Gillian,
 
Of all the things I recall as a child, I don’t remember directly experiencing the horrors of San Francisco or Shanghai. Perhaps it was the fact that Mum and Dad would shelter me from the news stories, afraid of the nightmares they would give a 7 year old child.

Yet with every major twist and turn that unfolded, there were always a few kids whose parents thought them mature enough to watch the horrors of the world unfold via the news or sensational online magazines. This would usually result in a hyperactive 2nd grader getting into trouble as he mercilessly killed imaginary Rak’Lan around the playground with nothing but his non-existent ’superpowers’.
 
I guess at our core, we all want to be heroes. 
 
I must confess, the need for revenge has been reawakened in me the last few days. But with reinvention comes inevitable questions. What would I have done had I been older? What would I have done had I been a government official? Would I have sacrificed as many as I did in China to quell the plague with the use of Nuclear weapons? How would I have handled the millions of requests from forlorn relatives? Could you possibly imagine what those horrible days were like? Entire families wiped from the planet in seconds, and those who tried desperately to save anyone left alive, became victims themselves. As an EMT, you would have been a first responder had one of the remaining asteroids hit close to home. Sheltered as I was from all that happened, just the thoughts of the past shake my very being.
 
To kill that many people is the worst kind of evil. I am pretty sure that to this day, there are people still missing and unaccounted for. The one memory I do have after this happened was hearing Dad warily ask our neighbor Mr. Shane why the Rak’lan initially went for civilian over military targets. You know what Mr. Shane said to Dad?  “I’ll tell ya why. Because they are nothing but animals, O’Leary. Anyone who attacks the innocent either don’t know anythin about love, or are the lowest of cowards.”
 
Now imagine being on this roller coaster ride I mentioned in my last letter. One day you’re inspired to help the human race fight off the greatest threat ever known, and other days you question your own loyalty to a cause that will most likely send you or your mates to an early grave. While I may not be in a position of political authority, my decisions will ultimately determine my successes and my failures, and the lives of my colleagues will be on the line with every, single order.
 
Today, I don’t want to be hero.
 
Perhaps tomorrow will be different.
 
Shannon