David Brin - Earth

Of course Professor Jameson kept saying it was wrong to overgeneralize. “… because you are gang members, that will color your views of everything. Young males do that when engaged in us-versus-them group bonding. They have to stereotype their enemies, dehumanize them. The problem’s really bad here in this part of the city, where the young-old conflict has deteriorated …”

Everybody hated Jameson, all the girlie gangs and dudie gangs — staying in his class only because a pass was required for any hope of earning a self-reliance card… as if half the kids were ever going to qualify. Shit.

“I like you because I remember the way it was for me,” gremper went on, unperturbed. “I remember when I felt I could bend steel, topple empires, screw harems, burn cities…” He closed his wrinkled eyelids for a moment, and when he reopened them, Remi felt a sudden thrill tickle his spine. The old guy seemed to be looking faraway into space and time.

“I did burn cities, y’know,” he told them in a low, very distant voice. And Remi somehow knew he had to be remembering things far more vivid than anything to be found in his own paltry store of recollections. Suddenly, he felt awash in envy.

“But then, each generation’s got to have a cause, right?” the oldster continued, shaking free of reminiscence. “Ours was ending secrecy . It’s why we fought the bankers and the bureaucrats and mobsters, and all the damned socialists to bring everything out into the open, once and for all, to stop all the underhanded dealing and giga-cheating.

“Only now our solution’s causing other problems. That’s the way things go with revolutions. When I overheard you guys dreaming aloud of privacy — like it was something holy — Jesus, that took me back. Reminded me of my own dad! People used to talk that way back at the end of TwenCen, till my generation saw through the scam—”

“Privacy’s no scam!” Roland snapped. “It’s simple human dignity!”

“Yeah!” Crat added. “You got no right to follow guys’ every move…”

But the old man lifted one hand placatingly. “Hey, I agree! At least partly. What I’m trying to say is, I think my generation went too far. We overthrew the evils of secrecy — of numbered bank accounts and insider deals — but now you guys are rejecting our excesses, replacing them with some of your own.

“Seriously though, what would you boys do if you had your way? You can’t just ban True-Vu and other tech-stuff. You can’t rebottle the genie. The world had a choice. Let governments control surveillance tech… and therefore give a snooping monopoly to the rich and powerful… or let everybody have it. Let everyone snoop everyone else, including snooping the government! I mean it, fellows. That was the choice. There just weren’t any other options.”

“Come on,” Roland said.

“All right, tell me. Would you go back to the illusion of so-called privacy laws, which only gave the rich and powerful a monopoly on secrecy?”

Crat glowered. “Maybe. At least when they had a…

monopoly, they weren’t so dumpit rude! People could at least pretend they were being left alone.”

Remi nodded, impressed with Crat’s brief eloquence. “There’s something to that. Who was it said life’s just an illusion, anyway?”

The gremper smiled and answered dryly. “Only every transcendental philosopher in history.”

Remi lifted his shoulders. “Oh, yeah, him. It was on the tip of my tongue.”

The old man burst out laughing and slapped Remi on the knee. In an odd way, Remi felt warmed by the gesture, as if it didn’t matter that they disagreed in countless ways or that a gap of half a century yawned between them.

“Damn,” the gremper said. “I wish I could take you back to those days. The guys in my outfit… the guys would’ve liked you. We could’ve shown you some times.”

To his amazement, Remi believed him. After a momentary pause, he asked, “Tell us… tell us about the guys.”

The three of them deliberated later, some distance from the tree, as dusk shadows began stretching across the park. Of course the old man left his big-ear unplugged while they passed judgment. He looked up when they returned to squat before him.

“We decided on a penalty for the way you invaded our privacy,” Roland said, speaking for all.

“I’ll accept your justice, sirs,” he said, inclining his head.

Even Crat grinned as Roland passed sentence. “You gotta come back here again next week, same time, and tell us more about the war.”

The old man nodded — in acceptance and obvious pleasure. “My name is Joseph,” he said, holding out his hand. “And I’ll be here.”

Over the next few weeks he kept his promise. Joseph told them tales they had never imagined, even after watching a thousand hypervideos. About climbing the steep flanks of the Pennine Alps, for instance, and then the Bernese Oberland — slogging through gas and bugs and radioactive mud. He described digging out booby traps nearly every meter of the way, and prying out the bankers’ mercenaries every ten or so. And he told them of his comrades, dying beside him, choking in their own sputum as they coughed their lungs out, still begging to be allowed to press on though, to help bring the Last War to an end.

He told them about the fall of Berne and the last gasp of the Gnomes, whose threat to “take the world down” with them turned out to be backed by three hundred cobalt-thorium bombs… which were defused only when Swiss draftees finally turned their rifles on their own officers and emerged from their shattered warrens, hands high over their heads, into a new day.

As spring headed toward summer, Joseph commiserated over the futility of high school, even under a “new education plan” that forced on students lots of supposedly “practical” information, but never did a guy any good anyway. He held them transfixed talking about the way girls used to be, back before they were taught all that modern crap about psychology and “sexual choice criteria.”

“Boy crazy, that’s what they were, my young tomodachis. No girlie wanted to be caught for even a minute without a boyfriend. It was where they got their sense of worth, see? Their alpha to omega. They’d do anything for you, believe most anything you said, so long as you promised you loved ’em.”

Remi suspected Joseph was exaggerating. But that didn’t matter. Even if it was all a load of bull semen, it was great bull semen. For the first time in his life, he contemplated the prospect of getting older — actually living beyond twenty-five — with anything but a vague sense of horror. The idea of someday being like Joseph didn’t seem so bad… as long as it took a long time happening, and providing he got to do as much as Joseph had along the way.

It was the profession of soldiering that fascinated Roland. Its camaradarie and traditions. Crat loved hearing about faraway places and escape from the tight strictures of urban life.

But as for Remi, he felt he was getting something more… the beginnings of a trust in time .

Joseph was a great source of practical advice, too — subtle verbal put-downs nobody here in Indiana had heard in years, but which would burrow like smart bombs dropped among the gang’s foes, only to blow up minutes, even hours, later with devastating effect. One day they met the same group of Ra Boys in the park and left them all scratching their heads in confusion, reluctant even to think of tackling Settlers anytime soon.

Roland talked about joining the Guard, maybe trying for one of the peacekeeping units.

Remi began tapping history texts from the Net.

Even Crat seemed to grow more reflective, as if every time he was about to lose his temper, he’d stop and think what Joseph would say.