Old Man's War

by John Scalzi

  “Yes,” I said.

  Please speak the name you would like to give your BrainPal™.

  “‘Asshole,’” I said.

  You have selected “Asshole,” the BrainPal wrote, and to its credit it spelled the word correctly. Be aware that many recruits have selected this name for their BrainPal™. Would you like to choose a different name?

  “No,” I said, and was proud that so many of my fellow recruits also felt this way about their BrainPal.

  Your BrainPal™ is now Asshole, the BrainPal wrote. You may change this name in the future if you like. Now you must choose an access phrase to activate Asshole. While Asshole is active at all times it will only respond to commands after it has been activated. Please choose a short phrase. Asshole suggests “Activate Asshole” but you may choose another phrase. Please say your activation phrase now.

  “‘Hey, Asshole,’” I said.

  You have chosen “Hey, Asshole.” Please say it again to confirm. I did. Then it asked me to choose a deactivation phrase. I chose (of course) “Go away, Asshole.”

  Would you like Asshole to refer to itself in the first person?

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  I am Asshole.

  “Of course you are.”

  I await your commands or queries.

  “Are you intelligent?” I asked.

  I am equipped with a natural language processor and other systems to understand questions and comments and to provide answers, which often gives the appearance of intelligence, especially when connected to larger computer networks. Brain Pal™ systems, however, are not natively intelligent. For example, this is an automated response. This question is asked frequently.

  “How do you understand me?”

  At this stage I am responding to your voice, Asshole wrote. As you speak I am monitoring your brain and learning how your brain activates when you desire to communicate with me. In time I will be able to understand you without the need for you to speak. And in time, you may also learn to use me without conscious audible or visual cues.

  “What do you do?” I asked.

  I have a range of abilities. Would you like to see a formatted list?

  “Please,” I said.

  A massive list appeared before my eyes. To see a list of subcategories, please select a top category and say, “Expand [category].” To perform an action, please say, “Open [category].”

  I read down the list. Apparently, there was very little Asshole couldn’t do. He could send messages to other recruits. He could download reports. He could play music or video. He could play games. He could call up any document on a system. He could store incredible amounts of data. He could perform complex calculations. He could diagnose physical ailments and provide suggestions for cures. He could create a local network among a chosen group of other BrainPal users. He could provide instantaneous translations of hundreds of human and alien languages. He could even provide field of vision information on any other BrainPal user. I turned this option on. I barely recognized myself anymore; I doubt I’d recognize any of the other Old Farts. Overall, Asshole was a pretty useful thing to have sitting inside one’s brain.

  I heard an unlatching sound at my door. I looked up. “Hey, Asshole,” I said. “What time is it?”

  It is now 1200, Asshole wrote. I had spent the better part of ninety minutes fiddling with him. Well, enough of that; I was ready to see some real people.

  “Go away, Asshole,” I said.

  Good-bye, Asshole wrote. The text disappeared as soon as I read it.

  There was a knock on the door. I walked over to open it. I figured it was Harry; I wondered what he looked like.

  He looked like a knockout brunette with dark (green) olive skin and legs that went all the way up.

  “You’re not Harry,” I said, incredibly stupidly.

  The brunette looked at me and looked me up and down. “John?” she finally said.

  I stared blankly for a second, and the name hit me—just before the ID floated ghostlike before my eyes. “Jesse,” I said.

  She nodded. I stared. I opened my mouth to say something. She grabbed my head and kissed me so hard that I was knocked back into my quarters. She managed to kick the door shut on our way down to the floor. I was impressed.

  I had forgotten just how easy it was for a young man to get an erection.

  SIX

  I’d forgotten how many times a young man can get an erection, too.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” Jesse said, lying on top of me after the third (!) time. “But I’m really not all that attracted to you.”

  “Thank God,” I said. “If you were, I’d be worn down to a nub by now.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Jesse said. “I’m fond of you. Even before the”—she motioned with her hand here, trying to think of a way to describe a rejuvenating, full-body transplant—“the change, you were intelligent and kind and funny. A good friend.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “You know, Jesse, usually the ‘let’s be friends’ speech is to prevent sex.”

  “I just don’t want you to have illusions about what this is about.”

  “I was under the impression that it was about magically being transported into a body of a twenty-year-old and being so excited about it that it was imperative to have wild sex with the very first person we saw.”

  Jesse stared at me for a second, then burst out laughing. “Yes! That’s exactly it. Although in my case, it was the second person. I have a roommate, you know.”

  “Yeah? How does Maggie clean up?”

  “Oh my God,” Jesse said. “She makes me look like a beached whale, John.”

  I ran my hands over her sides. “That’s a mighty fine beached whale, Jesse.”

  “I know!” Jesse said, and suddenly sat up, straddling me. She raised her arms up and crossed them behind her head, perking up her already marvelously firm and full breasts. I felt her inner thighs radiating heat as they wrapped around my midsection. I knew that even though I didn’t have an erection at that very moment, one was coming right up. “I mean, look at me,” she said, unnecessarily, because I hadn’t taken my eyes off her from the moment she sat up. “I look fabulous. I don’t say that to be vain. It’s just I never looked this good in real life. Not even close.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” I said.

