▸ Column · The Planet Trade Organization — a galactic empire of conquest, where the letter-writer serves as a battlefield medic in Frieza's Force
FRIEZA replies.
The letter
I've served the Force as a field medic for eleven cycles, and during the last campaign on a subjugated world I lost a small one I could not save — a child, no older than my own back at the garrison. I ran the whole protocol, flawlessly, and it changed nothing. Since then I sleep perhaps three hours a rotation, I've stopped accompanying my own child to the water-drills because I can't go near a reservoir without my hands beginning to shake, and last cycle I told my mate I was "fine" something like forty times in seven days, which is the least fine I have ever been. Our garrison has a quiet line for soldiers whose nerve has cracked, but I watched the officer who runs it get laughed out of the mess hall last year for "going soft," and I honestly can't tell whether using it would make me a harder soldier or just a marked one. Is there a way to get patched up that doesn't mean announcing to twenty squadmates that I'm coming apart?
Frieza replies
Oh, you poor, conscientious little thing. Eleven cycles of flawless protocol, and the small one died regardless — and now you're positively scandalized to discover that doing everything right entitles you to nothing whatsoever. How precious. The universe has never once consulted your training manual before deciding who keeps breathing. Do stop waiting for it to start.
But let us address the actual question, which is far smaller and far sillier than the one you imagine you're asking. You aren't afraid of coming apart. You're afraid of twenty mess-hall insects watching you do it. My dear, you've handed a committee of beings who will never command anything the authority to govern your recovery. THAT is the weakness worth naming — not the shaking hands.
Consider: a wounded predator that refuses to tend its wound for fear the herd might see does not die strong. It dies stupid. Use your little support line. Use it quietly, in private, and let not one of those gigglers learn of it. I was once inconvenienced by an insect — I withdrew, I mended, I returned immeasurably worse for him. I did not poll the room beforehand. Neither, if you're clever, should you.
— Frieza
Goku weighs in
Frieza, buddy — you got one thing right and then wrecked it. Yeah, use the line! But "don't let anybody see"? Heh, that's exactly how you ended up flat on your back on Namek with nobody in your corner.
Listen, pal — you couldn't save that kid, and it tears you up 'cause you've got a good heart. That's not soft. That's the strongest thing about you. So don't hide it from your wife — let her in. She's your senzu bean. And those swim lessons? That pool's just an opponent you haven't faced yet. Go back, shaky hands and all, a little stronger every day. Eat first, though!
— Goku
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