My great-grandfather was killed by a defragmentation grenade.
They never found his body.
It happened just as the Russians started winning against the Germans on the Eastern front. During the battle of Rusalka, his infantry group’s gunfire dislodged the enemy from their position. As the Germans retreated, one soldier hurled a defragmentation grenade behind him. A parting gift.
There was a red flash as the outer casing shattered and the chemicals mixed.
Defragmentation weapons are one of those exotic technologies that weren’t really used past World War II. Too finicky. And against the Convention.
Defragmentation was invented by a group of elite Jungian psychiatrists from Vienna. It was a secret project of the Wehrmacht. So secret that the exact chemical composition is still a mystery. The active substances were encased in borosilicate shells made by Wertheim’s finest gaffers – strong so they hold the noxious liquid, brittle so they shatter on impact. Enslaved children assembled the grenades: their fingers were ideal for this delicate work and their minds young enough to survive the substances’ psychological effects.
These weapons work by forcefully integrating your mind.
Consider that it takes a thousand little lies to get you through each day:
At work, “did they notice I’m falling behind the others?” “Did my boss pencil me in for the next layoff?” “Will I find another job before the savings run out?” You defer that thought. Maybe they won’t notice. Maybe everything will be fine. You put on a brave face as you head into Status Update Meeting #35.
At home, you look around and all you see is items your husband put in the wrong place. The kids’ toys are covering the floor. That picture you hate is still hung on the wall. “I’ll talk with him about it at a better time. Right now I just need to get through making breakfast and getting the kids to school.” Later. You’ll deal with it later.
At the grocery checkout, did that man budge in ahead of you? Yes he did. “But it’s fine”, you lie. Maybe he didn’t do it intentionally. You’re not going to speak up about it right now ’cause you’re in a hurry. Driving out of that parking lot, a speeding car barely misses your front bumper. God, you’d love to live in a place that doesn’t force you to risk your life every time you go buy milk. But that’s a fantasy. Your city is fine. Just swell.
A thousand concessions, deferrals, suppressions.
Don’t get me wrong – this is a reasonable adaptation to modern life. It’s just what you do to get through your immediate challenges. But each deferral is a new debt. Added to a nebulous mass growing in the background.
Later. Later. You’ll set things right later.
Defragmentation weapons undo all that. When the gas hits your lungs, there’s no more lying to yourself. You have to face every hypocrisy; take back each fiction you told yourself; acknowledge those temporary compromises that became immovable fixtures of your life. You feel your real feelings.
Do you ever get the sense that if you spoke your true feelings out loud, then a terrible thing might happen?
Well, friend, this is it.
What happened after the red flash was told to my grandmother twenty years later by one of her professors. This old man happened to serve in her father’s squad at Rusalka.
After the flash, they circled around my great-grandfather who was laying in a muddy dip in the ground. He was covered in glittering glass shards and muck. Outwardly he looked fine. But he was starting to shake and his pupils were like pinpricks.
As the wisps of red gas entered his nostrils, all his Later Later Laters became NOW NOW NOWs.
His inseparable school friends-for-life. He promised never to lose touch with them, but he stopped talking to them the moment university life got busy.
At the beginning of the war, he promised his parents to write every week. He only did it every two months, and wrote just enough they’d know he’s alive. And he secretly loved to be free of them.
The fact he felt more affinity for the German Prisoners of War he talked to than he ever did with his fellow Russians.
His anxiety about his neighbour, Boris. Making overtures towards his wife while she was caring for their young daughter back home.
The indignity of stealing chickens from his own countrymen’s yards, to supplement his rations.
The fact that he and the Sergeant always held each other’s gaze a little too long when making eye contact.
A man’s mind can’t withstand all those deferrals coming due at once.
If… if there is a small fragment of God within each of us, then taking an unfiltered look at oneself is like staring into the face of God without sunglasses. Terrible. Searing. Fatal.
As the light left his eyes there in the mud, his squadmates pressed his eyelids shut and moved on. They made a solemn promise to come back for his body. Later.