  She grabbed her breasts and pointed the nipples at my face. “See these?” she said, and wiggled the left one. “In real life, this one was a cup size smaller than this one, and it was still too large. I had a permanent backache from puberty onward. And I think they were this firm for one week when I was thirteen. Maybe.”

  She reached down, grabbed my hands, and placed them on her perfect, flat belly. “I never had one of these, either,” she said. “I always carried a little pouch down here, even before I had babies. After two kids, well, let’s just say that if I had ever wanted a third, it would have had a duplex in there.”

  I slid my hands behind her and grabbed her ass. “What about this?” I said.

  “Wide load,” Jesse said, and laughed. “I was a big girl, my friend.”

  “Being big’s not a crime,” I said. “Kathy was on the larger side. I liked it just fine.”

  “I didn’t have a problem with it at the time,” she said. “Body issues are foolish. On the other hand, I wouldn’t trade now.” She ran her hands over her body, provocatively. “I’m all sexy!” And with that, she did a little giggle and a head flip. I laughed.

  Jesse leaned forward and peered into my face. “I’m finding this cat’s-eye thing incredibly fascinating,” she said. “I wonder if they actually used cat DNA to make them. You know, spliced cat DNA with ours. I wouldn’t mind being part cat.”

  “I don’t think it’s really cat DNA,” I said. “We’re not exhibiting other catlike attributes.”

  Jesse sat back up. “Like what?” she said.

  “Well,” I said, and let my hands wander up to her breasts, “for one thing, male cats have bar
bs on their penis.”

  “Get out,” Jesse said.

  “No, it’s true,” I said. “It’s the barbs that stimulate the female to ovulate. Look it up. Anyway, no barbs down there. I think you’d’ve noticed if there were.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” Jesse said, and suddenly sent her back part back, and her forward part forward, to lie directly on top of me. She grinned salaciously. “It could be that we just haven’t been doing it hard enough to make them pop out.”

  “I’m sensing a challenge,” I said.

  “I’m sensing something, too,” she said, and wiggled.

  “What are you thinking about?” Jesse asked me, later.

  “I’m thinking about Kathy,” I said, “and how often we’d lie around like we’re doing now.”

  “You mean, on the carpet,” Jesse said, smiling.

  I bopped her gently on the head. “Not that part. Just lying around after sex, talking and enjoying each other’s company. We were doing this the first time we talked about enlisting.”

  “Why did you bring it up?” Jesse said.

  “I didn’t,” I said. “Kathy did. It was on my sixtieth birthday, and I was depressed about getting older. So she suggested that we sign up when the time came. I was a little surprised. We’d always been antimilitary. We protested the Subcontinential War, you know, when it wasn’t exactly popular to do that.”

  “Lots of people protested that war,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah, but we really protested. Became a little bit of a joke about it in town, actually.”

  “So how did she rationalize signing up with the Colonial Army?”

  “She said she wasn’t against war or the military in a general sense, just that war and our military. She said that people have the right to defend themselves and that it was probably a nasty universe out there. And she said that beyond those noble reasons, we’d be young again to boot.”

  “But you wouldn’t be able to enlist together,” Jesse said. “Unless you were the same age.”

  “She was a year younger than me,” I said. “And I did mention that to her—I said that if I joined the army, I’d be officially dead, we wouldn’t be married anymore and who knows if we’d ever see each other again.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said these were technicalities. She’d find me again and drag me to the altar like she had before. And she would have, you know. She could be a bear about these things.”

  Jesse propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me. “I’m sorry she’s not here with you, John.”

  I smiled. “It’s all right,” I said. “I just miss my wife from time to time, that’s all.”

  “I understand,” Jesse said. “I miss my husband, too.”

  I glanced over to her. “I thought he left you for a younger woman and then got food poisoning.”

  “He did and he did, and he deserved to vomit his guts out,” Jesse said. “I don’t miss the man, really. But I miss having a husband. It’s nice to have someone you know you’re supposed to be with. It’s nice to be married.”

  “It’s nice to be married,” I agreed.

  Jesse snuggled up to me and draped an arm over my chest. “Of course, this is nice, too. It’s been a while since I’ve done this.”

  “Lie on a floor?”

  It was her turn to bop me. “No. Well, yes, actually. But more specifically, lie around after sex. Or have sex, for that matter. You don’t want to know how long it’s been since I’ve had it.”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Bastard. Eight years.”

  “No wonder you jumped me the minute you saw me,” I said.

  “You got that right,” Jesse said. “You happened to be very conveniently located.”

  “Location is everything, that’s what my mother always told me.”

  “You had a strange mother,” Jesse said. “Yo, bitch, what time is it?”

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m talking to the voice in my head,” she said.

  “Nice name you have for it,” I said.

  “What did you name yours?”

  “Asshole.”

  Jesse nodded. “Sounds about right. Well, the bitch tells me it’s just after 1600. We have two hours until dinner. You know what that means?”

  “I don’t know. I think four times is my limit, even when I’m young and superimproved.”

