The Eternity Brigade (14 page)

About a week later, more prisoners were added to the camp, including a woman officer. She wore the uniform of an EU major, and at some point in the not-too-distant past she might have been a reasonably attractive woman. But now her face looked pale and dead, her blond hair scraggly and her eyes unfocused. Col. Itaga took her personally into his tent. A day later, when he was done with her, he handed her over to his men.

After a couple of days, the guards devised a new method of entertainment. They picked prisoners at random and, at gunpoint, forced them to rape the woman while they watched and laughed. The men were sickened, but after one was shot for refusing to participate, the others reluctantly complied. None of them would talk about it afterward.

Then one of the guards came over and pointed his gun at Green to go take his turn.. Green’s face, already pale, turned sheet-white. “I…I can’t,” he said, his voice shaking.

The guards, unmoved, yanked him over to her motionless body. “Rape,” one of them said.

Green’s whole body was trembling so badly he couldn’t even force his hands to pull down his zipper. “Please, no,” he said quietly, almost as though he was the one about to be raped.

Hawker had to do something. “No,” he yelled fiercely. “She’s mine!” He raced over to Green’s side and shoved his friend roughly to the ground, then unzipped his own pants and knelt beside the woman.

The major’s eyes looked up at him uncomprehendingly. Hawker had seen that look once before, in the eyes of his old dog, sick and in pain, not knowing what was happening. He’d held the dog, petting it, while the vet injected the final shot. He’d then gone home and cried for hours.

“Come on, bitch!” he shouted at her, then quickly reached down, grabbed her head and snapped her neck.

A guard hit him angrily on the side of his head with a rifle butt, upset that he’d spoiled their fun. He thought the guards might kill him, but they left it at that one blow. They dragged the carcass away like a lump of spoiled meet, but took no further action.

Hawker went over to Green and put an arm around him. Green was almost catatonic, and said nothing for over an hour. Finally he came out of it enough to say thank you, but didn’t talk much beyond that.

***

Three weeks later the war was officially declared over. Partitions drawn all over the Antarctic continent. Then there was a round of negotiations before the prisoners could be released back to their own sides. Green’s transfer came through immediately, but there was another three weeks of waiting in Antarctica before Hawker’s came through.

While waiting to be shipped home, he attended a briefing that turned out to be a recruitment pitch for another indefinite period in limbo. But this time, the process would be much different. Instead of being placed in suspended animation, the soldiers’ “life patterns” would be recorded and stored until they were needed.

“I know that probably doesn’t make sense to you right now,” the briefing officer said, “so let me try to explain. This is something on the very forefront of modern science—but it
does
work. I think you all know basically how television works. A camera takes a picture, and the image is broken down into a series of pixels, which can either be stored or broadcast and eventually reconstructed into an exact duplicate of the original picture.

“In a similar manner, we’ve learned how to break down physical objects and reconstruct them perfectly from the stored pattern. A special scanning device takes a three-dimensional ‘picture’ of every atom in the object, and its relation to every other atom. The scan is done so quickly that it’s practically instantaneous. The pattern is then recorded inside a computer. When we want to bring the object back, the computer simply tells us how much of each kind of atom we need. We adjust the mix in a chemical vat, and the computer impresses the electromagnetic pattern on the chemical mixture. In a matter of minutes, the original object is reconstituted exactly as when it was recorded. It hasn’t aged a day, it hasn’t suffered any deterioration—it is, as far as anyone has been able to tell, exactly the same as before it was recorded.”

There was a buzz of conversation throughout the room, and the officer held up his hands for silence. “I know this all sounds like the wildest science fiction to you right now, but just let me show you some holos of the process in action. I think you’ll be amazed.”

Hawker and the other soldiers watched as the holos demonstrated a series of experiments. At first, inanimate objects were placed in the scanners and dissolved into nothingness, only to be re-created moments later, looking the same as before. Then came a succession of test animals from mice to chimpanzees. The animals appeared to be unhurt by the process and, to test their memories, creatures with special training in mazes were recorded and resurrected, with no loss of their memory. Finally, the tests were conducted on human subjects—most of whom were black, and Hawker surmised that this was one fate of Freek POWs during the recent war. It was frightening—and not a little sickening—to watch a man being reduced to a puddle of ooze on the floor of the scanner, only to be reconstructed later apparently undamaged. The man could not recall anything from the moment the scanner was turned on until the moment he was re-create, and he insisted he was the same person and that nothing had been done to him.

“You can imagine how excited we are about the new process,” the officer said after the holos concluded. “The benefits over the old hibernation process are obvious. There’s no expensive maintenance program, no coffins to watch, no vital functions to be constantly checked. The patterns are stored neatly and safely inside the computer until we need them. The new system is much more mobile, because the reconstruction equipment is far easier to transport than delicate hibernation chambers. And best of all, from your point of view, there aren’t any elaborate preparations to go through at either end of the process.

“You don’t need physical exams, shots or enemas beforehand, and you don’t need a week or two of physical therapy and calisthenics after you come out of it. As far as this subject is concerned, the process is completely painless and takes place between one thought and the next.

“So, if you’re feeling adventurous, if you really want to see what tomorrow is like, if you want to serve your country in the best possible way, there’ll always be a place for you in the army. Think of us before you commit yourself to anything else.”

To Hawker, the concept seemed ludicrous. The idea of being frozen at least had some semblance of reality. But this new system was just too bizarre for words. He was glad he and Green had set aside their trust fund. He would be independently wealthy by now.

The plane flight back to the States took a bare three hours, even from Antarctica, and yet still seemed like an eternity. On arrival he was sent to the Orientation office, where a clerk helped him get adjusted to his new environment.

