Infinite Jest Part 19

Unmentioned by either man was how in heaven's name either man expected to get up or down from the mountainside's shelf in the dark of the U.S. desert's night.

8 NOVEMBER.

YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT INTERDEPENDENCE DAY GAUDEAMUS IGITUR GAUDEAMUS IGITUR.

Every year at E.T.A., maybe a dozen of the kids between maybe like twelve and fifteen - children in the very earliest stages of p.u.b.erty and really abstract-capable thought, when one's allergy to the confining realities of the present is just starting to emerge as weird kind of nostalgia for stuff you never even knew 120 120 - maybe a dozen of these kids, mostly male, get fanatically devoted to a homemade Academy game called Eschaton. Eschaton is the most complicated children's game anybody around E.T.A.'d ever heard of. No one's entirely sure who brought it to Enfield from where. But you can pretty easily date its conception from the mechanics of the game itself. Its basic structure had already pretty much coalesced when Allston's Michael Pemulis. .h.i.t age twelve and helped make it way more compelling. Its elegant complexity, combined with a dismissive-reenactment frisson and a complete disa.s.sociation from the realities of the present, composes most of its puerile appeal. Plus it's almost addictively compelling, and shocks the tall. - maybe a dozen of these kids, mostly male, get fanatically devoted to a homemade Academy game called Eschaton. Eschaton is the most complicated children's game anybody around E.T.A.'d ever heard of. No one's entirely sure who brought it to Enfield from where. But you can pretty easily date its conception from the mechanics of the game itself. Its basic structure had already pretty much coalesced when Allston's Michael Pemulis. .h.i.t age twelve and helped make it way more compelling. Its elegant complexity, combined with a dismissive-reenactment frisson and a complete disa.s.sociation from the realities of the present, composes most of its puerile appeal. Plus it's almost addictively compelling, and shocks the tall.

This year it's been Otis P. Lord, a thirteen-year-old baseliner and calculus phenom from Wilmington DE, who 'Wears the Beanie' as Eschaton's game-master and statistician of record, though Pemulis, since he's still around and is far and away the greatest Eschaton player in E.T.A. history, has a kind of unofficial emeritus power of correction over Lord's calculations and mandate.

