A Year of Stories (Collection Three)

A Catalog of Death

1

In training they like to tell you that you never get used to the sight of a corpse.

This is a lie.

"So, what do you think?"

"I don't, you should try it sometime..."

"How do you do that Ash?"

"Do what?"

"Stay so bloody calm, even when you're surrounded by all this."

"I already told you."

"Oh?"

"Yea, I don't think."

2

Everyone gets used to the sight of a corpse.

More quickly than you might expect.

"What do you figure happened here?"

"There's a reason they don't tell us, you know that right?"

"What? They don't think we can handle the truth?"

"We're standing ankle deep in organ meat Jarik, I'm pretty sure they think we can handle anything."

"Then why don't they tell us?"

"Bias, my new friend, bias."

"What does that mean?"

"Why don't you setup the equipment before something smarter than us comes along and ruin things."

3

It's a useful lie though, one designed to hold off the inexorable process of moral decay for as long as possible.

When your job is cataloging death, "moral decay" is the sort of thing you spend a lot of time thinking about.

"You still didn't explain the bias thing..."

"Fine, it goes like this – lets say we knew that this mess of tissue and blood belonged to a race of people who had spent the last several centuries ritually murdering their co-sentients. If we knew that, there is a better than average chance our philosophical views on the morality of revenge might color data collection."