“I see you’ve been in a prison camp for three years,” the clerk said. “Your email box must be stuffed.”

“I don’t have an email box.”

“Sure you do. It’s basic for all soldiers.” And he gave Hawker instructions for accessing the system from his assigned barracks.

When Hawker was installed in his barracks and found a private moment, he checked the email. The box was indeed overflowing, but all the messages were pure spam—except for one dated about two weeks ago. When Hawker saw the sender’s name, he ignored all the others and just played that one.

The screen flickered to life with a sharp, clear picture. There was David Green, looking straight at him and smiling.

“Hi, Hawk,” the image said. “I asked around about you and heard you hadn’t gotten home yet but I figured you’d eventually get this message. I tried waiting for you as long as I could—I wanted to tell you all this in person—but... well, you’ll understand when I’m finished.

“First, the good news—as little as there is of it. Lucky came through the war okay, too. We’re both alive and well—or we are when I’m recording this. I’m not so sure what our status will be by the time you get it.

“Now, the rest of the news... and it’s not very good.” Hawker listened, feeling himself growing numb. While they slept, a big scandal broke out in Washington over paying soldiers for not doing anything. Most of the sleepers had had the same idea, to invest their pay. A lot of people thought it was unfair to pay soldiers for lying in a coffin while the army took care of all their needs. They raised a big stink in Congress, and, after much hand-wringing, the sleepers had all their assets confiscated. Naturally, the sleepers were informed of this only after they came back from Antarctica—those who did. Some went a little crazy and ended up in the stockade. Some others were trying to fight it in the courts as being
ex post facto
, but, in Green’s opinion, they didn’t have a prayer the way the country was going.

“We thought things were bad in the United States after the China war,” Green went on. “Let me tell you, that was nothing compared to what’s happening right now. The place is an armed camp. Nobody goes
anywhere
without travel papers—and it hardly matters if you’ve got the papers, because travel is so expensive you probably can’t afford it anyway. If you’re lucky enough to get a job—the unemployment rate has stabilized at twenty percent or so—you’re practically stuck in it for the rest of your life. If you can’t get a job, you get stuck on the welfare rolls, and I’m told almost nobody ever gets off them once they’re on. The government does give you free dope to help you forget your troubles, but frankly I think almost anything is better than sitting around doped to the eyeballs day after day.

“The government is as close to a dictatorship as we’ve ever come. They still hold elections, apparently, but from the looks of things the candidates are all preselected for you. The news is heavily censored, so I couldn’t see much of what was really happening.

Hawker stared at the screen. Deep in his bones, he felt a kind of cold he’d never felt even in Antarctica.

“Lucky and I wanted to wait until you got back,” Green said, “so the three of us could decide together what we should do. But the army doesn’t want to keep us on salary and they won’t let us wait for you. We’ve got an ultimatum: either we sign up for this new process they’ve got or they kick us out into the real world and we have to fend for ourselves. Between the two, I don’t really think there’s much choice. We’re fucked any way we look at it.”

Green looked uneasy, and glanced away for a moment before looking back at the camera. “Lucky and I are going for it. I mean, for another jump into the future. I wish we could have waited for you, but they’re getting pushy. If you do decide to go that way, things won’t be so bad—we’ll simply come out of the machine and there you’ll be, only a few hours from when I’m recording this. If you decide to stick it out in the real world, I’ll understand that, too. This new process of theirs sounds scary.”

Green hesitated and Hawker thought that would be the end of the recording, but after a few seconds of silence, the image spoke again. “I don’t know, Hawk. Maybe we should get off the merry-go-round now, while we still have the chance. We’ve already tried escaping into the future twice in search of something better, and look how that worked out for us. If we don’t get out now, I don’t think we ever will. To be honest, I don’t really believe things will get better by the next time we wake up. The pace of human existence is accelerating all the time. Have you ever heard the legend of the Flying Dutchman? That would be us, lost souls doomed to repeat our mistakes forever through history.”

Green briefly closed his eyes. “Damn, but I’m getting philosophical in my old age,” he said with a bitter laugh. “I’d almost forgotten all my doubts until I started this letter to you. If I don’t stop now, maybe I’ll talk myself right out of it.

“That’s all I have to say, I guess. Be careful, and don’t let them railroad you into anything you don’t want to do. Whatever you decide is fine with us—and Lucky and I both wish you an eternity of good luck. Take care of yourself, Hawk; you matter more than you know.”

Hawker stared at the screen for many minutes after the message had finished playing, unable to move for fear the tears would spill out and drown him. Eventually, he returned to his bunk and spent the night staring at the ceiling.

The next day, he was called into the administration building for a “counseling session.” The counselor—a civilian, Hawker noted—tried to break the news about the seizure of sleepers’ money as gently as possible, and Hawker did nothing to make it easier for him. Hawker acted properly indignant when the facts were explained to him, and the counselor rushed to mollify him by showing the alternatives. The regular army had no room for him, the man said, but Hawker could always sign up for another hitch of suspended time, this time as a recorded pattern in the army’s computer. “What if I don’t want to do that?” Hawker asked. “Who knows what you’d steal from me this time.”

The counselor blushed and turned away to his computer. He typed quickly and had Hawker’s dossier on the screen within seconds. He did a double-take at Hawker’s age, until he saw the note that Hawker was a two-time sleeper. He mentioned that Hawker’s high school diploma would be virtually useless in the modern world because it had been granted so long ago. He grimaced when he noticed Hawker possessed no specialized skills that would stand him in good stead in civilian life.

“You mean there’s nothing out there for me,” Hawker said.