The Hero, by xpil.eu, przeklad yours truly, czyli znowu udaje, ze tlumacze ;)

Oryginal/Original version

Przeklad uparcie autoryzowany i wciaz za zgoda autora.

Wed, Nov the 25th 2015, Zone 51, Nevada.

Corporal Kouska yawned. The patrol was boring. As usual. Kouska, after seven hours of flattening his ass in the Stryker, achieved such levels of self-consciousness that he could aspire to become some sort of a saint if it wasn’t for the end of patrol around the proverbial corner.

According to the commanding officers, lone patrols of this desert sector were supposed to “form the core” of the soldier. Kouska didn’t want to be that soldier, but what can you do – a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. He always wanted to be in the military – since he was a kid, but in the wildest dreams he did not expect to patrol thousands of square miles of NOTHING in the hot and loud tin can.

Sand.

Closing his eyes for a moment would not make it go away. The view of fields upon fields of dirty-yellow shitty-nothingness was embedded in his retina for good. He would have given close to anything for a patch of green somewhere. Something that was not a sand dune, or at least something that was not a sturdy interior of the Stryker, as familiar as your best mate’s face.

All controls formed a boring message that everything was within acceptable parameters, nothing was going on, all components of the Stryker were operational and there was no point to expect anything out of ordinary for another hour.

Nothing, but the sand that is.

Even if any enemy was to attack this useless piece of desert, they would have to first sneak through an impenetrable radar network, that have been combing the area around the Zone for years.

Ten seconds later Corporal Kouska, son of Jean-Marie Kouska and Caroline Kouska (de domo Ctrvtek) was the most surprised corporal in the history of The American Military.

The cuboid appeared out of nowhere.

Literally.

It has not arrived, it has not surfaced from beneath the dune, it has not jumped from behind the pile of rocks. Simply where there was a desert, flat as a lake’s surface on a quiet day, suddenly there was this shining in numerous shades of green, cuboid.

Kouska had not clocked thousands hours of brutal trainings in the field for nothing. Three tenths of a second later Stryker was in full combat mode, machine guns aimed at the cuboid.  Actuators’ stabilizers for the threaded barrel howled, on a high gear, when the Stryker leaned halting suddenly.

Finger on the trigger gave this soothing feeling of being in control, only slightly shadowed by the fact that he was aiming at a wobbly, jelly-like, emerald cuboid, the size of a three-storey house.
Frantic memory dig for relevant combat instruction didn’t bring much. In fact, it has brought absolutely nothing.

Kouska was a simple guy. He knew that staying in the heat for prolonged period of time can make your brain go wackadoodle. Also in a such a way that you will see three-storey tall, greenish jelly-like cuboids, where there should be dirty-yellow sand.

Especially, that object this size should have triggered all sorts of alarms. If it was real, he would have been contacted the base by now. But the comms were silent.

The thermo vision was showing the object in its unreal orange-grey shades, so it either was really there, or his brain went wackadoodle more than he initially suspected. So he did the only sensible thing he could come up with. He grabbed radio transmitter and said... Well he tried to say. He wanted to report to the base that he was seeing what he was seeing. But radio was dead. As if he was trying to transmit from Faraday cage. There were no control signals.

The comms were dead.

Cold sweat covered his back. If something could sneak unnoticed through a fine mesh of military radar network and remotely kill all his comms...

Slowly, not losing an eye-contact with the objects, he reached for the breast pocket with his left hand, and retrieved a small vial, broke the tip and quickly ingested the content. Mixture of Pentylenetetrazol and Nikethamide could normally bring a wagon of deeply meditating monks to the level of agitated teenage girls at Justin Bieber concert. Kouska felt no difference, so he was not dreaming and possibly not hallucinating.

He was about 70 yards from the cuboid.

He grabbed bullhorn and said:

“This is Corporal Herman Kouska, US Army. Please identify yourself.”

Nothing.

“This is Corporal Herman Kouska. You are on a military base on the territory of the US Army forces. Identify yourself.”

Still nothing.

Kouska rubbed his eyes. It looked as if the air was vibrating next to the cuboid – as it does close to the tarmac on a very hot day. Also...

No, it couldn’t be. He must be “seeing” things. But something was not right.

Now he could see it. The pile of rocks that he was driving towards, before the cuboid appeared, was still few hundred yards away, and should be completely obscured by the cuboid. But he could still see it.

On both sides of the cuboid.

Kouska has never been an overly religious man. He also never really believed in Aliens – he had seen too many shitty sci-fi films as a kid for that. But this definitely was OUT of this world. No special effects could have fooled him so much in such a short spell.

Just to be on a safe side, he activated and dropped a radio beacon, shifted the gear to reverse and started putting some distance between himself and the object. He went for couple of hundred yards and the coms console suddenly came back from the dead. All lights were on!

And around him a hell broke loose. Suddenly there was a swarm of armoured vehicles, and air was thick with helicopters.

He took a sharp turn and only just managed not to ram into the command tent!

He froze.

Apparently they have been searching for him for 3 weeks now – he has disappeared from the radars out of the sudden in the middle of the desert. The country was on the brink of war – all usual suspects were being questioned – Russians, Chinese, Arabs and gods-know-who-else. Luckily he appeared at the very last moment as suddenly as he disappeared.

***

Thursday, May the 13^th 2128, Mars, stasis 3872.

Modern history class.

Since that day, Ladies and Gents, over 110 ago, Corporal Kouska has been a national hero. Leaving behind this radio beacon allowed us to locate the cuboid in a local four dimensional curvature.

Technology used to construct the object was several levels more advanced that anything known to humankind at the time. The jelly-like quality that Kouska recalled from that day was just and optical projection of the fractal structure of the cuboid. Eggheads to this day cannot fathom the purpose of the object, but as we all know, thanks to the detailed analysis of the object we managed to achieve in only four generations a technological jump we would not have otherwise achieved for millennia.

Thanks to that we no longer have to worry about the greenhouse effect, or how to end the poverty haunting 80% of human population at the time.

And because of that we have discovered ability to bend space in low-gravity mode, allowing us to safely colonize Moon and Mars, and now we are very seriously considering an interstellar travel.

If it wasn’t for the bravery of Corporal Kouska, most likely we would still be living on the dying, overpopulated and over polluted Earth.

Let the memory of Corporal Kouska live for ever!

***

Wed, 25^th of November 2015, Hyperspace, Interstellar taxi, category five.

“You Idiot! I have told you we are not stopping on the way. You were supposed to take a dump BEFORE we left!”

“I know Zgrvbhh, but you know how it is. You always forget something, plus it is holidays so chillax!!”

“I don’t give flying! We are not stopping or else we will miss the best part of the party – they are going to serve supernovas with hard gamma, and obstrudels for pudding!!”

“We won’t miss that, chill! Worst case scenario you will miss the opening choir of Brgvmmmw, and I need a dump SO badly, and this is a category five – remember?  They don’t have crappers!”

“Damn you! Ok, hang on; there is a little planet nearby with nothing but some worms on it. But be swift or else I’m going on my own!”

“Righty ho, don't get your shorts in a twist! Driver! Can you pull over here for a minute – there by that planet! Yeap, the 3^rd one on the left. I’ll give you the hyperspace pass codes.”