Battle On The Marathon

by John Thornton

  The junior level now had two people with private rooms. Timofei and Jane had each lost a roommate. Some people said they were lucky to have a room all their own. I thought it was sad and lonely. I felt guilty. Not just for being late getting to Radha, but I felt more guilt about the fact that I was glad I still had a roommate. I should not have felt guilt over that, because I should have had more compassion on Jane and Timofei.

  The next morning, Mister Fisher addressed the ten of us. “You are all aware of the incident which happened yesterday. The hospital reports that Radha is recovering but it will take some time. Everett will not be returning to us.”

  “Did he shoot her?” Bartlet blurted out.

  “We have completed a full investigation. Forensics from the site, and the logs from the two individual’s wristwatches, prove that Everett did fire a G1MP which wounded Radha. I can tell you that I do not believe it was a deliberate act to try to hurt Radha. However, and let me make this crystal clear, it was an incident which should never have happened. I blame myself for failing to instill in you the very serious nature of the weapons you have been issued. Everett apparently was able to crack the locking code to the armory and took a G1MP and six rounds of ammunition out without authorization. His intent, or so I believe, was to kill a feral bovine with the G1MP. However, he was not proficient in the use of that weapon and he inadvertently did fire and hit Radha. The security on the armory has been heightened. No one should attempt to get a weapon out without authorization. The training with the G1MP revolvers will continue on schedule. But be warned, do not attempt to break into the armory.”

  Everyone was much more careful about the gimps after that. But I really think the remaining ten of us would have already been just as cautious and safety conscious.

  So, we trained and we trained and we trained. We put hundreds of rounds through our gimps. I never was as good as some of the others, but a few times I did score in the top one or two places in our matches. But to be honest, I also sometimes was in the worst one or two in my shooting scores.

  We also still physically conditioned ourselves through swimming, running, and all the other activities. Rowing the boats on the river was a good way to burn off some steam and reduce stress, but I found just sitting there rowing was somewhat redundant. Sit in class, sit and read, sit and hear a lecture. I wanted to move more. Sort-of like Marie, I liked to keep moving a lot. So, exercise was a big part of what we did. This was all in addition to duties, our reading, study assignments, as well as classroom lectures.

  Our assigned fictional readings took a stranger turn. The prior year we had so many books about water, submarines, and about pirates and such. That second year, our first fictional book was called, Gulliver's Travels and was over three hundred years old. Then came an even older book called, Micromégas which I just found strange. Its astronomical facts were just so wrong in so many ways.

  On the benches, we met to discuss things, especially the fictional writing. We did not speak about Radha, or Everett, and I am not sure why. I guess we all had an unspoken agreement not to mention them. It was like how we seldom spoke of our parents. Some parts of life are just private. The conspiracies came up yet again as to why the militia was formed, and why we were required to read what I considered faulty books.

  “You are missing the point,” Bartlet told me. “These fictional works, which were mostly called science fiction, or sometime speculative fiction, are just that, fiction!”

  “I agree with Bartlet. I think maybe they are to divert our minds from all the serious study. A sort-of pressure release valve, or an escapism fantasy. Right Bartlet?” Pilliroog stated as he looked at her.

  “Have you ever disagreed with her on anything?” Brett asked. But he was smiling and did it in a pleasant joking way.

  “Pilliroog has my permission to disagree with me anytime I am wrong,” Bartlet chuckled.

  Marie barked repeatedly at that.

  “So no, I have never disagreed with her.” He winked at her, but everyone saw it.

  “The point is, they are fiction.”

  “But does that mean fiction cannot teach a lesson or have value?” Brett asked. “I think we are reading these for more than just entertainment or diversion.”

  “Then why?” I asked. “The science is so wrong. Like in that War of the Worlds book? Mars never had an advanced race on it, and the primitive ecology Mars once had collapsed long long ago. Eons ago. All that science ever found were long dead remains.”

  Tudeng added to the discussion. “The biology in most of those old books is incorrect as well. That Gulliver person meeting tiny little people, getting tied down, and all that. It just makes no logical sense. I think maybe we are to learn from that Emperor of Lilliput. Is there some leader in one of the habitats who is executing people for no reason?”

  Tudeng’s newest theory had not been shared before then, and we all discussed it in more detail.

  “Maybe in one of the aquatic habitats like Foreigner or Styx?” Jane asked. “I know my father would not allow his police to abuse people.”

  “Could it be the Captain herself?”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment after that comment. We had all been taught ever since we were born that the Captain was the leader of the flight crew and dedicated to our voyage and seeing us all safely through. Our lives depended on that.

  “It cannot be the Captain who is a threat, she set up the militia, right?” I asked. “Mister Fisher would not follow or obey someone like that tyrant emperor in Gulliver.”

  That seemed to calm things down for a while. Marie even went off and sniffed on a rabbit trail. That dog would eat a whole rabbit every time she caught one.

