OLD MAN'S WAR.

by John Scalzi.

PART I.

ONE.

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.

Visiting Kathy's grave was the less dramatic of the two. She's buried in Harris Creek Cemetery, not more than a mile down the road from where I live and where we raised our family. Getting her into the cemetery was more difficult than perhaps it should have been; neither of us expected needing the burial, so neither of us made the arrangements. It's somewhat mortifying, to use a rather apt word, to have to argue with a cemetery manager about your wife not having made a reservation to be buried. Eventually my son, Charlie, who happens to be mayor, cracked a few heads and got the plot. Being the father of the mayor has its advantages.

So, the grave. Simple and unremarkable, with one of those small markers instead of a big headstone. As a contrast, Kathy lies next to Sandra Cain, whose rather oversized headstone is polished black granite, with Sandy's high school photo and some maudlin quote from Keats about the death of youth and beauty sandblasted into the front. That's Sandy all over. It would have amused Kathy to know Sandra was parked next to her with her big dramatic headstone; all their lives Sandy nurtured an entertainingly pa.s.sive-aggressive compet.i.tion with her. Kathy would come to the local bake sale with a pie, Sandy would bring three and simmer, not so subtly, if Kathy's pie sold first. Kathy would attempt to solve the problem by preemptively buying one of Sandy's pies. It's hard to say whether this actually made things better or worse, from Sandy's point of view.

I suppose Sandy's headstone could be considered the last word in the matter, a final show-up that could not be reb.u.t.ted, because, after all, Kathy was already dead. On the other hand, I don't actually recall anyone visiting Sandy. Three months after Sandy pa.s.sed, Steve Cain sold the house and moved to Arizona with a smile as wide as Interstate 10 plastered on his skull. He sent me a postcard some time later; he was shacking up with a woman down there who had been a p.o.r.n star fifty years earlier. I felt unclean for a week after getting that bit of information. Sandy's kids and grand-kids live one town over, but they might as well be in Arizona for as often as they visit. Sandy's Keats quote probably hadn't been read by anyone since the funeral but me, in pa.s.sing, as I move the few feet over to my wife.

Kathy's marker has her name (Katherine Rebecca Perry), her dates, and the words: BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER. I read those words over and over every time I visit. I can't help it; they are four words that so inadequately and so perfectly sum up a life. The phrase tells you nothing about her, about how she met each day or how she worked, about what her interests were or where she liked to travel. You'd never know what her favorite color was, or how she liked to wear her hair, or how she voted, or what her sense of humor was. You'd know nothing about her except that she was loved. And she was. She'd think that was enough.

I hate visiting here. I hate that my wife of forty-two years is dead, that one minute one Sat.u.r.day morning she was in the kitchen, mixing a bowl of waffle batter and talking to me about the dustup at the library board meeting the night before, and the next minute she was on the floor, twitching as the stroke tore through her brain. I hate that her last words were "Where the h.e.l.l did I put the vanilla."

I hate that I've become one of those old men who visits a cemetery to be with his dead wife. When I was (much) younger I used to ask Kathy what the point would be. A pile of rotting meat and bones that used to be a person isn't a person anymore; it's just a pile of rotting meat and bones. The person is gone-off to heaven or h.e.l.l or wherever or nowhere. You might as well visit a side of beef. When you get older you realize this is still the case. You just don't care. It's what you have.

For as much as I hate the cemetery, I've been grateful it's here, too. I miss my wife. It's easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she's never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive.

I didn't stay long; I never do. Just long enough to feel the stab that's still fresh enough after most of eight years, the one that also serves to remind me that I've got other things to do than to stand around in a cemetery like an old, d.a.m.ned fool. Once I felt it, I turned around and left and didn't bother looking around. This was the last time I would ever visit the cemetery or my wife's grave, but I didn't want to expend too much effort in trying to remember it. As I said, this is the place where she's never been anything but dead. There's not much value in remembering that.

Although come to think of it, signing up for the army wasn't all that dramatic either.

