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Date Posted: 23:01:12 04/17/03 Thu
Author: Drummond
Subject: The War is Over

From Zyzzyva

The War is Over


by James Francis

The crowd is gathered between the Leaning Obelisk and the Terror Memorial. Their candles shine in the black oil of the Reflecting Pool and echo the eternal flame atop its derrick-inspired fountain. Spotlights play on M. L. King, Jr. (in bronze) praying on the Lincoln’s steps and the marble Reagan raising a fist in defiance of Evil Empires everywhere.

A squadron of stealth-drones streaks overhead. Cherry blossoms flutter from trees planted by the original George W.

Not a few pistols are pointed straight up, triggers clicking, though not discharging. (This is a Federal no-fire zone.)

The people sigh a palpable sigh; peace has been mandated.

All four ex-Presidents Bush stand at attention, as do ex-Presidents Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, and the other Opposition Presidents (because elections have always been free, and fair, offering, in every instance, a clear choice). At their sides are the ten-star generals, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld and Cheney. Even Pvt. Colin Powell, having been declared, by Chief Justice Thomas, not to be a traitor after all!

The entire Congress is also assembled, and all the Governors—from far-flung Japan, from the Caymans, from Greenland. And the local headmen and headwomen from all the Territories, Protectorates, and Occupied Zones. And the Directors from the Invisible Hand...all assembled to honor an idea made real: Peace in our time.

Look, then, at these Americans: some fresh and young, in their first skins, too young to remember the years of hardship and sacrifice, but firm in their resolve to uphold Freedom.

Look at the Middlers, proud in their various uniforms—because styles change, with every generation, even as our purpose remains fixed. At the Octos, stiff, but proud, with their exo-limbs; they who saw the worst of it: the Thirty Years’ Biobattle. Lastly, the Centurions, decked out in Yellowribbon, the sign of support for Ourboys Overthere.

Scattered through the crowd, some citizens wear fire helmets and police caps (the kind without filters or lights); these are the re-enactors, dedicated to verisimilitude, same as when they re-create the Civil or Vietnam Wars. Three centuries of style, with one fixed purpose: Liberty

We must also note, because nothing is perfect, those few who have been stricken with recombinant diseases. Those with Tomato Face or Grapefruit Breast, those with Cotton Mouth. And so on.

But Science finds cures! Is not male pattern baldness now just an urban legend?

Potato Prostate, Corn Bladder, Lawngrass Rectum...these may still be intractable, but, in the long run, we are confident. Someday everyone’s body will be re-made as necessary. For the moment, however, our first priority must be the maintenance of Freedom.

The prevailing mood is festive: many are swilling bags of Bud, the official sponsor; many are chewing coca leaves, such a popular refreshment now that coffee has mutated into decaf.

Happy faces and fingers are smeared with soy-rib BBQ sauce and flecks of okra.

President Bush X is tall and handsome; his conservative Afro bears just a touch of distinguished gray. He speaks: “September the Eleventh, Two Thousand and One is a day that has lived in infamy.”

He’s got a real way with words, and he hasn’t lost that reassuring Connecticut twang.

He recapitulates his personal struggle to get Texas back after the Separation (after Texas annexed Mexico and all points south). How he campaigned for Democracy in Canada, and facilitated their vote to join the Union, resulting in a truly united America, from pole to pole, from sea to shining sea to shining sea.

Now General Rumsfeld jokes about how he never said the 50 years required for the War would be sequential. He hints of new threats from Buddhist fundamentalists abroad; he alludes to a surge of electronic activity from Amish cells here in the Homeland.

An image of Bush the First is projected into the ionosphere. Many are moved to tears, remembering the sacrifice he made when he flew his fighter jet over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so long ago, to drop the bombs that ended the War, Part II and began to make the world safe for Democracy.

Also projected, clips of the flag being raised on the Sphinx, the opening of the first McDonald’s in Mecca, the Great Wall Jetcoaster at the Forbidden City Disneyland.

Outside the security perimeter, a few Antis, mostly Long Hairs and Blame’erica-Firsters, whine on about the neo-environment. They’re even burning the classic flag, the 50/13. The crowd gasps in shock. Because this is a Free Country, these people, now surrounded by Bluehelmets, now stuck together in a stickynet, will be lightly dealt with—catch and release, most likely, nothing more serious than a tracking device slapped on their wrists. Excepting, of course, the actual flag-burners—they will be prosecuted for creating smoke in a public space, a Federal felony.

(Of course, these Antis may have been planted. Or they may be part of the historical projection, included for context and drama.)

More speeches hail the discovery of the gene for evil; how dissidence has subsided since populace-positioning satellites went online; how the rising sea-level is good for the fish. (Who hasn’t enjoyed a day under the palms at the Potomac National Seashore?)

Free broadband is cited, to cheers, and there is confidence that there will soon be free electrical power for all now that non-Vegas Nevada has been cordoned off and covered with reactors, along with France and American Arabia

There is a display of fireworks, both live and virtual, and more streaking aircraft, which make a few people jump, or, conversely, hit the ground!

Finally, it’s over. Homeless-bots scurry about, eating the garbage, and the assembled populace forms into lines to exit, humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

They file out bathed by the soft red glow of the Memorial to the Unborn. They pass through the disinfectors, and the cortex-scanners, to return, underground, to their hummers, all linked together on the subfreeway, to begin their new lives in a world at peace at last.

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