be more specif; but the CO would rip off both my tits if I said more (not that they don’t have pens to black out classified info!). Needless to say, we’re XXXXXX, so don’t expect to take the gold ribbon off the doorknob any time soon!
Went to XXXXXX to see the Li’l General; your granddaughter weighs over fifteen pounds, and measures over twenty-five inches long. Tall like you. Should make a great captain eventually, you know how the tall ones are automatically officer material. (I don’t think Gen. Boles would be what she is today if she were a Size 6 Petite!) Wish I knew who the gen-dad was; tried pulling in a few favors, but all I’ve heard on the wire is that he was (is?) of Mid-East descent, which is unusual, since EVP hit harder there, ’specially since it split off into EVP I and II. Like Leia, the ’ner on XXXXXX always says, tho: “All gen-dads look the same...smooth, white, and bald as a rubber bulb on top.” My CO calls ’em “loaded tampons,” but considering that only XXXXXX ’ners in the squadron are carriers now, I’m inclined to think of ’em as blanks!
Don’t know how you and the rest of the ’ners in your squad made it through the POW camps without monthly gen-dad blasts; it’s still bad for the POWs, but they will go easy on a carrier. Might be with-unique, fresh source of gen-dad for them. One of our ’ners brought back some of their gen-dad (same make of blaster we use, only the bulb is softer, more like wet Tyvek) she’d ’vaged off a fallen; it was confiscated, tho, and XXXXXX so we won’t know for a while if it took. Only hitch is wearing the gen-dad belt; the cold element in there sometimes leeches out, and causes chem burns. Last night, I had a dream about you and Dad; he was telling me what a good boy I was, only it wasn’t like we were in the old apartment, but I was in a ’cruitment chair, getting my first shave, and you were just standing there with a draft notice in your hand. Not saying a word, just holding out your free hand as my hair drifted down, like you were catching leaves in the fall.
I wonder if that’s how guys used to feel when they were drafted or enlisted. I can’t picture it; the EVP’s in the offices are all so old they’re natural shine-heads. Got to thinking. When it came to the whole war process before EVP, were we women jealous of what the men were able to do in war, or secretly proud that we didn’t really have to get in there and fight? Once there was EVP, was it then “put up or shut up” time? Tried to bring that up once, in the bunker, but for all of us, it was like trying to figure out what the world would be like without sunlight, after we’d lived all our lives with it. Sort of a fairy-tale life, where women took pills not to have children, and men wore rubber sheaths on their s’rods to stop them from blasting the women, and not just to try and stop AIDS or EVP. I can read about it, talk about it, and know all the while that it was true, but for me it wasn’t, period.
I know you remember what it was like. Just like you remember Dad before EVP, and him eventually dying from it like just about all the men who got it and didn’t respond to the vaccine. I’d ask you, but I know I’d never get my answer....
You asked about the POW situation; we only see them for a short time, before they’re shipped out to XXXXXX. Looks like their army is treating the ’ners on their side ’bout the same as us, maybe a little worse. Some of the POWs that come through here are only twelve, maybe less. No hair down there when they’re stripped for delouse. Don’t know how they ’spect to get results from the gen-dads the youngest ’ners carry. Probably give ’em blanks.
Lights are flickering; happens every time a XXXXXX flies overhead. Which means that XXXXXX is coming back, either more POW or more wounded. Least I hope it’s just wounded. I hate seeing what they do to the fallen ’fore our ’ners can get to them. Hacked, or ringed with burning tires and always split open if they’re carrier due to evacuate soon. Most of the time they’re totally claimed when we find them. Worse if they aren’t; we have to XXXXXX them.
I wonder, honestly, if even pre-EVP male ’ners had to do that. Even if you won’t—or can’t—answer.
Lights again, almost out, taking the keys of this thing with them. Insane to send electronic machines; too susceptible to brown/blackouts. An EVP just toddled up, wants his toy back.
Salutes and hugs, Tash
04.09.46
From: Major Emi Takei
c/o PSC Box 976591
APO AP 96266
To: Captain Janet Ingram (Ret.)
P.O. Box 5490342
FDR Station
New York, NY 10150-0342
Re: T. Sgt. Natashia C. Ingram
Dear Captain Ingram,
It is my sad duty to inform you that on 31/08/46, your child Natashia was injured/killed in the line of duty during a MOAW missile attack on her bunker.
Her War Bag will be sent to you under separate cover, along with her Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
Her daughter/son Diee will remain in Army custody, per Property Regulation 5499872-C, as outlined in the standard enlistment forms Natashia signed upon joining the Army in 2034. You will be informed of the child’s progress as she/he advances in military training. Again, I am sorry to inform you of the injury/loss of your child. May God comfort you and look down upon you in this time of sorrow, and may She comfort your daughter Natashia.
With regret,
Maj. Emi Takei. C.O.
U.S. Army
Captain Ingram,
Please excuse the form letter above; it is regulation, and you & I know reg is God around here. I knew your daughter, and while she and I did not always agree on principle (or procedure—a habit of hers I seem to have posthumously inherited!) I found her to be a woman with a questioning, insightful mind—not a prickle-headed ’groaner blindly following orders (in my case, touché!) despite their logic or their true necessity. Not that she ever disobeyed any order given by myself or any of her superiors, but Tash was aware of the purpose (or lack thereof) behind day-to-day Army life, and chose to rationally and intelligently question the why of this woman’s Army.
Would that I had had the answers she was so desperately seeking.
Maj. Emi Takei (Soon-to-be-retired)
LIST OF CONTENTS:
War Bag, T. Sgt. N. C. Ingram:
Dog Tags
Genetic-donor receptacle belt (empty of donor syringes)
Diary (edited to conform to regulations 87943-A and -B)
Emergency MRE’s (three packets)
African-American phrase book
Misc. photographs (Infant Recruit D. M. Ingram-Hussam)
Letter dated 30.08.46 (unmailed at time of death)
iii.
blue
Norma was taking ears again. We were bunkering, cleaning out abandoned subter dwellings of the enemy fallen, burying those who’d been left by their evac units, but ears (and noses and lips—upper and lower) were off limits—unless your mother was a lieutenant colonel, and her mother was a ma-frucking-jor. Norma can fillet the whole frucking hide off an