  “The sizes in Gulliver must be mistranslations, or something. Tiny little people, and some giant child? Or is it all metaphors and similes?” Timofei asked. “People of good stature or people of bad stature?”

  “In that Voltaire's Micromégas, there are those weird creatures from Saturn and Sirius. They too are immense, even bigger than that daughter in Gulliver.”

  “Except for the dwarf who was only slightly less than two kilometers high,” I added and laughed. “But at least that book is short.”

  Timofei went on. “Maybe size is truly a metaphor in those books? We know nothing ever lived in Saturn’s gasses.”

  “And in the real world, every attempt to set up bases on the moons of the outer planets were all dismal failures. That was why the colony ships left Earth,” Brett said.

  “I do not think any were headed for the Sirius system. There are no earth-equivalent planets there, right?” Jane added.

  “But in that book, War of the Worlds, there were invaders from Mars, which we know cannot happen. But what about invaders? Could there be some tyrant leader who has taken over one of the habitat, and is threatening to invade the others?” I asked. “That would fit with why we read Gulliver and War of the Worlds.”

  Around and around our discussions went, but we never reached a consensus. The reason for the assignment of the fictional works was just an enigma.

  And so, our training continued. It took all sorts of forms, from the weapons training with the gimps, the hand-powered weapons used in the food acquisitions, to the ever-increasing physical training of rowing, swimming, calisthenics, and running. Mister Fisher pressed us intellectually as well with the rigorous classroom study, discussion, and more education. No topic was ignored, from all kinds of biology, to botany, to astronomy, to agronomics, to reactor dynamics. From aeronautics to zoology we studied anything, and everything in between. Yes, I think we covered every possible topic. Well, I thought that then, anyway.

  However, to this day, I still recall those discussion times around the benches as if they were just yesterday. Somehow, those odd fictional works gnawed away at my mind. Some months further along in our junior year, we were assigned some books which fired our conspiracy theories even more.

  “These latest books are just about silly wars,” Kulm stated one late afternoo
n.

  Marie barked a lot at that suggestion, or perhaps it was at a squirrel which ran across the side of the lodge. The dog happily took off on another of her adventures.

  “They are cautionary tales from before the Great Event. Too bad the world did not listen to them,” Kulm huffed at bit at his comment which was meant only partially to be humorous. “Do you ever wonder why with billions of people, they spent so much time on entertainment and not on works which could have prevented all that death and suffering?”

  “It was because of all those people. The masses had to be entertained,” Matkaja added. “Otherwise the war would have come sooner. It was inevitable as the Earth could not support nine billion people.”

  “But this Starship Troopers book, along with that Ender’s Game, are so wrong in countless many ways from an engineering standpoint,” Kulm added. “They are just fairytales to scare people into right behavior.”

  “The way some of those portray women is just dumb,” Jane said. “But that Forever War, and the Eternity Brigade made me think more about police work. War is sort-of just a massive security work, and when criminals are running whole nations or regions, then maybe a war is just a big confrontation between good and evil?”

  “But the politics in Starship Troopers made me think both sides considered their causes to be right,” Kulm responded. “Well, not so much the bug’s side, but the human had various sides, and lots of bickering and quarreling.”

  “Ender’s Game was about children training for war, but not really training so much.” I interjected. “I mean Ender did not really know he was piloting real spacecraft, even as strange as they sounded. And they too were fighting some giant insect-type enemy.”

  Tudeng interjected, “We are here in training, are the books just to help us relate to a training experience?”

  “Maybe. But, I keep trying to see a common theme in all those books,” I replied, “and all I come back to is that there must be a habitat on the Marathon where some criminals, to use Jane’s terms, are in rebellion against Captain Adams and the flight crew. That must be the reason why the militia exists.”

  “But that book from just a year or so before the Great Event, Johnny Can’t March Home, was so eccentric,” Bartlet said. She flipped back her blonde hair and smiled at Pilliroog. “Too weird for me, and the officers in that book were just disgusting fools.”

  “You just did not like it because of that stupid contraction in the title,” I joked.

  Nearly everyone laughed.

  “Antique contractions aside,” Kulm said, “that book at least got a lot of the engineering right, considering it was written in 2040, but all that violence and killing. For what?”

  “To show the horrors of some war?” Tudeng answered. “Like that book Red Badge of Courage? You know, that one we only had a fragment from. It was filled with contractions and strange words. Even the translators did not make out some of that.”

  “A lot was lost in the Great Event,” Bartlet said with authority. “I overheard Mister Fisher saying that many of the fictional books we have were saved by Captain Adams’ extended family, and our copies come from their private collection.”

  “So, maybe it really is the Captain who wants us to read these?” I wondered out loud. “Why? Does that mean the Captain is not some emperor tyrant?”