Eschaton takes eight to twelve people to play, w/ 400 tennis b.a.l.l.s so dead and bald they can't even be used for service drills anymore, plus an open expanse equal to the area of four contiguous tennis courts, plus a head for data-retrieval and coldly logical cognition, along with at least 40 megabytes of available RAM and wide array of tennis paraphernalia. The vademec.u.m vademec.u.mish rulebook that Pemulis in Y.P.W. got Hal Incandenza to write - with appendices and sample c:Pink2MathpakEndStat-path Decision-Tree diagrams and an offset of the most accessible essay Pemulis could find on applied game theory - is about as long and interesting as J. Bunyan's stupefying Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come, Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come, and a pretty tough nut to compress into anything lively (although every year a dozen more E.T.A. kids memorize the thing at such a fanatical depth that they sometimes report reciting mumbled pa.s.sages under light dental or cosmetic anesthesia, years later). But if Hal had a Luger pointed at him and were under compulsion to try, he'd probably start by explaining that each of the 400 dead tennis b.a.l.l.s in the game's global a.r.s.enal represents a 5-megaton thermonuclear warhead. Of the total number of a given day's players, and a pretty tough nut to compress into anything lively (although every year a dozen more E.T.A. kids memorize the thing at such a fanatical depth that they sometimes report reciting mumbled pa.s.sages under light dental or cosmetic anesthesia, years later). But if Hal had a Luger pointed at him and were under compulsion to try, he'd probably start by explaining that each of the 400 dead tennis b.a.l.l.s in the game's global a.r.s.enal represents a 5-megaton thermonuclear warhead. Of the total number of a given day's players, 121 121 three compose a theoretical three compose a theoretical Anschluss Anschluss designated AMNAT, another three SOVWAR, one or two REDCHI, another one or two the wacko but always pesky LIBSYR or more formidable IRLIBSYR, and that the day's remaining players, depending on involved random considerations, can form anything from SOUTHAF to INDPAK to like an independent cell of Nuck insurgents with a 50-click Howitzer and big ideas. Each team is called a Combatant. On the open expanse of contiguous courts, Combatants are arrayed in positions corresponding to their location on the planet earth as represented in designated AMNAT, another three SOVWAR, one or two REDCHI, another one or two the wacko but always pesky LIBSYR or more formidable IRLIBSYR, and that the day's remaining players, depending on involved random considerations, can form anything from SOUTHAF to INDPAK to like an independent cell of Nuck insurgents with a 50-click Howitzer and big ideas. Each team is called a Combatant. On the open expanse of contiguous courts, Combatants are arrayed in positions corresponding to their location on the planet earth as represented in The Rand McNally Slightly Rectangular Hanging Map of the World. The Rand McNally Slightly Rectangular Hanging Map of the World.122 Practical distribution of total megatonnage requires a working knowledge of the Mean-Value Theorem for Integrals, Practical distribution of total megatonnage requires a working knowledge of the Mean-Value Theorem for Integrals, 123 123 but for Hal's synoptic purposes here it's enough to say that megatonnage is distributed among Combatants according to an integrally regressed ratio of (a) Combatant's yearly military budget as percentage of Combatant's yearly GNP to (b) the inverse of stratego-tactical expenditures as percentage of Combatant's yearly military budget. In quainter days, Combatants' b.a.l.l.s were simply doled out by throws of s.h.i.+ny red Yahtzee-dice. Quaint chance is no longer required, because Pemulis has downloaded Mathpak Unltd.'s elegant EndStat but for Hal's synoptic purposes here it's enough to say that megatonnage is distributed among Combatants according to an integrally regressed ratio of (a) Combatant's yearly military budget as percentage of Combatant's yearly GNP to (b) the inverse of stratego-tactical expenditures as percentage of Combatant's yearly military budget. In quainter days, Combatants' b.a.l.l.s were simply doled out by throws of s.h.i.+ny red Yahtzee-dice. Quaint chance is no longer required, because Pemulis has downloaded Mathpak Unltd.'s elegant EndStat 124 124 stats-cruncher software into the late James Incandenza's fearsome idle drop-clothed D.E.C. 2100, and has shown Otis P. Lord how to d.i.c.ky the lock to Scht.i.tt's office at night with a dining-hall meal card and plug the D.E.C. into a three-p.r.o.ng that's under the lower left corner of the enormous print of Durer's 'The Magnificent Beast' on the wall by the relevant edge of Scht.i.tt's big gla.s.s desk, so Scht.i.tt or deLint won't even know it's on, when it's on, then link it by cellular modem to a slick Yus.h.i.+tyu portable with color monitor out on the courts' nuclear theater. AMNAT and SOVWAR usually end up with about 400 total megatons each, with the rest inconsistently divided. It's possible to complicate Pemulis's Mean-Value equation for distribution by factoring in stuff like historical incidences of bellicosity and appeas.e.m.e.nt, unique characteristics of perceived national interests, etc., but Lord, the son of not one but two bankers, is a straight bang-for-buck type of apportioner, a stance the equally bottom-line-minded Michael Pemulis endorses with both thumbs. Pieces of tennis gear are carefully placed within each Combatant's territories to mirror and map strategic targets. Folded gray-on-red E.T.A. T-s.h.i.+rts are MAMAs - Major Metro Areas. Towels stolen from selected motels on the junior tour stand for airfields, bridges, satellite-linked monitoring facilities, carrier groups, conventional power plants, important rail convergences. Red tennis shorts with gray trim are CONFORCONs - Conventional-Force Concentrations. The black cotton E.T.A. armbands - for when G.o.d forbid there's a death - designate the noncontemporary game-era's atomic power plants, uranium-/ plutonium-enrichment facilities, gaseous diffusion plants, breeder reactors, initiator factories, neutron-scattering-reflector labs, tritium-production reactor vessels, heavy-water plants, semiprivate shaped-charge concerns, linear accelerators, and the especially point-heavy Annular Fusion research laboratories in North Syracuse NNY and Presque Isle ME, Chyonskrg Kurgistan and Pliscu Romania, and possibly elsewhere. Red shorts with gray trim (few in number because strongly disliked by the travelling squads) are SSTRACs - equally low-number but point-intensive Sites of Strategic Command. Socks are either missile installations or antimissile installations or isolated silo-cl.u.s.ters or Cruise-capable B2 or SS5 squadrons - let's draw the curtain of charity across any more MILABBREVs - depending on whether they're boys' tennis socks or boys' street-shoe socks or girls' tennis socks with the little bunny-tail at the heel or girls' tennis socks w/o the bunny-tail. Toe-worn cast-off corporate-supplied sneakers sit open-mouthed and serenely lethal, strongly suggesting the subs they stand for. stats-cruncher software into the late James Incandenza's fearsome idle drop-clothed D.E.C. 2100, and has shown Otis P. Lord how to d.i.c.ky the lock to Scht.i.tt's office at night with a dining-hall meal card and plug the D.E.C. into a three-p.r.o.ng that's under the lower left corner of the enormous print of Durer's 'The Magnificent Beast' on the wall by the relevant edge of Scht.i.tt's big gla.s.s desk, so Scht.i.tt or deLint won't even know it's on, when it's on, then link it by cellular modem to a slick Yus.h.i.+tyu portable with color monitor out on the courts' nuclear theater. AMNAT and SOVWAR usually end up with about 400 total megatons each, with the rest inconsistently divided. It's possible to complicate Pemulis's Mean-Value equation for distribution by factoring in stuff like historical incidences of bellicosity and appeas.e.m.e.nt, unique characteristics of perceived national interests, etc., but Lord, the son of not one but two bankers, is a straight bang-for-buck type of apportioner, a stance the equally bottom-line-minded Michael Pemulis endorses with both thumbs. Pieces of tennis gear are carefully placed within each Combatant's territories to mirror and map strategic targets. Folded gray-on-red E.T.A. T-s.h.i.+rts are MAMAs - Major Metro Areas. Towels stolen from selected motels on the junior tour stand for airfields, bridges, satellite-linked monitoring facilities, carrier groups, conventional power plants, important rail convergences. Red tennis shorts with gray trim are CONFORCONs - Conventional-Force Concentrations. The black cotton E.T.A. armbands - for when G.o.d forbid there's a death - designate the noncontemporary game-era's atomic power plants, uranium-/ plutonium-enrichment facilities, gaseous diffusion plants, breeder reactors, initiator factories, neutron-scattering-reflector labs, tritium-production reactor vessels, heavy-water plants, semiprivate shaped-charge concerns, linear accelerators, and the especially point-heavy Annular Fusion research laboratories in North Syracuse NNY and Presque Isle ME, Chyonskrg Kurgistan and Pliscu Romania, and possibly elsewhere. Red shorts with gray trim (few in number because strongly disliked by the travelling squads) are SSTRACs - equally low-number but point-intensive Sites of Strategic Command. Socks are either missile installations or antimissile installations or isolated silo-cl.u.s.ters or Cruise-capable B2 or SS5 squadrons - let's draw the curtain of charity across any more MILABBREVs - depending on whether they're boys' tennis socks or boys' street-shoe socks or girls' tennis socks with the little bunny-tail at the heel or girls' tennis socks w/o the bunny-tail. Toe-worn cast-off corporate-supplied sneakers sit open-mouthed and serenely lethal, strongly suggesting the subs they stand for.

