The survivor spoke to us though, or tried to. Mumbling through that matted brown beard of his, pale as death itself. I can__ say now if it was weakness from his wounds or what it was _ but we struggled to understand him. In fact we got nothing intelligible from him at all then. He seemed afraid, like any dying man probably would be, but he did seem more terrified than any dying man I__e seen before _ and I__e seen a few in my time. Let me tell you, Corsair or not, he grabbed whatever hand would hold his, and clenched it so tight his knuckles turned white! He kept fading out as we carried him on the stretcher board the medics brought with them. Looking back, I think he tried to warn us, poor bastard. He tried to tell us to leave him behind and go, but we wouldn__ listen. We thought we were better than the Corsairs, remember? We thought we would be all moral and upright and try to help him. __on__ say I didn__ warn you._ were the last words he said before losing consciousness. At least, those that we could make out. At the end of it all, he was right _ as it turned out, we couldn__ even help ourselves.

Nothing in life is permanent. All of it will eventually disappear_Maybe we__e supposed to know that_accept it, and live our lives differently because of it. Rearrange our priorities based on the finite number of heartbeats we have left.

And on bad days, when his aura of sadness blazed like an alarm he couldn__ turn off, I felt like I was doing everything wrong.

When the devil wants to punish his worshippers, he uses the trick of karma.

I propose that the forces of corporate totalitarianism are deliberately destroying this entire world in order to sell their simulated version of it back to us at a profit.

The evil should end one for all.