My town was too small for its own recruiting office. I had to drive into Greenville, the county seat, to sign up. The recruiting office was a small storefront in a nondescript strip mall; there was a state liquor authority store on one side of it and a tattoo parlor on the other. Depending on what order you went into each, you could wake up the next morning in some serious trouble.

The inside of the office was even less appealing, if that's possible. It consisted of a desk with a computer and a printer, a human behind that desk, two chairs in front of the desk and six chairs lining a wall. A small table in front of those chairs held recruiting information and some back issues of Time Time and and Newsweek Newsweek. Kathy and I had been in here a decade earlier, of course; I suspect nothing had been moved, much less changed, and that included the magazines. The human appeared to be new. At least I don't remember the previous recruiter having that much hair. Or b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The recruiter was busy typing something on the computer and didn't bother to look up as I came in. "Be right with you," she muttered, by way of a more or less Pavlovian response to the door opening.

"Take your time," I said. "I know the place is packed." This attempt at marginally sarcastic humor went ignored and unappreciated, which has been par for the course for the last few years; good to see I had not lost my form. I sat down in front of the desk and waited for the recruiter to finish whatever she was doing.

"You coming or going?" she asked, still without actually looking up at me.

"Pardon me?" I said.

"Coming or going," she repeated. "Coming in to do your Intent to Join sign-up, or going out to start your term?"

"Ah. Going out, please."

This finally got her to look at me, squinting out through a rather severe pair of gla.s.ses. "You're John Perry," she said.

"That's me. How did you guess?"

She looked back to her computer. "Most people who want to enlist come in on their birthday, even though they have thirty days afterward to formally enlist. We only have three birthdays today. Mary Valory already called to say she won't be going. And you don't look like you'd be Cynthia Smith."

"I'm gratified to hear that," I said.

"And since you're not coming in for an initial sign-up," she continued, ignoring yet another stab at humor, "it stands to reason you're John Perry."

"I could just be a lonely old man wandering around looking for conversation," I said.

"We don't get many of those around here," she said. "They tend to be scared off by the kids next door with the demon tattoos." She finally pushed her keyboard away and gave me her full attention. "Now, then. Let's see some ID, please."

"But you already know who I am," I reminded her.

"Let's be sure," she said. There was not even the barest hint of a smile when she said this. Dealing with garrulous old farts every day had apparently taken its toll.

I handed over my driver's license, birth certificate and national ident.i.ty card. She took them, reached into her desk for a handpad, plugged it into the computer and slid it over to me. I placed my hand on it palm down and waited for the scan to finish. She took the pad and slid my ID card down the side to match the print information. "You're John Perry," she said, finally.

"And now we're back where we started," I said.

She ignored me again. "Ten years ago during your Intent to Join orientation session, you were provided information concerning the Colonial Defense Forces, and the obligations and duties you would a.s.sume by joining the CDF," she said, in the tone of voice which indicated that she said this at least once a day, every day, most of her working life. "Additionally, in the interim period, you have been sent refresher materials to remind you of the obligations and duties you would be a.s.suming.

"At this point, do you need additional information or a refresher presentation, or do you declare that you fully understand the obligations and duties you are about to a.s.sume? Be aware there is no penalty either for asking for refresher materials or opting not to join the CDF at this time."

I recalled the orientation session. The first part consisted of a bunch of senior citizens sitting on folding chairs at the Greenville Community Center, eating donuts and drinking coffee and listening to a CDF apparatchik drone on about the history of human colonies. Then he handed out pamphlets on CDF service life, which appeared to be much like military life anywhere. During the question and answer session we found out he wasn't actually in the CDF; he'd just been hired to provide presentations in the Miami valley area.

The second part of the orientation session was a brief medical exam-a doctor came in and took blood, swabbed the inside of my cheek to dislodge some cells, and gave me a brain scan. Apparently I pa.s.sed. Since then, the pamphlet I was provided at the orientation session was sent to me once a year through the mail. I started throwing it out after the second year. I hadn't read it since.

