way back to campus I took a wrong turn and, circling back, passed a downscale jack joint I’d never seen. They had feelies of group sex, downhill skiing, a car crash. Done there; been that. Not to mention all the combat ones.
Actually, I’d never done the car crash. I wonder if the actor died. Sometimes Enders did that, even though jacking’s supposed to be a sin. Sometimes people do it to be famous for a few minutes. I’ve never jacked into one of those, but Ralph has his favorites, so when I’m jacked with Ralph I get it secondhand. Guess I’ll never understand fame.
There was a new sergeant at the gate to the university, so we went through the delaying song and dance again.
I pedaled aimlessly through the campus for an hour. It was pretty deserted, Sunday afternoon of a long weekend. I went into the physics building to see whether any students had slipped papers under my door, and one had—an early problem set, wonder of wonders. And a note saying he’d have to miss class because his sister had a coming-out party in Monaco. Poor kid.
Amelia’s office was one floor above mine, but I didn’t bother her. I really ought to work out the answers to the problem set, get ahead of the game. No, I ought to go back to Amelia’s and waste the rest of the day.
I did go back to Amelia’s, but in a spirit of scientific inquiry. She had a new appliance they called the “anti-microwave;” you put something in it and set the temperature you want, and it cools it down. Of course the appliance has nothing to do with microwaves.
It worked well on a can of beer. When I opened the door, wisps of vapor came out. The beer was forty degrees, but the ambient temperature inside the machine must have been a lot lower. Just to see what would happen, I put a slice of cheese in it and set it to the lowest temperature, minus forty. When it came out I dropped it on the floor, and it shattered. I think I found all the pieces.
Amelia had a little alcove behind the fireplace that she called “the library.” There was just room for an antique futon and a small table. The three walls that defined the space were glassed-in shelves, full of hundreds of old books. I’d been in there with her, but not to read.
I set the beer down and looked at the titles. Mostly novels and poetry. Unlike a lot of jacks and jills, I still read for pleasure, but I like to read things that are supposed to be true.
My first couple of years of college, I majored in history with a minor in physics, but then switched around. I used to think it was the degrees in physics that got me drafted. But most mechanics have the usual compulsoryed degrees—gym, current events, communication skills. You don’t have to be that smart to lie in the cage and twitch.
Anyhow, I like to read history, and Amelia’s library was lean in that subject. A few popular illustrated texts. Mostly twenty-first century, which I planned to read about when it was over.
I remembered she wanted me to read the Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, so I took it down and settled in. Two hours and two beers.
The differences between their fighting and ours were as profound as the difference between a bad accident and a bad dream.
Their armies were equally matched in weaponry; they both had a diffuse, confused command structure that essentially resulted in one huge mob being thrown against another, to flail away with primitive guns and knives and clubs until one mob ran away.
The confused protagonist, Henry, was too deeply involved to see this simple truth, but he reported it accurately.
I wonder what poor Henry would think about our kind of war. I wonder whether his era even knew the most accurate metaphor: exterminator. And I wondered what simple truth my involvement kept me from seeing.
* * *
julian didn’t know that the author of The Red Badge of Courage had had the advantage of not having been a part of the war he wrote about. It’s harder to see a pattern when you’re part of it.
That war had been relatively straightforward in terms of economic and ideological issues; Julian’s was not. The enemy Ngumi comprised a loose alliance of dozens of “rebel” forces, fifty-four this year. In all enemy countries there was a