Virtual war, p.11
Virtual War, page 11
But Corgan couldn’t sleep. The terrible war scenes he’d suppressed all day came flooding at him in the night to haunt him. Children with limbs torn off, lying facedown in bloody mud. Soldiers’ bodies, male and female, stacked naked and decaying like fallen leaves.
When he did sleep, bits of lectures he’d heard from Mendor long ago flared into his dreams, in Mendor’s stern Father Professor voice. “War is obsolete. We must stop aggressors from taking lives, but we must engage the enemy without killing them.”
“So much blood,” Corgan wept in his sleep.
“In the old vicious wars, there were no non-combatants: women, children, the innocent, the helpless—all died.”
“No. No dying,” Corgan tried to cry out, but sleep smothered his cries.
“What was the point of bloody, bloody wars when they were so destructive that nobody won?” Mendor’s voice rang through the nightmares. “Even the winners lost.”
“No blood!” Corgan moaned, and woke himself from his restless sleep.
“There, there,” Mendor the Mother quieted him. “You cried ‘no blood.’ Of course there will be no blood, Corgan—only in the virtual images. You know that’s just pretend.”
“But they used to fight like that, didn’t they, Mendor? All the killing … people really killed each other in the old days, didn’t they?”
“Yes. For thousands of years.”
“Why did they?”
“Human nature, Corgan. People’s instincts can be selfish and ruthless.”
“But why do we have to show slaughter in the Virtual War games? Can’t we just play a bloodless Virtual War?”
Mendor answered, “There are reasons. You’re all sweaty. Let me wipe your face with a cool cloth. Sleep, now. Sleep. It’s the middle of the night.”
“Two A.M.,” Corgan said, “and seven minutes forty-six and nineteen hundredths seconds. But I didn’t know the time the other day, Mendor. What if I can’t count time again when the War is happening?”
“You’ll be fine,” she soothed him. “You must trust me, Corgan. This past week, you worked yourself into a state of anxiety over nothing. Didn’t you notice how much better you played today? Anyway, tomorrow won’t be a hard day. It’s the day before the War, and They want you to save your strength. It will be easier tomorrow. Rest now, Corgan. Dream of the Isles of Hiva.”
Twelve
“It’s time,” Mendor whispered, gently shaking Corgan. “This is the day.”
He groaned, and fought against waking.
“It’s seven in the morning, Corgan.”
“I know what time it is, Mendor. I’m the world’s most accurate human clock, remember?”
Without touching him, Mendor the Mother Figure wrapped him in a cocoon of love. “Corgan, dear boy, this is the day that may change your life.”
“The Isles of Hiva,” Corgan murmured. “What will you do if I go there, Mendor?”
Hesitant, she answered, “You won’t need me anymore then, so I’ll cease to exist.”
“I can’t imagine you not existing.”
Her face hovered over him. She was pale pink, with cheeks so moist and fresh he wanted to touch them, with eyes that radiated love. She said, “If you don’t get up now, Corgan, you’ll be late for the War, and if you lose the War—no Isles of Hiva. Then the matter of my existence will become irrelevant.”
“Right.” Wearily, he rolled out of bed and went to sanitize himself in his Clean Room.
Breakfast was tasteless brain-potency-mineral cereal plus some chemical-laden juice that made him gag. “This drink is awful!” he exclaimed.
“It will help your muscles avoid a buildup of lactic acid,” Mendor told him. “Save some of it so you can swallow these pills. They’re to enhance your synaptic nerve pathways.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” he said, but he took the pills. “I’m ready now,” he said.
When he faced Sharla and Brig in the Virtual War Room, their images looked to be so nearby that they could have been within touching distance. But he was inside the confinement of his Box, and they were in their own Boxes, and the Virtual War Room didn’t exist except in electronic impulses carried by metal ions embedded in aerogel. No matter how broad the battlefield appeared, no matter how real the soldiers and shells and bombardment and dirt and blood seemed—they were only combinations of light and sound created by clever virtualizers: artists, historians, programmers, and engineers from all three confederations. Those electronic geniuses could pack an entire vast War inside the walls of Corgan’s small Box. And inside Shark’s, and Brig’s. And the three team members would almost forget they were in separate cubicles; would almost believe they were together. Fighting the War.
