John Scalzi: Old Man's War

I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Since I was now officially legally dead on Earth and flying across the solar system in a spaceship, I guess I wasn't too far off.

"Oh my," the fellow I sat next to at breakfast said, as I put down my fully-loaded tray. "Look at all the fats on that tray. You're asking for a coronary. I'm a doctor, I know."

"Uh-huh," I said, and pointed to his tray. "That looks like a four-egg omelet you're working on there. With about a pound each of ham and cheddar."

"'Do as I say, not as I do.' That was my creed as a practicing physician," he said. "If more patients had listened to me instead of following my sorry example, they'd be alive now. A lesson for us all. Thomas Jane, by the way."

"John Perry," I said, shaking hands.

"Pleased to meet you," he said. "Although I'm sad, too, since if you eat all that you'll be dead of a heart attack within the hour."

"Don't listen to him, John," said the woman across from us, whose own plate was smeared with the remains of pancakes and sausage. "Tom there is just trying to get you to give him some of your food, so he doesn't have to get back in line for more. That's how I lost half of my sausage."

"That accusation is as irrelevant as it is true," Thomas said indignantly. "I admit to coveting his Belgian waffle, yes. I won't deny that. But if sacrificing my own arteries will prolong his life, then it's worth it to me. Consider this the culinary equivalent of falling on a grenade for the sake of my comrade."

"Most grenades aren't soaked in syrup," she said.

"Maybe they should be," Thomas said. "We'd see a lot more selfless acts."

"Here," I said, sawing off half of a waffle. "Throw yourself on this."

"I'll launch myself face first," Thomas promised.

"We're all deeply relieved to hear that," I said.

The woman on the other side of the table introduced herself as Susan Reardon, late of Bellevue, Washington. "What do you think of our little space adventure so far?" she asked me.

"If I had known the cooking was this good, I would have found some way to sign up years ago," I said. "Who knew army food would be like this."

"I don't think we're in the army quite yet," Thomas said, around a mouthful of Belgian waffle. "I think this is sort of the Colony Defense Forces waiting room, if you know what I mean. Real army food is going to be a lot more spare. Not to mention I doubt we'll be prancing around in sneakers like we are right now."

"You think they're easing us into things, then," I said.

"I do," Thomas said. "Look, there are a thousand complete strangers on this ship, all of whom are now without home, family, or profession. That's a hell of a mental shock. The least they can do is give us a fabulous meal to take our minds off it all."

"John!" Harry had spied me from the line. I waved him over. He and another man came, bearing trays.

"This is my roommate, Alan Rosenthal," he said, by way of introduction.

"Formerly known as Sleeping Beauty," I said.

"About half of that description is right," Alan said. "I am in fact devastatingly beautiful." I introduced Harry and Alan to Susan and Thomas.

"Tsk, tsk," Thomas said, examining their trays. "Two more plaque attacks waiting to happen."

"Better throw Tom a couple bacon strips, Harry," I said. "Otherwise we'll never hear the end of this."

"I resent the implication that I can be bought off with food," Thomas said.

"It wasn't implied," Susan said. "It was pretty much boldly stated."

"Well, I know your roommate lottery turned out badly," Harry said to me, handing over two bacon strips to Thomas, who accepted them gravely, "but mine turned out all right. Alan here is a theoretical physicist. Smart as a whip."

"And devastatingly beautiful," Susan piped in.

"Thanks for remembering that detail," Alan said.

"This looks like a table of reasonably intelligent adults," Harry said. "So what do you think we're in for today?"

"I have a physical scheduled for 0800," I said. "I think we all do."

"Right," Harry said. "But I'm asking what you all think that means . Do you think today is the day we start our rejuvenation therapies? Is today the day we begin to stop being old?"

"We don't know that we stop being old, " Thomas said. "We've all assumed that, because we think of soldiers as being young. But think about it. None of us has actually seen a Colonial soldier. We've assumed, and our assumptions could be way off."

"What would the value of old soldiers be?" Alan asked. "If they're going to put me in the field as is, I don't know what good I'm going to be to anyone. I have a bad back. Walking from the beanstalk platform to the flight gate yesterday just about killed me. I can't imagine marching twenty miles with a pack and a firearm."

"I think we're due for some repairs, obviously," Thomas said. "But that's not the same as being made 'young' again. I'm a doctor, and I know a little bit about this. You can make the human body work better and achieve high function at any age, but each age has a certain baseline capability. The body at seventy-five is inherently less fast, less flexible and less easily repaired than at younger ages. It can still do some amazing things, of course. I don't want to brag, but I'll have you know that back on Earth I regularly ran ten K races. I ran one less than a month ago. And I made better time than I would have when I was fifty-five."

"What were you like when you were fifty-five?" I asked.

"Well, that's the thing," Thomas said. "I was a fat slob at fifty-five. It took a heart replacement to get me serious about taking care of myself. My point is that a high-functioning seventy-five-year-old can actually do many things without actually being 'young,' but just by being in excellent shape. Maybe that's all that's required for this army. Maybe all the other intelligent species in the universe are pushovers. Presuming that's the case, it makes a weird sort of sense to have old soldiers, because young people are more useful to their community. They have their whole lives ahead of them, while we are eminently expendable."

"So maybe we'll still be old, just really, really healthy," Harry said.

"That's what I'm saying," Thomas said.

"Well, stop saying that. You're bringing me down," Harry said.

"I'll shut up if you give me your fruit cup," Thomas said.

"Even if we're turned into high-functioning seventy-five-year-olds, as you say," Susan said, "we'd still be getting older. In five years, we'd just be high-functioning eighty-year-olds. There's an upper limit to our usefulness as soldiers."

Thomas shrugged. "Our terms are for two years. Maybe they only need to keep us in working order for that long. The difference between seventy-five and seventy-seven isn't as great as between seventy-five and eighty. Or even between seventy-seven and eighty. Hundreds of thousands of us sign up each year. After two years, they just swap us out with a crew of 'fresh' recruits."

"We can be retained for up to ten years," I said. "It's in the fine print. That would seem to argue that they have the technology to keep us working for that period of time."

"And they've got our DNA on file," Harry said. "Maybe they've cloned replacement parts or something like that."

"True," Thomas admitted. "But it's a lot of work to transplant every single organ, bone, muscle and nerve from a cloned body to ours. And they'd still have to contend with our brains, which can't be transplanted."

Thomas looked around and finally realized he was depressing the whole table. "I'm not saying that we won't be made young again," he said. "Just what we've seen on this ship convinces me that the Colonial Union has much better technology than we ever had back home. But speaking as a medical doctor, I'm having a hard time seeing how they'll reverse the aging process as dramatically as we all think they will."