Drill Sergeant Yoshie Hauptmann wouldn’t have needed the alarm to go off at 6:30 every morning. He’d disciplined his body to fall asleep at 11:30 precisely, and as precisely to wake up at 6:30, although he was as punctual at setting the alarm as he was about everything. Just in case. You never know. Be prepared. The devil’s in the details.
On August 5th,
2027, he rolled over, sat up gently so as not to wake Anika and padded into the
walk-in closet to retrieve the uniform Anika had so carefully brushed the night
before. It wasn’t there. He backed out of the closet and closed the door, in
response, probably, to the ubiquitous advice that unplugging a thing that’s not
working usually cures the problem. He opened the door again, but a white robe
hung in the precise spot where his uniform should be. He woke Anika. She was as
befuddled as he was.
His duplicate uniform
was at the cleaners and they wouldn’t be open until 10:00. He donned street
clothes and drove to the barracks. A few dozen raw recruits were wandering
around the parade ground, some in pajamas, some in their underwear. They
gathered around Drill Sergeant Hauptmann and informed him that where they’d
hung their uniforms and street clothes last night, there were only blue jeans
and Hawaiian shirts. Also, that they’d been awakened at 7:00 by what sounded
like a choir singing something about sheep grazing.
With that news, DS
Hauptmann took out his cell phone and dialed headquarters in Tel Aviv. They
already knew something was up, had already decided that Iran was retaliating
for the previous week’s bombing of a nuclear enrichment facility by Israel.
“The air force has been ordered to scramble all fighter jets, and
land-based-missile command to be ready for further orders. Do your best to …”
The call was
interrupted by “Hang on, Hauptmann,” and the click of a phone being hung up.
The news flashed down
the chain of command via X. When pilots (in street clothes) ran to the hangers,
they found every jet had been replaced by a skateboard and where bombs were
stored ready to be attached to planes, there was a bowling alley. Missile command
examining the silos’ contents found that the ICBMs had mysteriously turned into
massive heaps of Swiss Cheese, complete with holes.
The entire base was
gripped by excruciating fear. Officers and privates ran back and forth between
rooms, between buildings, and the parade ground was awash in Hawaiian shirted
civilians carrying baseball bats, hockey sticks, anything they could get their
hands on.
Fortunately, relief
followed hard upon all this devastating news: Iran, Saudi Arabia, the USA,
Russia, Australia, Great Britain were all struggling to understand how their
entire military apparatus had turned into food, flowers, game venues and
identical Hawaiian shirts. Nobody knew who was who, rank and privilege lost all
their markers and most amazingly, every economy discovered that the last year’s
military spending had been reimbursed and governments were awash in cash.
Prince William was up
early, dressed for a portrait photograph to be taken by Amelia Standingstill,
Great Britain’s most celebrated female portrait photographer. At 7:00
precisely, Amelia gasped as she saw poor William through her viewfinder without
hat, coat, pants, epaulets and medals and him looking down and wishing he’d
chosen boxers instead of briefs.
Several arms
manufacturing CEOs took their own lives, too hastily, turns out; their
factories remained intact, except that all had been retooled to produce solar
panels and tidal generators. Go figure!
Jerry Pinkstable and
Hank Surinamy were neighbours on Colonel Wogey Street in Denver, Colorado.
Jerry’s first thought when he heard the news of very strange doings was to
prepare to defend his family. He reached in and felt around in his night table
drawer, but his pistol was gone. In a panic, he ran downstairs to his gun
cabinet and found when he opened it that his hunting rifles had turned into
gardening tools and his last-ditch, assault rifle was now a cricket bat. Jerry
has never, ever played cricket. Somebody goofed.
He ran out to make
sure the gate in his chain link property fence was locked and discovered no
fence and no gate. He ran back into the house and placed Jonathon’s and
Sidney’s miniature baseball bats near the door, then ran back to the kitchen
for a knife, but wherever a knife had been, there was now a pizza cutter. He
felt silly holding one in his hand and making a few ridiculous thrusts with it.
He dropped it back into the drawer.
He picked up a bat and
stepped gingerly out onto the front porch. He was startled to see that “that
bastard Hank” was mirroring his stance and his weapon on the Surinamy’s front
porch. Hank’s six-year-old son stepped out beside Hank, looked at Jerry and said,
“Daddy, if your guns went away, and Jerry’s guns went away, prob’ly everybody’s
guns went away.” Jerry’s defiant demeanour left, replaced by a sheepishness at
the wisdom of a child. He dropped the bat on the lawn, as did Hank and both
felt that a ton of rocks had been lifted from their shoulders, although it
would take some time before they could admit it.
A chapter of Hell’s Angels had
bought three adjacent houses on Grady Street in Summerdale, Ontario back in
2019. Every other house on that block had been FOR SALE ever since, but they
didn’t care. They tore down the middle house and erected a large garage for
their motorcycles. Their weapons were kept on their persons or at their
bedsides. Not prone to early rising and having no use for establishment news,
they would experience the upheaval of theirs and everybody else’s world for
themselves.