"I understand," I said.

She nodded, reached into her desk, pulled out a piece of paper and a pen, and handed both to me. The paper held several paragraphs, each with a s.p.a.ce for a signature underneath. I recognized the paper; I had signed another, very similar paper ten years earlier to indicate that I understood what I would be getting into a decade in the future.

"I'm going to read to you each of the following paragraphs," she said. "At the end of each paragraph, if you understand and accept what has been read to you, please sign and date on the line immediately following the paragraph. If you have questions, please ask them at the end of each paragraph reading. If you do not subsequently understand or do not accept what has been read and explained to you, do not sign. Do you understand?"

"I understand," I said.

"Very good," she said. "Paragraph one: I the undersigned acknowledge and understand that I am freely and of my own will and without coercion volunteering to join the Colonial Defense Forces for a term of service of not less than two years in length. I additionally understand that the term of service may be extended unilaterally by the Colonial Defense Forces for up to eight additional years in times of war and duress."

This "ten years total" extension clause was not news to me-I did read the information I was sent, once or twice-although I wondered how many people glossed over it, and of those who didn't, how many people actually thought they'd be stuck in the service ten years. My feeling on it was that the CDF wouldn't ask for ten years if it didn't feel it was going to need them. Because of the Quarantine Laws, we don't hear much about colonial wars. But what we do hear is enough to know it's not peacetime out there in the universe.

I signed.

"Paragraph two: I understand that by volunteering to join the Colonial Defense Forces, I agree to bear arms and to use them against the enemies of the Colonial Union, which may include other human forces. I may not during the term of my service refuse to bear and use arms as ordered or cite religious or moral objections to such actions in order to avoid combat service."

How many people volunteer for an army and then claim conscientious objector status? I signed.

"Paragraph three: I understand and agree that I will faithfully and with all deliberate speed execute orders and directives provided to me by superior officers, as provided for in the Uniform Code of Colonial Defense Forces Conduct."

I signed.

"Paragraph four: I understand that by volunteering for the Colonial Defense Forces, I consent to whatsoever medical, surgical or therapeutic regimens or procedures are deemed necessary by the Colonial Defense Forces to enhance combat readiness."

Here it was: Why I and countless other seventy-five-year-olds signed up every year.

I once told my grandfather that by the time I was his age they'd have figured out a way to dramatically extend the human life span. He laughed at me and told me that's what he had a.s.sumed, too, and yet there he was, an old man anyway. And here I am as well. The problem with aging is not that it's one d.a.m.n thing after another-it's every d.a.m.n thing, all at once, all the time.

You can't stop aging. Gene therapies and replacement organs and plastic surgery give it a good fight. But it catches up with you anyway. Get a new lung, and your heart blows a valve. Get a new heart, and your liver swells up to the size of an inflatable kiddie pool. Change out your liver, a stroke gives you a whack. That's aging's trump card; they still can't replace brains.

Life expectancy climbed up near the ninety-year mark a while back, and that's where it's been ever since. We eked out almost another score from the "three score and ten" and then G.o.d seems to have put his foot down. People can live longer, and do live longer-but they still live those years as an old person. Nothing much has ever changed about that.

Look, you: When you're twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five or even fifty-five, you can still feel good about your chances to take on the world. When you're sixty-five and your body is looking down the road at imminent physical ruin, these mysterious "medical, surgical and therapeutic regimens and procedures" begin to sound interesting. Then you're seventy-five, friends are dead, and you've replaced at least one major organ; you have to pee four times a night, and you can't go up a flight of stairs without being a little winded-and you're told you're in pretty good shape for your age.

Trading that in for a decade of fresh life in a combat zone begins to look like a h.e.l.l of a bargain. Especially because if you don't, in a decade you'll be eighty-five, and then the only difference between you and a raisin will be that while you're both wrinkled and without a prostate, the raisin never had a prostate to begin with.

