| abstract | - FROM: General Herres TO: Elisabet Sobeck General Herres: Dr. Sobeck. As projected, the Wichita salient has collapsed. Five Horus-class Titans have broken through. We predict contact in 34 hours. Elisabet Sobeck: Everything is in position, General. It took a few shortcuts to pull everything together, but Zero Dawn is functionally complete. Good to go. General Herres: Then Enduring Victory served its purpose, after all. Elisabet Sobeck: Yes. If we'd had even one day less... General Herres: I've sent you an encoded file, Doctor. Please do me the favor of archiving it. Elisabet Sobeck: I'll... see what I can do. What is it? General Herres: A brief statement. An allocution of crimes, I guess you'd call it. Elisabet Sobeck: To what are you admitting guilt? General Herres: Over the past sixteen months, Doctor, I have presided over the greatest wholesale slaughter of military personnel and civilians in the history of... history. Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, Sorabella - add'em together, they don't even come close. Elisabet Sobeck: You didn't do the killing, General. General Herres: Not directly. But I didn't wind up the highest military commander in the United States by resisting efforts to automate the armed forces. Even before the swarm, Doctor... I was helping death along. So instead of letting what I've done sink into the murk, forgotten... I've sent a file with all the details. Let posterity judge my actions with clear vision. Elisabet Sobeck: I'll do as you ask, General. But you should consider that, were it not for your actions... our actions... there wouldn't be any posterity to judge us. General Herres: Perhaps. Dr. Sobeck. Elisabet Sobeck: At ease, General. And goodbye. General Herres: Hell of a thing -
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