Geras GÇô Nearly two months after the existence of cloned soldiers was made public to the cluster by Jacus Roden, Modern Finances has released a positive report on the financial viability of the soldiers. According to the report, the average cloned soldier begins providing a greater return on investment with each passing day, allowing them to quickly overcome their initial cost.

While the costs to create and train an individual cloned soldier is greater than an ordinary soldier, due to the necessity of implanting the brain scan devices, these costs are overcome GÇ£within three months on averageGÇ¥. Due to the retention of skills and the ability of the cloned soldiers to fight without fear of permanent death, the soldiers are quickly capable of outstripping the value of baseline troops.

GÇ£One of the largest costs of any military or mercenary outfit is training soldiers,GÇ¥ the report reads. GÇ£While the initial cost for the same is higher with cloned soldiers, because they have much lower attrition rates, there is a much lesser need to replace them. Additionally, their ability to gain knowledge and experience through repeat trials by fire allows them to become more highly skilled than other units. Camaraderie also remains high, as squad members need not be replaced with new recruits, allowing intra-unit cohesion to flourish.GÇ¥

While the report stops short of advocating a complete abandonment of traditional soldiers, it does recommend GÇ£increasing the usage of cloned soldiers utilizing second generation implants.GÇ¥

It also notes some potential negatives of the soldiers, such as the GÇ£tendency for cloned soldiers to take low-reward risks when caution would have been advisedGÇ¥ and the risk of GÇ£cloned soldiers becoming maladjusted to life off the battlefield and experiencing an extreme form of post-traumatic stress disorder.GÇ¥ However, these concerns were dismissed because GÇ£the profit potential far outweighs these additional costs.GÇ¥

Yeah I suppose repeatedly dieing and watching your friends getting shot to hell would cause some wear and tear on a soldier's psyche

While I have some appreciation for having such a value being placed on me as a mercenary monetary wise, we are still less than people to them. Unfortunately countless deaths have left me a little jaded to the whole situation. Would still be nice to have some semblance of humanity shown towards me.

Pfft I died like 30 times yesterday pt... what the **** was that noise!?!?!?

We traded our humanity for the power to kill a hangover by sucking a bullet. With that in mind, it's hard to care about what they think.

5...1...4...



I suppose. Still the sound of Mass Driver shells exploding next to your head tends to wake you when you're sleeping. As a Logistics it tends to be a bit worse since I'm more or less responsible for keeping your organs inside so you don't end up back at a CRU. Good thing the suits keeps the organs on the inside.

Well, people are bound to die one way or the other anyways be it accidental, war time, or old age. We just have to move on and only concern ourselves with what to do now.

That empathy is gonna get you killed one day.

Heheheheh....

5...1...4...

You do know the rumors about those who go crazy, right? You might want to avoid saying those numbers next to each other... in any order.

In any case...

To be quite honest, at this point in time, I don't know much of my sanity I have left. I mean, sure, I can capable of thinking logically through most of this time and can maintain a conversation on topics that may or may not be related to war directly, but I am sure that I am definitely not the normal kind of person that you see on the streets... not anymore.

Every other time, while I sleep, I tend to hear (and even see) the "drums of war"... countless battles being endlessly wage upon between our kind against our enemies, and even ourselves. Sometimes all I see is dust and the people that I kill coming back from said dust, like the legendary fire birds, only to die again and be reborn to fight once more. I see myself and my other self, and all of those past other selves that know that we were all once the same person, yet all of them not the same body, all suddenly falling into the dust from whence we once came.

"From ashes to ashes, from dust to dust."

Never though that was going to be such an appropriate phrase to describe myself, let alone those that share our likeness...

Maybe now I am so crazy that my insanity has developed into a state of "super-sanity". all that's left is but to put myself into a clown costume and call myself "The Juggler". So crazy, yet so insanely aware of one's self.

Were I to walk the streets of any city I wonder what civvies would see.

I'm a little surprised I'm not crazy.

I haven't actually changed a whole lot, far as I can tell. Still enjoy rum, still like playing blackjack with the boys, even if my new looks freak 'em out some, and I still catch myself lookin' at storms through the station windows when I'm off duty.

Truth be told, I never really hurt a whole lot whenever I got cut down. I guess my body just goes into shock or something when I get hit, or maybe my CEO's got it good with a pharmacy and slips us extra-strong painkillers, I dunno. But I'll be honest... I hate wakin' up.

It feels like I'm someone else and the real me got left behind, pulled out somewhere between the dirt and the CRU. I don't like it. Don't like to think about how there's a thousand me's somewhere up in the stars, starin' down and accusin' me of theft. Feels like it isn't my body, feels like I stole it and don't know how to give it back.

I have never visited my psychologist, I think I might have to do so to have a somewhat clearer psychoanalysis and to make sure that I may well be clinically capable of functioning in a non-combat environment...

I wonder what will they find if they check all of us.

I wonder what will they find if they check all of us.

They'd probably find that they have to go and see a psychologist themselves or maybe even join us to come close to understanding. We can't talk to civvies about this, they have nothing to relate it to. It's like the butterfly trying to explain to a caterpillar what it feels like to fly. The only thing the butterfly can really tell the caterpillar is "You have to go through the darkness first."

It's just unfortunate that that our darkness never ends.

5..... ahem

Capsuleers exist after all....

I got lucky.

The injuries that lead me to get voulentold for the program wiped my previous memories. The training is still there but everything is still a blank. Only my call sign followed me and that name has become mine.

War brought me into this world, I am going to make the war regret such.

I still have dreams of the Ammarian who killed me the first time. That look of utter contempt as the laser cut me in half at the hip, then pulling out his SMG to ensure I couldn't get back up. That is why I don't like Ammarians.