Another eight hours done. Eight hours of standing in an 8-foot patrol mech for eight credits per hour. There would be a joke in that if there was a sense of humor left after eight years of grinding duty.
He really didn't want to be a mech pilot, but his cranial compatibility was higher than average and he had no other real skills. He used to have passions - for art, for music - but after UMS peeled the former American West out of Federal hands, there wasn't a market for people who could sing or play guitar. The only people UMS cared about were those who could do enough math or stack enough bodies to bolster their bottom line, and as UMS was the only employer for hundreds of miles, he signed on. So here he was, clambering out of a Bulldog to collect his check after two more weeks of trying to intimidate civilians hanging around a UMS patrol station.
The pilot's phone beeped at him. Barely visible through the heavily cracked screen was an appointment. One that he faithfully kept every year, overtime be damned. Climbing into his beat-to-shit Ford, decades older and orders of magnitude less valuable than his work machine, he drove three hours south to an overgrown lot barely recognizable as a cemetery.
They were going to do something together. They were kids then, really - no real experience, but a lot of passion and ambition. They were going to learn how to play guitar, to sing, to bring the energy they had inside of them out to their friends, their family, whoever would listen - but then the Feds pulled out of North America, and he was alone. It wasn't even on purpose - they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a few fleeing Federals panic-fired. The pilot's leg still hurt when it got cold.
The cold stone was barely legible due to erosion and overgrowth, but the pilot could still read it as clear as the day the grave was filled.
BELOVED SON, BROTHER, AND FRIEND