’vaged off a fallen; it was confiscated, tho, and XXXXXX so we won’t know for a while if it took. Only hitch is wearing the gen-dad belt; the cold element in there sometimes leeches out, and causes chem burns. Last night, I had a dream about you and Dad; he was telling me what a good boy I was, only it wasn’t like we were in the old apartment, but I was in a ’cruitment chair, getting my first shave, and you were just standing there with a draft notice in your hand. Not saying a word, just holding out your free hand as my hair drifted down, like you were catching leaves in the fall.
I wonder if that’s how guys used to feel when they were drafted or enlisted. I can’t picture it; the EVP’s in the offices are all so old they’re natural shine-heads. Got to thinking. When it came to the whole war process before EVP, were we women jealous of what the men were able to do in war, or secretly proud that we didn’t really have to get in there and fight? Once there was EVP, was it then “put up or shut up” time? Tried to bring that up once, in the bunker, but for all of us, it was like trying to figure out what the world would be like without sunlight, after we’d lived all our lives with it. Sort of a fairy-tale life, where women took pills not to have children, and men wore rubber sheaths on their s’rods to stop them from blasting the women, and not just to try and stop AIDS or EVP. I can read about it, talk about it, and know all the while that it was true, but for me it wasn’t, period.
I know you remember what it was like. Just like you remember Dad before EVP, and him eventually dying from it like just about all the men who got it and didn’t respond to the vaccine. I’d ask you, but I know I’d never get my answer....
You asked about the POW situation; we only see them for a short time, before they’re shipped out to XXXXXX. Looks like their army is treating the ’ners on their side ’bout the same as us, maybe a little worse. Some of the POWs that come through here are only twelve, maybe less. No hair down there when they’re stripped for delouse. Don’t know how they ’spect to get results from the gen-dads the youngest ’ners carry. Probably give ’em blanks.
Lights are flickering; happens every time a XXXXXX flies overhead. Which means that XXXXXX is coming back, either more POW or more wounded. Least I hope it’s just wounded. I hate seeing what they do to the fallen ’fore our ’ners can get to them. Hacked, or ringed with burning tires and always split open if they’re carrier due to evacuate soon. Most of the time they’re totally claimed when we find them. Worse if they aren’t; we have to XXXXXX them.
I wonder, honestly, if even pre-EVP male ’ners had to do that. Even if you won’t—or can’t—answer.
Lights again, almost out, taking the keys of this thing with them. Insane to send electronic machines; too susceptible to brown/blackouts. An EVP just toddled up, wants his toy back.
Salutes and hugs, Tash
04.09.46
From: Major Emi Takei
c/o PSC Box 976591
APO AP 96266
To: Captain Janet Ingram (Ret.)
P.O. Box 5490342
FDR Station
New York, NY 10150-0342
Re: T. Sgt. Natashia C. Ingram
Dear Captain Ingram,
It is my sad duty to inform you that on 31/08/46, your child Natashia was injured/killed in the line of duty during a MOAW missile attack on her bunker.
Her War Bag will be sent to you under separate cover, along with her Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
Her daughter/son Diee will remain in Army custody, per Property Regulation 5499872-C, as outlined in the standard enlistment forms Natashia signed upon joining the Army in 2034. You will be informed of the child’s progress as she/he advances in military training. Again, I am sorry to inform you of the injury/loss of your child. May God comfort you and look down upon you in this time of sorrow, and may She comfort your daughter Natashia.
With regret,
Maj. Emi Takei. C.O.
U.S. Army
Captain Ingram,
Please excuse the form letter above; it is regulation, and you & I know reg is God around here. I knew your daughter, and while she and I did not always agree on principle (or procedure—a habit of hers I seem to have posthumously inherited!) I found her to be a woman with a questioning, insightful mind—not a prickle-headed ’groaner blindly following orders (in my case, touché!) despite their logic or their true necessity. Not that she ever disobeyed any order given by myself or any of her superiors, but Tash was aware of the purpose (or lack thereof) behind day-to-day Army life, and chose to rationally and intelligently question the why of this woman’s Army.
Would that I had had the answers she was so desperately seeking.
Maj. Emi Takei (Soon-to-be-retired)
LIST OF CONTENTS:
War Bag, T. Sgt. N. C. Ingram:
Dog Tags
Genetic-donor receptacle belt (empty of donor syringes)
Diary (edited to conform to regulations 87943-A and -B)
Emergency MRE’s (three packets)
African-American phrase book
Misc. photographs (Infant Recruit D. M. Ingram-Hussam)
Letter dated 30.08.46 (unmailed at time of death)
iii.
blue
Norma was taking ears again. We were bunkering, cleaning out abandoned subter dwellings of the enemy fallen, burying those who’d been left by their evac units, but ears (and noses and lips—upper and lower) were off limits—unless your mother was a lieutenant colonel, and her mother was a ma-frucking-jor. Norma can fillet the whole frucking hide off an enemy ’ner and wear it over her uniform, if she wants. Claims she’s a pre-EVP relation to ol’ General Norman S. hisself.
She is big enough.
“G’eee over here,” Norma barked, stretching the “G’eee” out hard and fast, like when you give an order to a K-9’er.
I didn’t know if that was her way of saying “Get” or a corruption of my name, Diee, but I sure as fruck wasn’t answering. I may be an I.R. born to a draftee tech sergeant, raised in Mandelia’s kibbutz-cum-boot camp, but I don’t lick any lips. Upper or lower.
Staying where I was, I shook powdery grayish snow off a Mongol-English phrase book, watching Norma through lowered lashes as she raised the fallen ’Gol ’ner by the meaty scruff of her neck (her rounded yellow-brown head was covered with a quarter inch of stubble), took out her laser-knife from her parka, and with a hum and a flash of rod-focused light, the right ear, followed by the left, rested in Norma’s wide palm.
“Lieutenant Ingram-Hussam, g’eee over here!”
I put the phrase book into the ’Gol ’ner’s War Bag, taking the time to untangle the straps before approaching the earless corpse. Patting the Velcro male section onto the softer, female patch on the ’Gol’s outside belt, then resting the straps across her body (I wasn’t strong enough to lift her and secure the straps under the uniform back), I leaned back on my heels, asking, “What, Norma?”
Glaring, yet unable to protest (we shared the same rank), Norma said, “I think this one’s a he.”
“I think not, Lieutenant.” Rocking back ’n’ forth before I built up the momentum to rise in a long, fluid movement (loving Norma’s narrowed eyes and puckered lips as I did it), I dusted semi-melted snow off my pants before walking away from her, adding over my shoulder, “I don’t see the wisdom in using a nonexpendable member of any society as missile-munchie.”
Muttering “Thesaurus-tongue,” Norma opened her parka pocket—the rasp of separating Velcro carried far in the cold, dry air—and hid her latest ear harvest.
Norma