In the game, Combatants' 5-megaton warheads can be launched only with hand-held tennis racquets. Hence the requirement of actual physical targeting-skill that separates Eschaton from rotisserie-league holocaust games played with protractors and PCs around kitchen tables. The paraboloid transcontinental flight of a liquid-fuel strategic delivery vehicle closely resembles a topspin lob. One reason the E.T.A. administration and staff unofficially permit Eschaton to absorb students' attention and commitment might be that the game's devotees tend to develop terrific lobs. Pemulis's lobs can nail a coin on the baseline two out of three times off either side, is why it's idiotic that he rushes the net so much instead of letting the other guy come in more. Warheads can be launched independently or packed into an intricately knotted athletic supporter designed to open out in midflight and release Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles - MIRVs. MIRVs, being a profligate use of a Combatant's available megatonnage, tend to get used only if a game of Eschaton metastasizes from a controlled set of Spasm Exchanges - SPAs.e.x - to an all-out apocalyptic series of punis.h.i.+ng Strikes Against Civilian Populations - SACPOP. Few Combatants will go to SACPOP unless compelled by the remorseless logic of game theory, since SACPOP-exchanges usually end up costing both Combatants so many points they're eliminated from further contention. A given Eschaton's winning team is simply that Combatant with the most favorable ratio of points for INDDIR - Infliction of Death, Destruction, and Incapacitation of Response - to SUFDDIR - self-evident - though the a.s.signment of point-values for each Combatant's s.h.i.+rts, towels, shorts, armbands, socks, and shoes is statistically icky, plus there are also wildly involved corrections for initial megatonnage, population density, Land-Sea-Air delivery distributions, and EM-pulse-resistant civil-defense expenditures, so that the official victor takes three hours of EndStat number-crunching and at least four Motrin for Otis P. Lord to confirm.