  “Calm yourself. It means we have just enough time for a nap.”

  “Should I grab a blanket?”

  “Don’t be silly. Just because I had sex on the carpet doesn’t mean I want to sleep on it. You’ve got an extra bunk. I’m going to use it.”

  “So I’m going to have to nap alone?”

  “I’ll make it up to you,” Jesse said. “Remind me when I wake up.”

  I did. She did.

  “God damn it,” Thomas said as he sat down at the table, carrying a tray so piled with food that it was a miracle he could even lift it. “Aren’t we all just too good-looking for words.”

  He was right. The Old Farts had cleaned up amazingly well. Thomas and Harry and Alan could all have been male models; of the four of us, I was definitely the ugly duckling, and I looked—well, I looked good. As for the women, Jesse was stunning, Susan was even more so, and Maggie frankly looked like a goddess. It actually hurt to look at her.

  It hurt to look at all of us. In that good, dizzying sort of way. We all spent a few minutes just staring at each other. And it wasn’t just us. As I scanned through the room, I couldn’t find a single ugly human in it. It was pleasingly disturbing.

  “It’s impossible,” Harry said, suddenly, to me. I looked over at him. “I looked around, too,” he said. “There’s no way in hell all the people in this room all looked as good as they do now when they were originally this age.”

  “Speak for yourself, Harry,” Thomas said. “If anything, I do believe I am a shade less attractive than in my salad days.”

  “You’re the same color as a salad these days,” Harry said. “And even if we excuse Doubtful Thomas over here—”

  “I’m going to cry all the way to a mirror,” Thomas said.

  “—it’s well nigh impossible that everyone is in the same basket. I guarantee you I did not look this good when I was twenty. I was fat. I had massive acne. I was already balding.”

  “Stop it,” Susan said. “I’m getting aroused.”

  “And I’m trying to eat,” said Thomas.

  “I can laugh about it now, because I look like this,” Harry said, running his hand down his body, as if to present this year’s model. “But the new me has very little to do with the old me, I’ll tell you that.”

  “You sound as if it bothers you,” Alan said.

  “It does, a little,” Harry admitted. “I mean, I’ll take it. But when someone gives me a gift horse, I look it in the mouth. Why are we so good-looking?”

  “Good genes,” Alan said.

  “Sure,” Harry said. “But whose? Ours? Or something that they spliced out of a lab somewhere?”

  “We’re just all in excellent shape now,” Jesse said. “I was telling John that this body is in far better shape than my real one ever was.”

  Maggie suddenly spoke up. “I say that, too,” she said. “I say ‘my real body’ when I mean ‘my old body.’ It’s as if this body isn’t real to me yet.”

  “It’s real enough, sister,” Susan said. “You still have to pee with it. I know.”

  “This from the woman who criticized me for oversharing,” Thomas said.

  “My point, because I did have one,” Jesse said, “is that while they were toning up our bodies, they took some time to tone up the rest of us as well.”

  “Agreed,” Harry said. “But that’s not telling us why they did it.”

  “It’s so we bond,” Maggie said.

  Everyone stared. “Well, look who’s coming out of her shell.”

  “Bite me, Susan.” Maggie said. Susan grinned. “Look, it’s basic human psychology
that we’re inclined to like people who we find attractive. Moreover, everyone in this room, even us, are basically strangers to each other, and have few if any ties to bring us together in a short time. Making us all look good to each other is a way to promote bonding, or will be, once we start training.”

  “I don’t see how it’s going to help the army if we’re all too busy ogling each other to fight,” Thomas said.

  “It’s not about that,” Maggie said. “Sexual attraction is just a side issue here. It’s a matter of quickly instilling trust and devotion. People instinctively trust and want to help people they find attractive, regardless of sexual desire. It’s why newscasters are always attractive. It’s why attractive people don’t have to work as hard in school.”

  “But we’re all attractive now,” I said. “In the land of the incredibly attractive, the merely good-looking could be in trouble.”

  “And even now, some of us look better than others,” Thomas said. “Every time I look at Maggie, I feel like the oxygen is being sucked from the room. No offense, Maggie.”

  “None taken,” Maggie said. “The baseline here isn’t each other as we are now, anyway. It’s how we all appeared before. In the short term, that’s reflexively the baseline we’ll use, and a short-term advantage is all they’d be looking for anyway.”

  “So you’re saying that you don’t feel oxygen-deprived when you look at me,” Susan said to Thomas.

  “It’s not meant to be an insult,” Thomas said.

  “I’ll remember that when I’m strangling you,” Susan said. “Speaking of oxygen-deprived.”

  “Stop flirting, you two,” Alan said, and turned his attention to Maggie. “I think you’re right about the attraction thing, but I think you’re forgetting the one person we’re supposed to be the most attracted to: ourselves. For better or worse, these bodies we’re in are still alien to us. I mean, between the fact that I’m green and I’ve got a computer named ‘Dipshit’ in my head—” He stopped, and looked at us all. “What did you all name your BrainPals?”

  “Asshole,” I said.

  “Bitch,” Jesse said.

  “Dickwad,” said Thomas.

  “Fuckhead,” said Harry.