“I sense that everyone is prepared,” Mendor the Father Figure said. “The Western Hemisphere Federation is counting on the three of you. I know you will fulfill your destiny. Come forward now to stand before the Supreme Council.”
Corgan stood up, and watched his virtual image join Shark’s and Brig’s. in front of the Council table. Subtly at first, then more quickly, the Council members morphed from faceless, identical images into true-to-life representations of Themselves, the way They’d looked when Corgan saw Them, that time, through the transparent wall.
“Since you prefer the look of reality, Corgan…” the tall, stooped one said, but he didn’t finish the sentence. He just gestured to indicate the others.
Six distinctive, individual right hands raised in a blessing. “Our trust is in you,” stated the dissimilar mouths in six unalike though ordinary human faces. “Please recite the pledge.”
“I promise,” Corgan began, “to wage the War with courage, dedication, and honor.” He twisted to get a look at Shark’s lips. Was she saying the real pledge, or was she faking it?
“Take your places now. The countdown begins.”
Corgan sat flexing his hands, wondering what exactly had been in the pills Mendor gave him at breakfast. He could feel every nerve ending, each tiny neuron in his arms and fingertips. His hands generated power as he contracted them into fists. Yet each centimeter of his skin had become so sensitive he could feel dust motes that he couldn’t even see.
“Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen …” Even as the seconds were audibly counted off, Corgan’s mind divided them into fragments of hundredths. His internal clock seemed to be working perfectly.
“Begin.” The word was spoken so quietly that Corgan might have missed it if his sense of time hadn’t been flawless. He waited for the explosion that always signaled the beginning of the practice sessions, but the battlefield stayed so silent he thought the sound effects must have malfunctioned.
Fog rolled in, making it impossible for him to see anything at first. He strained his eyes until he was able to pick out his one hundred soldiers, huddled together in small groups behind camouflage netting.
Then, “On your left!” Brig screamed.
Corgan threw his whole body across the scene and managed to sweep all his troops to safety before the bomb exploded. The blast was so ferocious it shook him physically. It left his ears ringing with such terrible echoes he couldn’t hear Brig, who was shouting something and waving his arms, his eyes wide with fear.
Corgan looked up. A heat-seeking missile shrieked toward his troops at such tremendous speed he couldn’t hope to save them. Then, too high to cause real damage, it exploded. Sharla! Decoding the trajectory, she’d managed to defuse the warhead. Just in time.
So much heavy artillery flew at Corgan’s troops that all he could do was move them out of the way, time after time. Not only was he unable to advance, but his troops kept getting shoved backward, kept losing ground.
“Land mines!” Brig yelled. “Retreat.”
“No. I won’t.” If they did nothing but retreat, there’d be too much ground to make up later. Cupping his hands to intensify the electromagnetic force, he moved his soldiers forward a few at a time, weaving them cautiously across the dangerous minefield for seven minutes forty-two seconds until two mines detonated and three of his troops got blown to bits.
“Do what I say!” Brig screeched. “I’m the Strategist—do you want to lose?”
“Can’t help it if there are casualties,” Corgan panted, struggling to keep down his breakfast. His stomach heaved at the sight of his soldiers—two men and a young woman with long golden hair—lying entangled in a bloody mess, with the life ripped out of them and seeping into the ground.
“Back! Back!” Brig had to yell to be heard over the rattle of attack rifles. “Now! Around the side, behind that barn!”
“What’s the score?” Corgan wanted to know.
“You’ve lost three. Pacific’s lost eight. Eurasia’s lost five.”
They were ahead! Exultation filled Corgan—he was playing well! At that exact second an armored tank rumbled through the barn, crushing four of his troops. Even as he watched in horror, the tank burst into flame and disintegrated. Sharla again!