So how does the CDF manage to reverse the flow of aging? No one down here knows. Earthside scientists can't explain how they do it, and can't replicate their successes, though it's not for the lack of trying. The CDF doesn't operate on-planet, so you can't ask a CDF veteran. However, the CDF only recruits on-planet, so the colonists don't know, either, even if you could ask them, which you can't. Whatever therapies the CDF performs are done off-world, in the CDF's own authority zones, away from the purview of global and national governments. So no help from Uncle Sam or anyone else.

Every once in a while, a legislature or president or dictator decides to ban CDF recruiting until it reveals its secrets. The CDF never argues; it packs up and goes. Then all the seventy-five-year-olds in that country take long international vacations from which they never return. The CDF offers no explanations, no rationales, no clues. If you want to find out how they make people young again, you have to sign up.

I signed.

"Paragraph five: I understand that by volunteering for the Colonial Defense Forces, I am terminating my citizenship in my national political ent.i.ty, in this case the United States of America, and also the Residential Franchise that allows me to reside on the planet Earth. I understand that my citizenship will henceforth be transferred generally to the Colonial Union and specifically to the Colonial Defense Forces. I further recognize and understand that by terminating my local citizenship and planetary Residential Franchise, I am barred from subsequent return to Earth and, upon completion of my term of service within the Colonial Defense Forces, will be relocated to whatsoever colony I am allotted by the Colonial Union and/or the Colonial Defense Forces."

More simply put: You can't go home again. This is part and parcel of the Quarantine Laws, which were imposed by the Colonial Union and the CDF, officially at least, to protect Earth from any more xen.o.biological disasters like The Crimp. Folks on the Earth were all for it at the time. Funny how insular a planet will become when a third of its male population permanently loses its fertility within the s.p.a.ce of a year. People here are less enthused about it now-they've gotten bored with Earth and want to see the rest of the universe, and they've forgotten all about childless Great Uncle Walt. But the CU and CDF are the only ones with s.p.a.ceships that have the skip drives that make interstellar travel possible. So there it is.

(This makes the agreement to colonize where the CU tells you to colonize something of a moot point-since they're the only ones with the ships, you go where they take you anyway. It's not as if they're going to let you drive the starship.) A side effect of the Quarantine Laws and the skip drive monopoly is to make communication between Earth and the colonies (and between the colonies themselves) all but impossible. The only way to get a timely response from a colony is to put a message onto a ship with a skip drive; the CDF will grudgingly carry messages and data for planetary governments this way, but anyone else is out of luck. You could put up a radio dish and wait for communication signals from the colonies to wash by, but Alpha, the closest colony to Earth, is eighty-three light-years away. This makes lively gossip between planets difficult.

I've never asked, but I would imagine that it is this paragraph that causes the most people to turn back. It's one thing to think you want to be young again; it's quite another thing to turn your back on everything you've ever known, everyone you've ever met or loved, and every experience you've ever had over the span of seven and a half decades. It's a h.e.l.l of a thing to say good-bye to your whole life.

I signed.

"Paragraph six-final paragraph," the recruiter said. "I recognize and understand that as of seventy-two hours of the final signing of this doc.u.ment, or my transport off Earth by the Colonial Defense Forces, whichever comes first, I will be presumed as deceased for the purposes of law in all relevant political ent.i.ties, in this case the State of Ohio and the United States of America. Any and all a.s.sets remaining to me will be dispensed with according to law. All legal obligations or responsibilities that by law terminate at death will be so terminated. All previous legal records, be they meritorious or detrimental, will be hereby stricken, and all debts discharged according to law. I recognize and understand that if I have not yet arranged for the distribution of my a.s.sets, that at my request the Colonial Defense Forces will provide me with legal and financial counsel to do so within seventy-two hours."

I signed. I now had seventy-two hours to live. So to speak.

"What happens if I don't leave the planet within seventy-two hours?" I said as I handed the paper back to the recruiter.

