The Forever War

Then what the hell are you, we, am I, answered the other side. A peace-loving, vacuum-welding specialist cum physics teacher snatched up by the Elite Conscription Act and reprogrammed to be a killing machine. You, I have killed and liked it.

I hated myself for smiling. It was slaughter, even though our flank was outnumbered five to one.

If they could condition us to kill on cue, they can condition us to do almost anything. Re-enlist.’

I felt my gorge rising and knew that all the lurid training tapes, all the horrible deaths in training accidents, hadn’t prepared me for this sudden reality … that I had a magic wand that I could point at a life and make it a smoking piece of half-raw meat; I wasn’t a soldier nor ever wanted to be one nor ever would want—

So after another month of logy calisthenics and drill, at a constant two gravities, we got our first look at the planet we were going to attack. Invaders from outer space, yes sir.

But while my conscious mind was rejecting the silliness, somewhere much deeper, down in that sleeping animal where we keep our real motives and morals, something was thirsting for alien blood, secure in the conviction that the noblest thing a man could do would be to die killing one of those horrible monsters …

The 1143-year-long war had been begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate.

Heaven was a lovely, unspoiled Earth-like world; what Earth might have been like if men had treated her with compassion instead of lust.

Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there … the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.