Corgan maneuvered his troops into a stand of trees where the fog lay thickest. Again the battlefield fell silent except for muffled explosions in the distance, where Pacific and Eurasia troops were defending themselves. He used the pause to take stock. He’d lost seven soldiers, seven percent of his total force, and he hadn’t gained a single meter of ground. He decided to pull his troops into squads of eight: better to realign them, and advance some of the squads toward the target area. Just as he thought of it, Brig said the same thing over the audio connector.
As the hours wore on Corgan wished he could be Brig, who looked down through smoke and flames and fog on the whole picture: at the patterns made when the troops regrouped—his own troops and the ones from the other two confederations. They came together, moved out, died, formed new units, retreated, skirted around buildings and avoided—sometimes—the minefields. Or didn’t avoid the minefields and got blown apart.
Corgan’s viewpoint was right in the thick of it, at ground level. His hands moved soldiers and when he didn’t do it right he watched them die screaming, falling, rising above the earth as their bodies separated into bleeding limbs, torn heads, and eviscerated torsoes.
Brig had stopped shrieking out orders; his commands were now terse and low. At five hours fourteen minutes thirty-seven seconds they had fifty-two troops left, and they were halfway to the target area. Corgan regrouped his squads again—eight soldiers to a squad with four left over for reconnaissance.
It was then he notice his blistered hands. Five hours of compressing electromagnetic energy, nonstop, to move his virtual troops, no matter how gently, had burned the skin on his fingers. He put them into his mouth to suck the blisters, and at that second a bomb killed four more of his troops, four that he could have moved to safety if his hand had been where it was supposed to be instead of in his mouth.
“Damn!” he screamed, and swept his remaining troops inside a barricade, bursting a blister on one of his fingers. There was no stopping to have it cauterized; as Mendor had made abundantly clear, there would be no stopping for anything until exactly five P.M. when the War would end. No food, no water, no wiping away of sweat, and no damage control for raw-skinned team members. And no Mendor, Corgan realized thankfully. No Mendor to chastise him for whatever stupid mistakes he was making during the course of the War. The team was on its own.
“What score, Brig!” he demanded.
“We have forty-eight troops. Pacific fifty-seven. Eurasia fifty-one.”
Corgan groaned aloud. They were down!
“But we’re nineteen meters closer to the target area than the other two armies,” Brig announced.
So it wasn’t totally bad news. Then sweat fell into Corgan’s eyes and while he tried to blink away the stinging, a helicopter dropped a fire bomb behind the barricade where three of his squads were waiting.
Forgetting his blistered fingers, forgetting his sweat-stung eyes, Corgan lunged forward to move out what remained of his troops and assess his losses. Two more dead, but that wasn’t so bad considering the suddenness of the fire bombing. He advanced them once again to behind the camouflage nets.
Each time a bomb burst, the heat was so searing it made his skin ache. Flares from the explosions blinded him so that he could hardly tell the true colors of anything: All he saw were reverse-color afterimages. The continuous roar deafened him so much he had to try to read Brig’s lips, because half the time he couldn’t hear the audio connector over the ringing in his ears. Hour after grueling hour the battle raged. Once Corgan used a brief moment’s lull to wonder how frail little Brig was managing to hold up. Brig’s voice was now a gravelly rasp.
“Sharla says,” Brig reported hoarsely at half past three, “we’re doing okay.”
Corgan wasn’t too sure. His fingers had grown numb, and his hands functioned only about half as well as they had when the War started. But by now he had only half as many troops to maneuver.
“Position to target?” he yelled to Brig.
“A hundred and two meters.”
So far to go! Corgan wanted nothing more than to lay his head on his arms and blot out the whole bloody battle, but he wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his now-black LiteSuit, and struggled on.
“Brig, report our position to me every five minutes,” he ordered. He counted the number of troops remaining to him. Only thirty-seven.
“Wow!” Brig cried hoarsely. “Sharla just threw a code that disabled a huge missile before it even got close to us.”
Corgan had no time to worry about Sharla, because he had to maneuver his troops into a ditch. He did it just before another missile streamed over their heads and exploded harmlessly in midair.