At 10:15, a bearded,
barbed-wire-tattooed Jason Farthing awoke, sat up, scratched his ample belly,
and reached for the leather jacket that he’d left hanging on the bedpost. What
came away was not his jacket, but a plaid sportscoat whose only nod to leather
was in the elbow patches. Jason hung it back up, shook his head, went for a
pee—in response, probably, to the ubiquitous advice that unplugging a thing
that’s not working usually cures the problem—and came back. The plaid
sportscoat was still there, hanging from the bedpost. What’s more, the handgun
he kept under his pillow at night was not under his pillow.
Jason pounded on every
bedroom door in the house screaming, “OK, you jackasses, who’s the wise guy.
Joke’s over!” A few doors opened, a few arms appeared, a few hands gingerly
held out plaid sportscoats with leather elbow protectors and every coat with a
pen clipped into the breast pocket.
Eventually the world
news registered via Aaron “Frisky” Patterson’s Facebook account. He rushed out
to the garage and, you guessed it, where fourteen Harleys and Yamahas and
Phantom Blacks had stood, there now were fourteen high-end racing bikes.
Aaron was probably the
most astute of the chapter membership. First, he thought, “Strange, this is not
military hardware.” Then he thought, “Military hardware intimidates;
motorcyclists in packs wearing Hell’s Angels decals are intimidating,
that’s what we set out to be. Whoever did this is smart, like me.”
He ran his hand across
the new leather of the bicycle’s banana seat. It reminded him of the first bike
he’d had as a kid back in Laird, Saskatchewan. He went back upstairs and put on
the plaid sportscoat with the leather elbow pads and took the racing bike out
for a spin.
It felt really good
except that the jacket didn’t match his leather pants. He stopped on a country
road, took off his pants and hung them over a barbed-wire fence and gleefully
headed west in his boxer shorts and the greenish-plaid sportscoat with the leather
elbow protectors.
He was enthralled by
the singing of the birds on the fence wires.
Joe Biden was nearing the endpoint of his
presidency and like everyone, he was shaken by the news as it unfolded from
around the world. Most astounding to him were the images of the Pentagon on
TV—before and after. Whoever or whatever force was at work had exercised some
cosmic geometry and turned it into a circle. Furthermore, it was now a school;
offices with their maps and strategic planning documents and international
intelligence apparatus were all gone, replaced by classrooms. The signage out
front and back now read “Plowshare College,” and President Joe chuckled because
he’d actually been listening in church and knew where the name came from. His
attorney-general opined that it must have something to do with agriculture, an
easy mistake to make.
Prime Minister Trudeau in Canada
approached the new governor-general with a request to prorogue parliament, a
request that was denied. “You’re suddenly befuddled and clueless, Justin,” she
said, “and you can’t wrap your head around no fighter jets, no tanks, no army.
Well join the club. Go back and write a budget and a throne speech. Trust me.
It’s gonna be fun with all that new cash and all those personnel freed up to
fight climate change. Right up your alley, nuh?”
And the world unfolded
as it should. War- and terrorism-refugees started to drift home, people (who
seem always to need a war) became obsessed with saving the planet, cleaning up
oceans, rivers and lakes, planting trees, building renewable energy infrastructure,
building better hospitals and better schools, ensuring food security, all these
and more creating jobs, jobs, jobs.
Street gangs filled their pockets with rocks
at first, but gave that up when their thrown stones would turn into potato
chips the instant they left their hands. Everyone knows how hard it is to throw
a potato chip with any degree of accuracy. A few, in desperation, turned
themselves into book clubs.
Most importantly, the
world of the poor, the rich, the powerful, the ordinary, celebrities and
heroes, artists and poets, writers and readers, laborers and thinkers, all
could finally count on a good night’s sleep. The sounds of snoring could at
times be deafening.
CBC reported two years
later that Putin had made a disparaging remark about the Canadian Prime
Minister at an international conference. Apparently, the Canadian Prime
Minister stuck his tongue out at Putin in response, at which the UN General
Secretary was reported to have banged his gavel and remarked, “My goodness,
will this aggression, counter-aggression cycle never end?”
In Israel/Palestine
all the walls and barriers came down, missiles and personnel weapons were
nowhere to be found. And amazingly here, the power that had demilitarized the
nations had added a twist: whether faces and clothes were different or just
appeared to be, observers could no longer tell Israelis from Palestinians.
Authorities soon tired of having to ask people whether they were Jewish or Arab
before telling them whether they were allowed to stand or walk, here or there.
There was nothing for it, finally, but to declare the entire area a democratic,
secular state with politicians elected by universal suffrage, police armed with
little more than good will and compassion, and everyone worshipping the same
spirit of God’s goodness and mercy … side by side.
The En…, no, The Beginning.
No comments:
Post a Comment