Another reason why each year's master statistician has to be a special combination of tech-wonk and compulsive is that the baroque apparatus of each Eschaton has to be worked out in advance and then sold to a kind of immature and easily bored community of world leaders. A quorum of the day's Combatants has to endorse a particular simulated World Situation as Lord's stayed up well past several bedtimes to develop it: Land-Sea-Air force-distributions; ethnic, sociologic, economic, and even religious demographics for each Combatant, plus broadly sketched psych-profiles of all relevant heads of state; prevailing weather in all the map's quadrants; etc. Then everybody playing that day is a.s.signed to a Combatant's team, and they all sit down over purified water and unfatted chips to hash out between Combatants stuff like mutual-defense alliances, humane-war pacts, facilities for inter-Combatant communication, DEFCON-gradients, city-trading, and so on. Since each Combatant's team knows only their own Situation-profile and total available megatonnage - and since even out in the four-court theater the stockpiled warheads are hidden from view inside the identical white plastic cast-off industrial-solvent buckets all academies and serious players use for drill-b.a.l.l.s 125 125 - there can be a lot of poker-facing about response-resolve, willingness to go SACPOP, nonnegotiable interests, EM-pulse-immunity, distribution of strategic forces, and commitment to geopolitical ideals. You should have seen Michael Pemulis just about eat the whole world alive during pre-Eschaton summits, back when he played. His teams won most games before the first lob landed. - there can be a lot of poker-facing about response-resolve, willingness to go SACPOP, nonnegotiable interests, EM-pulse-immunity, distribution of strategic forces, and commitment to geopolitical ideals. You should have seen Michael Pemulis just about eat the whole world alive during pre-Eschaton summits, back when he played. His teams won most games before the first lob landed.

What often takes the longest to get a quorum on is each game's Triggering Situation. Here Lord, like many stellar statistics-wonks, shows a bit of an Achilles' heel imagination-wise, but he's got a good five or six years of Eschaton precedents to draw on. A Russo-Chinese border dispute goes tactical over Sinkiang. An AMNAT computracker in the Aleutians misreads a flight of geese as three SOVWAR SS10s on reentry. Israel moves armored divisions north and east through Jordan after an El Al airbus is bombed in midflight by a cell linked to both H'sseins. Black Albertan wackos infiltrate an isolated silo at Ft. Chimo and get two MIRVs through SOUTHAF's defense net. North Korea invades South Korea. Vice versa. AMNAT is within 72 hours of putting an impregnable string of antimissile satellites on line, and the remorseless logic of game theory compels SOVWAR to go SACPOP while it still has the chance.

