeting systems, help us foster national identity. The vicious live vicariously through the battles, and the pacifists placate themselves with the lack of human soldiers.

At least, there shouldn’t be human soldiers. Yet a person is on screen. Is it a glitch? As seconds tick by, the image doesn’t reformat. 

Oh. Oh, no.

The realization hits me like a battering ram, and a rush of empathetic adrenaline shoots through my strained veins. This person is on the battlefield. The glasses attempt to identify his face and provide me information but are unable to simplify him into a set of data. With error messages abound and my strangled thoughts, the glasses are pausing and unpausing the recording irregularly, filming disjointed pieces of dialogue. 

I claw the stifling glasses off. The light, shining in my eyes, is too bright. Though I sought clarity, I am unprepared for the onslaught of reality. And I am trapped by hyperfixation on their mask and lack of identity like a moth to light.

They are fighting in a different war than the one we’re watching. 

“The war against robots. For meaning.”

I murmur. My glasses film the words. 

Someone in the Lounge grunts, before speaking slurred words. “Amateur. Why’s he interferin’?” 

“It doesn’t matter. He’ll die regardless.” A second voice joins, reproachful and callous.

“Hey, don’t say that!” Paige responds, with dreamy eyes. “He might be a superhero! He’s probably one of those few Angolans who refused to leave once the fighting started. Now, he’s defending his hometown with his last breath! He is an Angolan Atlas, fighting off the Goliath of the war.” 

Paige’s words infuriate me; how can she imprison the fighter in fiction? If she does this, we will also be remembered as merely a story. Still, at least she understands his significance.

The fighter attacks two more robots with his electric gun, and one of them, labeled with an American flag, aims at him.

A gossamer lassitude sets over my body. I can’t move and yet I must, because the person on the screen is going to die, die, DIE — amidst the silence of the Lounge that is getting more oppressing and —

The fighter’s muscles spasm from the electric shock. Their cut, bloodied fingertips trace a 14th red stripe on the flag of their murderer, the robot. It often rains in Angola, and when it does, I dimly realize, their fingerprints will wash off. 

Behind him, the robots fight on.

The media claimed that land in Angola where the robots fight is cheap and deserted. That no one cares if it becomes a wasteland. But they lied. That fighter cared! They were fighting to defend their home, perhaps, and the insignificance of their life and death is incredibly significant.

“Aww, he died.” Paige assumes the person is a “him”. She has already assigned an identity to the fighter that is removed from her own identity and gender.

I respond, thinking to the glasses to record remotely through ThoughtCast. 

“The fighter is you, and me, and all of us. Not just ‘him.’”

As if to wash down the bitter aftertaste of the martyr’s death, Paige swigs her wine. The liquid briefly paints her lips blood red, and she stains her hands with the blood as she wipes it off. By consuming the story of this martyr like they were fictional, cannon-fodder in the war, Paige chooses to remember the robots as real and forget the humans, and thus the martyr’s blood is on her hands. Human lives become worth nothing in the longevity of robots. The martyr’s war, then, was not just against robots, but also to be remembered.

The only way for this fighter’s sacrifice to be realized is if us – the watchers – take a stance and address the devaluation of a human life, of humanity in its entirety.

“We have to join him in fighting for the ability to write history.”

I say, my voice reaching a clamorous crescendo as I get passionate. 

To the robots, the vigilante is just a vigil ant, trying to survive. If the concept of robot immortality wasn’t chipping away at the way we value a human life, Asimov’s laws or telerobotic operators would still regulate the LAWs, and the URSes wouldn’t be curses. 

Lights-out manufacturing won’t end when the lights of humanity burn out. And now I’ve been enlightened to our own mortality. The fighter is a forgotten footnote, at best a break in the flow of text and time. 

As quickly as the rush of anger enters me at the injustice, it leaves. What can I do to save history? I am no more than that fighter; no more brave and no more powerful.  My mark is just as permanent as that fighter’s bloody fingerprints. Papery skin and inky blood come together to form history, his story, my story — all of which will be forgotten. 

The glasses normally act as an umbral umbrella, a shadowed shield to keep me squirreled away from reality. I wish I was still protected in my fortress of lies, where humans were the giants, not the ants. It would be so much easier to return to my illusioned state to make videos that people will ignore in favor of the war. I can’t cope with my newfound understanding of mortality; instead, I want to hope and dream and believe that I’ll be remembered.

Treating time and my own fragility like they aren’t real will backfire, I know. But it’s so hard to care about that when I could return to my state of security. To believe that I matter.

“Remember my story, please?”

I say into the glasses, pitifully quiet. I just need someone to hear me. Paige hears, and then looks at me, concern etched on her face. 

“Don’t worry, Daisy. It’s just … like a game, and he’s an NPC. The main characters are the robots, who can fight for us all the time,” Paige says amiably, trying to cheer me up. She’s so kind, so perfect, so human. Then she, too, should fight to preserve humanity’s records. Doesn’t she realize that the “non-playable character” is human too? I am revolted by her words, and even more repulsed by the fact that I understand her. 

“Maybe that was a bad example,” Paige says. Her eyes, deep with worry, come into focus as she sets my glasses on my nose.

I have two options now. I can shatter my glasses and become an actor, not a spectator. But I don’t think I can. I can also bury my nihilistic thoughts in the graveyard of the martyr’s memories and live in peace. 

I pick the latter.

“No, it’s fine. You’re right. The fighter wasn’t real, of course.” I say, forcing a laugh. I hope my grin isn’t stretched too tight over my sharp teeth, built for ripping apart Angolan fighters and drinking their blood. After all, lie is a part of the word ‘believe,’ and perhaps a necessary prerequisite.

Perhaps, if I was a stronger person, I could snap the glasses. But for now, I’ve grown too dependent on my delusions and diluted society.  The fourth wall and the glass wall have become my shields, and I need them back. I push the glasses up my nose and return to unreal, augmented reality.

Immediately, I am assailed with notifications of myself unpausing and pausing the stream. The fragmented footage only contains 11 lines of dialogue due to my irregular emotions and muddled commands. It wasn’t done right, nor was it engaging enough.

Before I tell my glasses to delete the footage, I decide to provide closure to myself and this film by whispering,

“Goodbye, audience.”