King's County Read Online Free PDF Page B

right." I said to
him.
    "Your military access card is now
revoked. You’ll hand it in to the departure secretary and be
assigned a placement officer. They’ll put you somewhere and then
your access will be reevaluated. You will still retain privileges
from your participation in the Artemis project but you’ll need your
new card to be issued first. OK? That’s all. Now get out of
here."
    **

    King’s County Ch.2, Seattle

    Earth, Moon 2066

    It seemed like there wasn't
nothing else to do, and going military was as good or better than
whatever might be coming down the pike later. That's everybody's
reason. But this ain't living out here, sitting in this thing.
There’s no fight in it. No fight in either of us. We ain't living
or dying. If in your mind you can handle that then maybe it's
better than just doing nothing and staying home. I’ve made my own
peace already.
    - Major Edward Hart

    From orbit we swung once around the
Earth to catch the right trajectory to hit the Moon base. Ed got a
look around and decided to sleep most of the way there. The Earth
and Sun and Moon were beautiful but you couldn't stare at them
forever, I guess, even at high speed.
    I read books on the HUD, the
heads-up-display. They could be switched from print to audio. I'd
listen to one while reading another or while browsing images.
Biology, archeology, paleontology, military history, art history,
architecture, lots of photos, museums, biographies: everything was
available. It was just up to me to find it. Why didn't I read this
stuff in college? I started War and Peace but gave up on it. I
finished half of Moby Dick and saved the rest for later. Some of
the time I just stared out of the window into the nothingness, just
thinking to myself. I hadn't yet taken a pill.
    Ed was in slow motion. Every so often
he'd croak something out. It took him a minute or two just to make
a simple statement. He couldn't possibly have understood my
response.
    92 hours passed quickly. The harshly
sunlit, ashy gray Moon swelled in a corner of the window. I fed Ed
his wake-up pill. Details on the surface crystallized. Craters,
vague impressions at first, became discernible with edges and lips.
Smaller and smaller craters, craters within craters, came into
focus and ran off the sides as we closed in. We saw the base, a
dark gray rounded rectangle with two large orange stripes running
the length of the roof.
    *
    AK/WA 2092
    Within a few hours of Colonel Jackson
dismissing me, they had me processed and put on a plane. I had a
temporary access card and a duffel bag. My uniforms and badges I
surrendered. I kept the infantry boots to wear with my civilian
clothes. No one asked for them and I didn't want to give them up.
They're great boots that I still wear to this day.
    The transport took off from the
Anderson base and climbed to 20,000 meters, making a long, gradual
arc down to SEA-TAC airport. I was alone except for one other
passenger, an older looking Sgt. Major who sat across from me and
refused to speak.
    At the ramp, a woman was there to meet
me. She knew me by sight.
    "Mr Waller?" It was Sunday and she was
wearing jeans. She looked into the center of my face when she
spoke.
    "I’m your placement adviser, Alice."
She held out a hand then quickly withdrew it, seeing mine occupied
with the duffel bag.
    "OK. So what do we do now,
Alice?"
    She had a meeting room in the airport
reserved for us. I followed her for the short walk rolling my bag
beside me on a powered cart. The glass doors opened at our
approach. Her assistant was waiting there with coffee.
    Alice consulted her tablet for a moment
while the assistant checked me out from across the table. Alice
looked to be a year or two older than the assistant. They were both
sort of blandly cute, plain faced but healthy, with delicate wrists
and ankles which I liked.
    "Is there something I can do
with...computers, maybe?" I asked her. She looked up and set the
tablet down. Her assistant laughed a little.
    "You've been