Black Wall

He wanted to be a pacifist. Getting drafted to fight in the first interplanetary war could end only one way. Death. A long ago day in a lecture hall, he lost his friends, became a pariah and began the downward spiral that brought him face to face with the losing side of a war. The blocks to his memory were of his own doing and he had no interest in finding out what terrible traumas he endured during those terrible years, but deployment to the front lines was a one way ticket to the grave and becoming another expendable body felt like fate. As he watches the enemy tear through the ranks around him he knows the end is inevitable.

That's when he is trapped in a dark prison and must painstakingly remove the blocks to his past in order to survive, unaware this isn't his first war.

Black Wall was inspired by a story I had in the back of my mind for years. I joined the military at a young age and always thought about how chaotic it was when I started. The recruitment process, training and various personalities encountered left a lasting impression. The scene I imagined had a character waiting to be given a physical as he stared at the wall next to him, avoiding eye contact with the others in the room. It was originally supposed to be put in modern times with a fictional retelling of the life I had in those youthful days but quickly changed.

The story turned out to be a new scifi tale set in space that starts out in that fateful room I described, leading to a deep space battle with an interstellar war. No, this isn't based on a real experience where I got to battle aliens, have an intergalactic adventure and save the universe. (Or is it?)