“If you see anything, and I mean anything, you call it in.

” The words of Din’s commanding

officer still hung in the stale air around him. The room in which he was stationed smelled of fuel,
stale air, and his commander’s heavy cigarette smoke. He’d never smoked in his life, hadn’t wanted
to fill his lungs with any more smoke and debris. Without even trying he’d probably already sucked
in enough of his comrade’s smoke that he’d never need to consciously inhale it. Din used to be a
soldier, not of any particular rank or of any particular prestige, just a soldier like everyone else in
those days. He hadn’t been that good but, by God, he hadn’t been that bad either. After the fighting,
he was awarded one small tin-coloured medal, and a place on the floats during the Victory parades.
The bright banners and dark, oil-stained expressions of his fellow comrades in arms. His friend Jen
was awarded the same medal, which had been given to her mother via the post, and a place among
other chiselled names on the various memorial statues erected around the city.

standing in the doorway adjusting her tall tri-coloured hat that matched her leather boots,
before leaving Din alone in the rustic outpost at the end of the region. The outpost, his last posting,
was a relic from the war. It was one of the scouting models, large and thin, boasting a large rifle that
resembled an ordinary grunt’s weapon but enlarged a hundred-fold. The diesel-powered biped,
which was humanoid in shape and monstruous in appearance, was produced in the hundreds and
shipped into the mud with the rest of them during the war. Now retired from war, much like the
man that was currently stationed in its head cavity, it rested on the crest of the Last Hill. The Last
Hill, dubbed by the occupying man as the Lost Hill, was apart of a massive section of rolling green
hills that symbolised the border. The bucolic harmony of the landscape stopped abruptly