On Interdependence Day, Sunday 11/8, game-master Lord's Triggering Situation unwinds nicely, on Pemulis's view. Explosions of suspicious origin occur at AMNAT satellite-receiver stations from Turkey to Labrador as three high-level Canadian defense ministers vanish and then a couple of days later are photographed at a Volgograd bistro hoisting shots of Stolichnaya with Slavic bimbos on their knee. 126 126 Then two SOVWAR trawlers just inside international waters off Was.h.i.+ngton are strafed by F16s on patrol out of Cape Flattery Naval Base. Both AMNAT and SOVWAR go from DEFCON 2 to DEFCON 4. REDCHI goes to DEFCON 3, in response to which SOVWAR airfields and antimissile networks from Irkutsk to the Dzhugdzhur Range go to DEFCON 5, in response to which AMNAT-SAC bombers and antimissile-missile silos in Nebraska and South Dakota and Saskatchewan and eastern Spain a.s.sume a Maximum Readiness posture. SOVWAR's bald and port-wine-stained premier calls AMNAT's wattle-chinned Then two SOVWAR trawlers just inside international waters off Was.h.i.+ngton are strafed by F16s on patrol out of Cape Flattery Naval Base. Both AMNAT and SOVWAR go from DEFCON 2 to DEFCON 4. REDCHI goes to DEFCON 3, in response to which SOVWAR airfields and antimissile networks from Irkutsk to the Dzhugdzhur Range go to DEFCON 5, in response to which AMNAT-SAC bombers and antimissile-missile silos in Nebraska and South Dakota and Saskatchewan and eastern Spain a.s.sume a Maximum Readiness posture. SOVWAR's bald and port-wine-stained premier calls AMNAT's wattle-chinned 127 127 president on the Hot Line and asks him if he's got Prince Albert in a can. Another pretty shady explosion levels a SOVWAR Big Ear monitoring station on Sakhalin. General Atomic Inc.'s gaseous diffusion uranium-enrichment facility in Portsmouth OH reports four kilograms of enriched uranium hexafluoride missing and then suffers a cataclysmic fire that forces evacuation of six downwind counties. An AMNAT minesweeper of the Sixth Fleet on maneuvers in the Red Sea is. .h.i.t and sunk with REDCHI Silkworm torpedoes fired by LIBSYR MiG25s. Italy, in an apparently bizarre EndStat-generated development Otis P. Lord will only smile enigmatically about, invades Albania. SOVWAR goes apes.h.i.+t. Apoplectic premier rings AMNAT's president, only to be asked if his refrigerator's running. LIBSYR shocks the Christian world by air-bursting a half-megaton device two clicks over Tel Aviv, causing deaths in the low six figures. Everybody and his brother goes to DEFCON 5. Air Force One leaves the ground. SOUTHAF and REDCHI announce neutrality and plead for cool heads. Israeli armored columns behind heavy tactical-artillery saturation push into Syria all the way to Abu Kenal in twelve hours: Damascus has firestorms; En Nebk is reportedly just plain gone. Several repressive right-wing regimes in the Third World suffer coups d'etat and are replaced by repressive left-wing regimes. Tehran and Baghdad announce full dip-mil support of LIBSYR, thus reconst.i.tuting LIBSYR as IRLIBSYR. AMNAT and SOVWAR activate all civil defense personnel and armed forces reserves and commence evacuation of selected MAMAs. IRLIBSYR is today represented by Evan Ingersoll, whom Axford keeps growling at under his breath, Hal can hear. A s.h.i.+fty-eyed member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff vanishes and isn't photographed anywhere. Albania sues for terms. Crude and apparently amateur devices in the low-kiloton range explode across Israel from Haifa to Ashqelon. Tripoli is incommunicado after at least four thermonuclear explosions cause second-degree burns as far away as Medenine Tunisia. A 10-kiloton tactical-artillery device air-bursts over the Command Center of the Czech 3rd Army in Ostrava, resulting in what one Pentagon a.n.a.lyst calls 'a serious wienie roast.' Despite the fact that n.o.body but SOVWAR itself has anybody close enough to hit Ostrava from Howitzer-distance, SOVWAR stonewalls AMNAT's denials and regrets. AMNAT's president tries ringing SOVWAR's premier from the air and gets only the premier's answering machine. AMNAT is unable to determine whether the string of explosions at its radar installations all along the Arctic Circle are conventional or tactical. CIA/NSA reports that 64% of the civilian populations of SOVWAR's MAMAs have been successfully relocated below ground in hardened shelters. AMNAT orders evacuation of all MAMAs. SOVWAR MiG25s engage REDCHI aircraft over seas off Tientsin. Air Force Two tries to leave the ground and gets a flat tire. A single one-megaton SS10 evades antimissile missiles and detonates just over Provo UT, from which all communications abruptly cease. Eschaton's game-master now posits - but does not go so far as to actually a.s.sert - that EndStat's game-theoretic Decision Tree now dictates a SPAs.e.x response from AMNAT. president on the Hot Line and asks him if he's got Prince Albert in a can. Another pretty shady explosion levels a SOVWAR Big Ear monitoring station on Sakhalin. General Atomic Inc.'s gaseous diffusion uranium-enrichment facility in Portsmouth OH reports four kilograms of enriched uranium hexafluoride missing and then suffers a cataclysmic fire that forces evacuation of six downwind counties. An AMNAT minesweeper of the Sixth Fleet on maneuvers in the Red Sea is. .h.i.t and sunk with REDCHI Silkworm torpedoes fired by LIBSYR MiG25s. Italy, in an apparently bizarre EndStat-generated development Otis P. Lord will only smile enigmatically about, invades Albania. SOVWAR goes apes.h.i.+t. Apoplectic premier rings AMNAT's president, only to be asked if his refrigerator's running. LIBSYR shocks the Christian world by air-bursting a half-megaton device two clicks over Tel Aviv, causing deaths in the low six figures. Everybody and his brother goes to DEFCON 5. Air Force One leaves the ground. SOUTHAF and REDCHI announce neutrality and plead for cool heads. Israeli armored columns behind heavy tactical-artillery saturation push into Syria all the way to Abu Kenal in twelve hours: Damascus has firestorms; En Nebk is reportedly just plain gone. Several repressive right-wing regimes in the Third World suffer coups d'etat and are replaced by repressive left-wing regimes. Tehran and Baghdad announce full dip-mil support of LIBSYR, thus reconst.i.tuting LIBSYR as IRLIBSYR. AMNAT and SOVWAR activate all civil defense personnel and armed forces reserves and commence evacuation of selected MAMAs. IRLIBSYR is today represented by Evan Ingersoll, whom Axford keeps growling at under his breath, Hal can hear. A s.h.i.+fty-eyed member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff vanishes and isn't photographed anywhere. Albania sues for terms. Crude and apparently amateur devices in the low-kiloton range explode across Israel from Haifa to Ashqelon. Tripoli is incommunicado after at least four thermonuclear explosions cause second-degree burns as far away as Medenine Tunisia. A 10-kiloton tactical-artillery device air-bursts over the Command Center of the Czech 3rd Army in Ostrava, resulting in what one Pentagon a.n.a.lyst calls 'a serious wienie roast.' Despite the fact that n.o.body but SOVWAR itself has anybody close enough to hit Ostrava from Howitzer-distance, SOVWAR stonewalls AMNAT's denials and regrets. AMNAT's president tries ringing SOVWAR's premier from the air and gets only the premier's answering machine. AMNAT is unable to determine whether the string of explosions at its radar installations all along the Arctic Circle are conventional or tactical. CIA/NSA reports that 64% of the civilian populations of SOVWAR's MAMAs have been successfully relocated below ground in hardened shelters. AMNAT orders evacuation of all MAMAs. SOVWAR MiG25s engage REDCHI aircraft over seas off Tientsin. Air Force Two tries to leave the ground and gets a flat tire. A single one-megaton SS10 evades antimissile missiles and detonates just over Provo UT, from which all communications abruptly cease. Eschaton's game-master now posits - but does not go so far as to actually a.s.sert - that EndStat's game-theoretic Decision Tree now dictates a SPAs.e.x response from AMNAT.