"Nothing," she said, taking the form. "Except that since you're legally dead, all your belongings are split up according to your will, your health and life benefits are canceled or disbursed to your heirs and being legally dead, you have no legal right to protection under the law from everything from libel to murder."

"So someone could just come up and kill me, and there would be no legal repercussions?"

"Well, no," she said. "If someone were to murder you while you were legally dead, I believe that here in Ohio they could be tried for 'disturbing a corpse.'"

"Fascinating," I said.

"However," she continued, in her ever-more-distressing matter-of-fact tone, "it usually doesn't get that far. Anytime between now and the end of those seventy-two hours you can simply change your mind about joining. Just call me here. If I'm not here, an automated call responder will take your name. Once we've verified it's actually you requesting cancellation of enlistment, you'll be released from further obligation. Bear in mind that such cancellation permanently bars you from future enlistment. This is a onetime thing."

"Got it," I said. "Do you need to swear me in?"

"Nope," she said. "I just need to process this form and give you your ticket." She turned back to her computer, typed for a few minutes, and then pressed the ENTER ENTER key. "The computer is generating your ticket now," she said. "It'll be a minute." key. "The computer is generating your ticket now," she said. "It'll be a minute."

"Okay," I said. "Mind if I ask you a question?"

"I'm married," she said.

"That wasn't what I was going to ask," I said. "Do people really proposition you?"

"All the time," she said. "It's really annoying."

"Sorry about that," I said. She nodded. "What I was going to ask was if you've actually ever met anyone from CDF."

"You mean apart from enlistees?" I nodded. "No. The CDF has a corporation down here that handles recruiting, but none of us are actual CDF. I don't think even the CEO is. We get all our information and materials from the Colonial Union emba.s.sy staff and not the CDF directly. I don't think they come Earthside at all."

"Does it bother you to work for an organization you never met?"

"No," she said. "The work is okay and the pay is surprisingly good, considering how little money they've put in to decorate around here. Anyway, you're going to join an organization you've never met. Doesn't that bother you?"

"No," I admitted. "I'm old, my wife is dead and there's not much reason to stay here anymore. Are you going to join when the time comes?"

She shrugged. "I don't mind getting old."

"I didn't mind getting old when I was young, either," I said. "It's the being old now that's getting to me."

Her computer printer made a quiet hum and a business cardlike object came out. She took it and handed it to me. "This is your ticket," she said to me. "It identifies you as John Perry and a CDF recruit. Don't lose it. Your shuttle leaves from right in front of this office in three days to go to the Dayton Airport. It departs at 8:30 A.M A.M; we suggest you get here early. You'll be allowed only one carry-on bag, so please choose carefully among the things you wish to take.

"From Dayton, you'll take the eleven A.M. A.M. flight to Chicago and then the two flight to Chicago and then the two P.M. P.M. delta to Nairobi from there. They're nine hours ahead in Nairobi, so you'll arrive there about midnight, local time. You'll be met by a CDF representative, and you'll have the option of either taking the two delta to Nairobi from there. They're nine hours ahead in Nairobi, so you'll arrive there about midnight, local time. You'll be met by a CDF representative, and you'll have the option of either taking the two A.M. A.M. beanstalk to Colonial Station or getting some rest and taking the nine beanstalk to Colonial Station or getting some rest and taking the nine A.M. A.M. beanstalk. From there, you're in the CDF's hands." beanstalk. From there, you're in the CDF's hands."

I took the ticket. "What do I do if any of these flights is late or delayed?"

"None of these flights has ever experienced a single delay in the five years I've worked here," she said.

"Wow," I said. "I'll bet the CDF's trains run on time, too."

She looked at me blankly.

"You know," I said, "I've been trying to make jokes to you the entire time I've been here."

"I know," she said. "I'm sorry. My sense of humor was surgically removed as a child."

"Oh," I said.

"That was a joke," she said, and stood up, extending her hand.

"Oh." I stood up and took it.

"Congratulations, recruit," she said. "Good luck to you out there in the stars. I actually mean that," she added.