Joe Haldeman - Forever Peace

We had taken refuge in a burned-out schoolhouse in an abandoned village. I was on the second sleep shift, so I first spent two hours sitting at a broken window, smelling jungle and old ashes, patient in the unchanging darkness. From my point of view, of course, it was neither dark nor unchanging. Starlight flooded the scene like monochromatic daylight, and once each ten seconds I switched to infrared for a moment. The infrared helped me track a large black cat that stalked up on us, gliding through the twisted remains of the playground equipment. It was an ocelot or something, aware of motion in the schoolhouse and looking for a meal. When it got within ten meters it froze for a long period, scenting nothing, or maybe machine lubricant, and then was away in a sudden flash.

Nothing else happened. After two hours, the first shift woke up. We gave them a couple of minutes to get their bearings and then passed on the "sit-rep," situation report: negative.

I fell asleep and instantly awoke to a blaze of pain. My sensors brought in nothing but blinding light, a roar of white noise, searing heat-and complete isolation! All of my platoon was disconnected or destroyed.

I knew it wasn't real; knew I was safe in a cage in Portobello. But it still hurt like a third-degree burn over every square centimeter of naked flesh, eyeballs fried in their sockets, one dying inhalation of molten lead, enema of same: complete feedback overload.

It seemed to last for a long time-long enough for me to think this was actually it; the enemy had cracked Portobello or nuked it, and it was actually me dying, not my machine. Actually, we were switched off after 3.03 seconds. It would have been quicker, but the mechanic in Delta platoon who was our horizontal liaison-our link to the company commander if I died-was disoriented by the sudden intensity of it, even secondhand.

Later satellite analysis showed two aircraft catapulted from five kilometers away. They were stealthed and, with no propellant, left no heat signature. One pilot ejected just before the plane hit the schoolhouse. The other plane was either automatically guided or its pilot came in with it-kamikaze or ejection failure.

Both planes were full of incendiaries. About one hundredth of a second after Candi sensed something was wrong, all our soldierboys were trying to cope with a flood of molten metal.

They know we have to sleep, and know how we do it. So they contrive things like this setup: a camouflaged catapult, zeroed on a building we would sooner or later use, its two-pilot crew waiting for months or years.

They couldn't have just boobytrapped the building, because we would have sensed that amount of incendiary or other explosive.

In Portobello, three of us went into cardiac arrest; Ralph died. They used air-cushion stretchers to move us to the hospital wing, but it still hurt to move; just to breathe.

Physical treatment wouldn't touch where that pain was, the phantom pain that was the nervous system's memory of violent death. Imaginary pain had to be fought through the imagination.

They jacked me into a Caribbean island fantasy, swimming warm waters with lovely black women. Lots of virtual fruit-and-rum drinks, and then virtual sex, virtual sleep.

When I woke up still in pain, they tried the opposite scenario-a ski resort, thin dry cool air. Fast slopes, fast women, the same sequence of virtual voluptuousness. Then canoeing in a calm mountain lake. Then a hospital bed in Portobello.

The doctor was a short guy, darker than me. "Are you awake, sergeant?"

I felt the back of my head. "Evidently." I sat up and clutched at the mattress until the dizziness subsided. "How are Candi and Karen?"

"They'll be all right. Do you recall..."

"Ralph died. Yes." I dimly remembered when they had stopped working on him, and brought the other two out of the cardiac unit. "What day is it?"

"Wednesday." The shift had started Monday. "How do you feel? You're free to go as soon as you feel up to it."

"Medical leave?" He nodded. "The skin pain is gone. I still feel strange. But I've never spent two days jacked into fantasies before." I put my feet on the cold tile floor and stood up. I walked shakily across the room to a closet and found a dress uniform there, and a bag with my civvies.

"Guess I'll hang around awhile, check on my platoon. Then go home or wherever."

"All right. I'm Dr. Tull, in RICU Recovery, if you have any problems." He shook hands and left. Do you salute doctors?

I decided to wear the uniform and dressed slowly and sat there for awhile, sipping ice water. I'd lost soldier-boys twice before, but both times it was just a twist of disorientation and then switch-off. I'd heard about these total feedback situations, and knew of one instance when a whole platoon had died before they could be turned off. Supposedly, that couldn't happen anymore.

How would it affect our performance? Scoville's platoon went through it last year. We all had to spend a cycle training with the replacement soldierboys, but they seemed unaffected, other than being impatient with not fighting. Theirs was only a fraction of a second, though, not three seconds of burning alive.

I went down to see Candi and Karen. They'd been out of jack therapy for half a day, and were pale and weak but otherwise all right. They showed me the pair of red marks between their breasts where they'd been jolted back to life.

Everyone but them and Mel had checked out and gone home. While I waited for Mel I went down to Ops and replayed the attack.

I didn't replay the three seconds, of course; only the minute leading up to them. All the people on guard heard a faint "pop" that was the enemy pilot ejecting. Then Candi, out of the corner of her eye, saw one plane for a hundredth of a second, as it cleared the trees that bordered the parking lot and dove in. She started to swing, to target it with her laser, and then the record ended.

When Mel came out, we had a couple of beers and a plate of tamales at the airport. He went off to California, and I went back to the hospital for a few hours. I bribed a tech to jack me with Candi and Karen for five minutes-not strictly against regulations; in a way, we were still on duty-which was long enough for us to reassure each other that we would be all right, and to share grief about Ralph. It was especially hard on Candi. I took on some of the fear and pain they had about their hearts. Nobody likes to face the possibility of a replacement, having a machine at the center of your life. They were likely candidates now.

When we unjacked, Candi held my hand very hard, actually just the forefinger, staring at me. "You hide your secrets better than anyone else," she whispered.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I know you don't."

"Talk about what?" Karen said.

Candi shook her head. "Thanks," I said, and she released my finger.

I backed out of the small room. "Be...," Candi said, and didn't complete the sentence. Maybe that was the sentence.

She had seen how profoundly I hadn't wanted to wake up.

I called Amelia from the airport and said I'd be home in a few hours, and would explain later. It would be after midnight, but she said to come straight over to her place. That was a relief. Our relationship didn't have any restrictions, but I always hoped she slept alone, waiting, the ten days I was away.

Of course she knew something was seriously wrong. When I got off the plane, she was there, and had a cab waiting outside.

The machine's programming was stuck in a rush-hour pattern, so it took us twenty minutes to get home, via surface roads I never see except on bicycle. I was able to tell Amelia the basic story while we drove through the maze that avoided nonexistent traffic. When we got to the campus the guard looked at my uniform and waved us through, wonder of wonders.