In War and Peace

He poured himself a drink, and sat down by one of the screens that provided a glimpse of the outside world. An ever-shifting, arbitrary arrangement of stars and planets, drifting around like bums in a park; going nowhere in particular, but somehow eventually ending up in the same place as the day before. They were much prettier than the bums in the park though. At least at a distance. When viewed up close, however, most of them were just as gritty, smelly and unwelcoming as the bums, with the exception of a handful of happy ones.

The cognac was a fairly cheap brand that Swenson had bought because the label looked sophisticated. It made him feel sophisticated when he poured himself a glass, but since the glass was a white plastic cup the feeling of sophistication only lasted until the bottle was back in the cabinet. Then he felt like a regular John Doe again, wearing his regular clothing, sitting in his regular corner, drinking his regular alcohol while being irregularly shaven.

Regular indeed. That pretty much summed up what his life had been like since the end of the Great War. Fucking regular, despite his best attempts to resuscitate it. Marry, settle down, become a father, they had told him, and he had been naïve enough to listen. She had been pretty, had had no aspirations – that was a good thing right, for settling down? For taking it easy. Nine to five and then dinner together and some quality time kissing and cuddling over a glass of wine. He had fled when she realized she had become pregnant. It wasn’t like he had ever pretended to be anything more than a coward anyway.

Being the Family Man had felt like just another mission, a role to play, and all too late he had realized that no one would torture and kill him if he blew his cover. So he had bolted. Left the city. The planet. Found another job as a cop, which worked okay, for a while, until he fucked up and his superiors found out just how deeply involved he had become in the Underworld, and just how brutally he hunted down the criminals. Blackmail and torture weren’t acceptable means with which to ensure people followed the laws, he was told, and got the sack even if he couldn’t quite remember having used such methods. It was a matter of definition, his friends comforted him, and he had started his own private business and made his own definitions.

It really was all a matter of definition. Laws were a matter of definition. The right to power was a matter of definition. Human rights were a matter of definition, and now even the Kowalskian monkeys were claiming those. Let them have them, he thought. Let them show us what human mercy is like, just like we have taught them by our brilliant example. One day king, the next day a beggar, revolution followed counterrevolution and in the end the number of unhappy creatures would stay constant.

He smiled to himself and sipped at his drink. The taste became better as the effect of the alcohol kicked in and he leaned back comfortably and stretched his legs. The war was back. He should have been horrified, like the captain, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t quite dancing with joy either, but he did fail to feel appropriately devastated. He hadn’t quite been able to handle peace the way he imagined a man should. In times of peace he had been an anomaly, an outcast and a stranger. In times of war, he fit right in.