Macho Side Story #5: Shadows March Through the Second Dimension

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Macho Side Story #5: Shadows March Through the Second Dimension

Macho and his squad traverse a strange, black-and-white realm beyond time, far past the extraction zone and still miles from their destination: a mysterious mine. In this eerie second dimension, the laws of physics blur, memory twists, and the terrain snakes like a living thing. Despite the unsettling environment, the squad keeps their morale through sharp banter and inside jokes, with Macho leading the way—silent, focused, unshaken. Every step through treacherous paths reveals more of this surreal world, filled with impossible monuments and warped reality. As uncertainty and danger press in from all sides, the only thing keeping the unit grounded is each other—and the mission.

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Transcript

Macho Side Story #5: Shadows March Through the Second Dimension

There was no sky in the second dimension, only gradients of black below and white smeared across the air like smoke trapped between mirrors. Time didn’t move here—it hung, thick and stale. Dates were meaningless, clocks unreliable. They were beyond the extraction zone now, deep into the void, with the mine somewhere ahead—always ahead, never closer. No vehicles. Just boots, echoing endlessly over paths carved by something older than war.
Macho walked point, eyes hard beneath his helmet, jaw locked like a vault. His squad followed, boots crunching over fractured obsidian and bone-dry dust. The terrain was treacherous: jagged edges, shadow chasms, the occasional floating ruin drifting by like a forgotten thought.
“Yo Macho,” cracked Griggs, trudging just behind him. “You sure this ain’t your hometown? ‘Cause it’s got the same charm—gray, cold, and full of dead things.”
“Only thing dead here is your sense of humor,” Macho muttered without turning.
“Better than your dating life,” piped Harris from the rear, tightening his straps. “Heard your last girl left you for a toaster.”
“That toaster made better eggs,” Macho shot back. The squad chuckled.
They walked on. No direction but forward.
Sometimes, the path shrank to a blade’s width. Drones wouldn’t work here. Radios spat static at times. Even memory twisted—names fading, faces flickering, time loops playing tricks on the mind.
“Hey, y’all remember chow back in the day?” muttered Pritchard, more to himself than anyone. “Those MREs that tasted like wet regret?”
“I remember you crying when you ran out,” Harris grinned.
“Man’s got priorities,” said Griggs. “That was the last time I saw Pritchard run.”
“I was conserving energy!”
“You were crying and tripped over a ledge,” Macho growled. “Don’t rewrite history.”
Laughter again. Short, sharp. Relief in a place that didn’t allow much.
Then silence.
They passed something that might’ve been a monument—or a warning. A pillar split top to bottom. None of them looked too long. You didn’t stare at the things here.
The mine lay somewhere ahead, hidden in the static. Macho felt it. Like gravity. Like hunger. His fists clenched. This place messed with your head, but not his. Not Macho. He was made for this kind of wrong.
“Twenty-two clicks,” Harris guessed. “Maybe less.”
“Or maybe it’s right behind us and we’re walking in circles,” Pritchard muttered.
Nobody argued. Because both could be true.
Still, they marched. There was no sunrise coming. No end-of-shift bell. Just this strange space, this slow deathwalk toward something unspeakable. Macho led the way, unmoved. He didn’t fear mines. He didn’t fear death. He feared stillness.
Behind him, the squad joked, cursed, laughed, adjusted gear.
Ahead, the path twisted like a serpent made of memory and smoke.
They kept walking.
Because that’s what soldiers do—even in a dimension where time is dead and maps mean nothing.
They walk.
And they survive.
For now.