  “Nor a bug from Klendathu, or some bug-like queen, right?” Timofei laughed. “Hey here are the buggers, I am burning them up!” He mockingly pretended to fire off some kind of flame weapon.

  While I laughed along, I wondered about what Bartlet had said about our books coming from the Captain’s family’s private collection. I considered asking my conservation slate about that, but decided not to bother. I knew the history of how much had been destroyed in the atomic firestorms of the 90 Hour War, and how difficult the rebuilding had been. Besides, most of the really interesting stuff in the databases was sequestered away from us students. We could not even get direct access to the lattice of compeers, but had only the library system to utilize. Back as a sophomore, I had been thrilled with the potential for “all the knowledge of the artificial brains on the lattice” and had tried to get some answers. I had eagerly submitted my inquiries. However, if they were not directly related to the lessons or the readings, I was denied an answer. Then, I was shuffled around and got into too many peripheral areas. Once, while trekking on a tangential, I was reading something interesting, when the slate interrupted. A message scrolled across the display, “How is this related to your studies at Raven Academy? Your instructor has been informed of your activity.”

  I hated seeing that come up. I was terrified I had done something wrong. Mister Fisher never directly addressed me about it, but after that, I was very hesitant to make inquiries outside of the range of the lessons. Everett had talked about how easily he could sneak around getting information through his slate, but I did not believe him that first year. After the shooting, I wondered if he really had been able to unlock things in the nonphysicality as he claimed. He unlocked a mess of trouble, for sure.

  And so, we discussed our readings, all while sitting on the benches. Over and over and over we deliberated the readings. While we studied botany and its chemical applications, we were also reading, H.G. Wells’ The Stolen Bacillus. That Wells author, you know, I never did learn if Wells was a man or a woman, that was a point we debated sometimes. But anyway, Wells wrote about some anarchist lunatic thief. That thief stole a vial of some ancient disease pathogen, cholera bacilli, and tried to poison the water supply of a major city. Now, I had never lived in a major city, only on the farm, and neither Colby or Olathe could be called a major city. So again, I was confused about why were had to read that odd story. But then I remembered that the habitat called Chicago could be considered a major city, as it was dedicated to urban housing and whatnot.

  One day on the benches I asked about that. “If someone wanted to murder a bunch of people, like in Chicago habitat. What do you think of someone using water to poison a city?”

  Jane was ready, as usual. “Like in our reading? Water has been a common theme, from submarines, to that Wells’ story. I think criminals are making some kind of play to gain control of drinking water. Maybe holding some habitat for ransom. It could be Chicago. But which habitat is trying to do that? Not Kansas certainly.”

  “Ransom?” Kulm asked. “For what goal? To what purpose?”

  “Who can know the motivations of a criminally insane person?” Jane said as if she had heard it many times before. Maybe her dad spoke that phrase as an idiom.

  Kulm replied, “All the water systems in every habitat are filtered and purified. The biomes are designed to automatically recycle the water. The water on the command ship—the needle ship—is even more strictly monitored, as there are no biome filters. So, if some criminal dumped some germs in the water, it would be mitigated quickly by all the cleaning systems. I tell you, from an engineering standpoint, it just could not be done on a large scale. Sure, drop some poison in a drinking cup, or a closed drinking system in a facility, and maybe you could make a few people sick, but not some giant city. The idea is just dumb.”

  I admired Kulm and the way he understood engineering, as that was a love of my heart as well, but I also remembered history and another book we read. So, I jumped in with my own ideas.

  “Well, in that Germ Growers book, by Robert Potter, there was some kind of weird plague. Lots of cities named in that book, some I have never heard of. After the Great Event, there were mass starvations, and many diseases. I know many major cities had numerous atomic detonations. So, could both those books just be fictionalized accounts of the Great Event and the 90 Hour War? Maybe a way for people to cope by reliving it in literature?”

  “Great idea, roomie,” Brett interjected, “but absolutely wrong.”

  Whenever Brett called me roomie, I knew I had said something stupid, that was just his way of good-natured joshing with me.

  Brett went on. “The dates are all out of w
hack. That Germ Growers, and The Stolen Bacillus were both written like way more than a hundred years before the 90 Hour War, and nuclear bombs were not even invented back then. Good try though.” He smiled

  “Nuclear weapons, initially called atomic bombs, were created circa 1940s during some war,” Bartlet stated. “That was a hundred plus years before the Marathon launched.”

  “But way, way, after those other books were written. I checked. The old calendar is goofy, but I ran it a couple times. Only a few of our fiction readings were composed near or after the Great Event. While our textbooks are contemporary and modern, those fiction things are antiques.” Brett yawned and got up and wandered off.

  That was the way of our discussions on the benches. I think that was because we never got any solid answers to why the militia existed. We all had our own ideas. If I could go back and tell my young self what I know now, that junior student would never have believed it.