“Wow!” Brig cried again. “That was Sharla’s doing, too. Wait a minute—she’s telling me something. She says—she’s broken all the artillery codes. She’ll call it out each time they lob something at us so we can cover our troops.”
“I’ve got a better idea. I’ll move them between bursts.” Again he regrouped his soldiers, this time into parties of three each.
“Now!” Brig called.
Corgan kept his troops down until the artillery passed, then moved a group quickly up the hill.
“Now!” He moved another group.
Each time Brig called out that a shell was coming, Corgan moved his soldiers to cover. Then, in the seconds between shellings, he moved them out, one small party after another.
“How much time left?” Brig asked.
“Fourteen minutes seven and … bomb!”
Surprised, Corgan realized he’d already moved all his soldiers from the ditch, and he hadn’t lost any for the past twelve minutes. “Score, Brig!” he demanded.
“Us thirty-two; Eurasia thirty-seven; Pacific eighteen.”
“Distance to target?”
“We’re strung out between twelve and twenty-nine meters to target. Consolidate them, Corgan. Uh-oh, Sharla says they figured out she hacked their artillery codes. They’ve changed crypto keys now. Lookout!”
The next bomb found its mark. Corgan lost five soldiers. In another minute one more soldier stepped on a land mine. He was down to twenty-six.
“Sharla’s coding to lay down a smoke screen,” Brig reported. “Move! Move! Move!”
Under cover of smoke Corgan pulled his twenty-six remaining soldiers into four tight groups, inching them closer to the target area at the top of the hill. He could feel the seconds ticking away; his body vibrated with each fraction of time. Another bomb exploded—two more troops dead. A heat-seeking missile blew up out of range; Sharla had evidently altered its trajectory.
One more minute.
“You’re close to target,” Brig rasped. “The periphery will be heavily mined. Send the troops in one at a time until you find a safe passage. As soon as one of them gets inside safely, let the others follow the exact same path.”
“Okay.” He moved one soldier forward. A mine blew her into shreds.
“Use that path!” Brig screamed. “Move your troops one at a time over her body. The mine is already detonated, so that path is safe.”
It worked. As the seconds counted down, Corgan propelled his troops one at a time onto the hilltop. At exactly five P.M. he screamed, “Time!”
It was over. Twenty-three Western Hemisphere Federation soldiers were inside the designated area. Twenty-three Eurasian soldiers were also in the area, along with thirteen Pacific troops.
Mendor appeared, to announce, “It’s a tie,” just as Corgan screamed, “Default!”
The silence was sudden and astonishing, even though Corgan’s ears still rang from the explosions.
“No tie!” he cried. “No tie.” He could barely speak the words. His lips were cracked dry, his throat swollen almost shut, his tongue raw from grinding his teeth. “Eurasia ran seven hundredths of a second overtime getting their twenty-third soldier across the line. They lose! We win!”
Again silence, but only for eight seconds. Then the War Room erupted in brilliant colors; Corgan could feel the exhilaration. Feel the cheers of triumph. He dragged himself to his feet, grabbed his head with his blistered hands to clear his thoughts, and forced himself back to reality. He was still inside his Box. Everything that had happened had taken place in a world of virtual images while he sat imprisoned in his Box. “Sharla!” he cried.
“Corgan, get back here!” Mendor the jubilant Mother/Father cried. “You’re the hero. This is your moment.”
He lurched to the wall. “Open the door, Mendor,” he rasped, “or I’ll shred it into splinters. I want out!”
There was no resistance. He fell into the passageway, reeling, staggering from one side to the other of the stainless-steel tunnel until he saw her. She had Brig by the hand. Both of them looked terrible—drained, pale, sweat-stained, tear-stained. With tormented cries the three warriors fell into one another’s arms and sobbed.
No one came after them. No one bothered them as they hugged each other and wept, both from the horror of what they’d been through and the joy that they’d won the War.
Sharla rubbed tears from Corgan’s face and kissed him on the mouth. “Me too,” Brig whimpered. “Me too, Sharla.”
