Joel Fishbane
As he did every morning, the general rose at eight-twenty, performed a series of fierce calisthenics to stimulate the blood, and stood naked in the window to overlook the utopia he had created years before. The great hero had a strapping chest that would have filled out his uniform, had he been allowed to wear it, and his eyes still had the glint of destiny as if he could see things no one else could. Outside, the heat was penitential. It was the seventy-third day of the drought and only a month since an earthquake had ravaged the countryside. Here, in the capital, the sky was a blank canvas and rock pigeons were dropping from the sky.
The general lived alone in a magnificent apartment that was part of his pension and, as he had a monthly stipend, he was spending his retirement writing the memoirs that would cement his legacy (he understood the need to publish his own thoughts before historians invented them for posterity). The general had sworn to write five thousand words a day but today was his day of rest and, rather than go to his desk, he showered for three and a half minutes, shaving off his whiskers with a few skilled swipes of the blade. It took fifty-two seconds to dress in civilian clothes and another forty-seven to comb the silver weeds that grew along the sides of his head. In the kitchen, the general ground chicory root for coffee (thirty-nine seconds) and scrambled two eggs with the last of the hard cheese (two and a half minutes). For a quarter of an hour, he ate this spartan meal along with half an apple and thirty grams of toast. His meal, like so much of his day, had been designed with meticulous care. Extra rations carried over and another week without butter meant he would obtain a luxurious sixteen ounces at the end of the month. It would be his seventy-fifth birthday and the general was planning a feast. He and his last surviving commanders could drink to their utopia with one of the last bottles of genuine Merlot in the world.
After fixing his identification disc to his lapel, the general left the apartment with a heroic stride. His neighbor was a widow who used blackboot polish for mascara and walked her Alaska Husky as if it was one of the great labors of Hercules. Both woman and dog had button noses that wrinkled in distaste as the great hero passed. He paid this no mind, blaming it on his facial wound, a singular injury that marked him like a brand. The general had won the injury during the Battle of Thunder Hill where he had saved the infant daughter of his aide-de-camp, an act that made his reputation and earned him the first of the medals he was no longer allowed to wear. But all that was years ago and he knew that, when the woman and her dog looked at him, they saw only a greying spectre with a scar. The general believed this was why people often turned from him. Such were the dangers of time. His memoirs would change that. The people would smile at him. How is your health, General? Stop by some night for a drink?
Downstairs, the general swiped the keycard that unlocked the security gate and transmitted a message to the authorities so they knew he had left home. This was a recent precaution that they said was to prevent identify theft (even in the utopia, the world is filled with liars and thieves). The high temperatures were nothing to the general, who had fought his first campaigns during the days when the heat had made the sea levels rise, and he now proceeded with his habitual march, squinting in the glare of the sun. The general always began his walks by turning down K Street toward the beach. Had he been there at sunrise, he might have seen water thieves trapped by nets. But the roundsmen had already come to collect these scavengers and, beyond the electric fence, the general saw only the untouched beach and the grandeur of the lake that everyone was forbidden to approach.
After coming to the end of the boardwalk, the wandering general turned onto P Street where he found a surprise checkpoint. These tended to pop up without warning and he was made to queue with pedestrians who turned from the deformity on his face. He imagined he wouldn’t have to bother showing his identification but, when his time came, the sweaty roundsman scanned his disc without ever acknowledging him for who he was. It would have been the general’s right to protest the indignity but the line was long and the day was hot. The general swallowed his outrage. A charitable act; yet one more sacrifice to be ignored.
On he walked and the security drones buzzed overhead, manoeuvering around the pigeons as they fell. He came upon a bookshop and stopped by the stalls. Brushing away a cloud of flies, the general ran a hand over the spines. Like him, each was a survivor—so many books had been removed by edict that the ones that remained seemed to have the glow of divine luck. Someday his memoirs would be here. The general had been practicing his signature. He already knew what he would write to the children whose parents he had saved.
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