March of the Retreating World

(An unfinished story idea)

Brave men, all. They fought when they should sleep, they fought when they should eat, they fought when they should pray. I was once told that bravery is not the absence of fear, but the facing of it anyway. Whether that’s true or not, didn’t really matter to them. They were brave no matter how you defined it.
It was when the machines replaced them that they were broken.
At first they called themselves Puppets. It was a joke, anything to keep them sane, keep them fighting. It rallied them together, to get the job done they had to get done.
“You’re a goddamn Puppet.”
“We all are.”
And the game became to see whichever Puppet could stretch their strings the furthest without their limbs snapping.
“Hey, Puppet, you’re gonna snap that twine around your wrist.”
“Don’t worry about me. I know what I’m doing.”
They didn’t.
The population took on the names, and some underground rebellion which never amounted to more than a single great battle at the end – which they lost – called themselves Puppets. They were extremists. Terrorists.
They were snapping strings all over the place.

And when the population grew fed up with them the government took advantage of it. The term “Pup” was always a derogatory curse, and the very sound of it could make mothers bring their children in from playing in the streets. Kids were afraid to call their small dogs by their traditional terms. It had become much like the word used for a female dog. Truly a correct term, but not socially acceptable.
Something was changing.

When the Puppet terrorists had been defeated, and the Puppet soldiers came home, a new connotation became associated with the word. The soldiers had said they were being controlled, like puppets. And those who did the government’s bidding – who refused to stand up for themselves, for anything they believed in – was a Puppet.
It was a vague uneasiness in everyone, even if they couldn’t name it. On a Friday someone threw a brick into a window, hitting the side of a girl’s head and killing her instantly. The note on it read “Leave the neighborhood, damn Puppies.” On Halloween a group of teenagers dressed as puppets in uniforms, parading themselves down the street where children dropped bags of candy and ran home, terrified of the sight and the droning chant they sang. The day the President died someone managed to spray paint in big red letters on the White House – PUP.

Things like this had happened before. The Civil Rights Movement. World War II. World War III. The Civil War. Slavery.