That silent roar in Eli's head just got deafening. He couldn't wrap his mind around how their squeaky-clean histories lined up with the brutal truth seared into his bones. His isolation grew into this heavy, smothering loneliness. One day, Aris Thorne, trying something new, decided to show him the "main historical archive" – basically, a huge, immersive library of holograms detailing how the Great Peace started.
The room was massive, its walls shimmering with data. Eli stood in the middle of this swirling cloud of info, thousands of bright spots showing battles, peace deals, and tech leaps. Aris, waving her hand around, talked about the huge data sets, the exact casualty numbers, the perfectly calculated changes in world power that led to their "global harmony algorithm".
"This, Sergeant Stone," Aris announced, her voice echoing in the giant space, "is everything we know about conflict. The raw numbers of suffering that let us move past it". She put up a timeline, red lines shrinking to nothing as they got closer to now. "Every life lost, every resource spent, it's all meticulously documented right here".
Eli just stared at the shimmering lines, the neat figures, the calm progression. He saw numbers. He saw charts. He saw a math problem. But he didn't see faces. He didn't hear screams. He didn't feel the choking dust.
"This isn't understanding," Eli said, his voice low, shaking with a fury he hadn't felt in weeks. "This is just sugar-coating it. It's a lie".
Aris turned, her calm look not budging. "It's objective truth, Sergeant. Measurable".
"Measurable?" Eli blew up, his voice raw, bouncing off the holographic walls. "My squad, blown to bits in a ditch in Khandahar – is that just a data point? The kid I saw bleeding out in the rubble, begging for his mom – is that just 'resources spent'? The smell of burnt flesh, guys drowning in their own blood, the fear that turns your gut to ice – are those just lines on your damn charts?"
He stomped toward the nearest shimmering wall, hand raised like he wanted to tear it down. Aris took a step back without thinking, a flash of pure alarm in her pale blue eyes.
"You wanna talk about understanding conflict?" Eli snarled, his voice rising to a hoarse roar. "You wanna understand? Then you should've lived it! You should've tasted it! Numbers don't scream, Aris Thorne! Numbers don't bleed!"
His chest heaved, the sheer effort of his rage leaving him breathless. The huge, peaceful archive seemed to mock him with its spotless perfection. He was the ghost of conflict, a primal scream in their silent utopia. He dropped into a nearby chair, body shaking, his rage spent but his soul still burning. Aris just stood there, frozen, face pale, her perfect calm finally, visibly, cracked. The silence after that was heavy, not peaceful anymore, but thick with the echo of his raw, unfiltered pain.