Uninitiated adults who might be parked in a nearby mint-green advertorial Ford sedan or might stroll casually past E.T.A.'s four easternmost tennis courts and see an atavistic global-nuclear-conflict game played by tanned and energetic little kids and so this might naturally expect to see fuzzless green warheads getting whacked indiscriminately skyward all over the place as everybody gets blackly drunk with thanatoptic fury in the crisp November air - these adults would more likely find an actual game of Eschaton strangely subdued, almost narcotized-looking. Your standard round of Eschaton moves at about the pace of chess between adepts. For these devotees become, on court, almost parodically adult - staid, sober, humane, and judicious twelve-year-old world leaders, trying their best not to let the awesome weight of their responsibilities - responsibilities to nation, globe, rationality, ideology, conscience and history, to both the living and the unborn - not to let the terrible agony they feel at the arrival of this day - this dark day the leaders've prayed would never come and have taken every conceivable measure rationally consistent with national strategic interest to avoid, to prevent - not to let the agonizing weight of responsibility compromise their resolve to do what they must to preserve their people's way of life. So they play, logically, cautiously, so earnest and deliberate in their calculations they appear thoroughly and queerly adult, almost Talmudic, from a distance. A couple gulls fly overhead. A mint-green Ford sedan has pa.s.sed through the gate's raised portcullis and is trying to parallel park between two dumpsters in the circular drive behind West House, which is behind and to the neck-straining left of the Gatorade pavilion. There's an autumnal tang to the air and a brittle gray sh.e.l.l of cloud-cover, plus the constant faraway hum of Sunstrand Plaza's ATHSCME fan-line.

Strategic ac.u.men and feel for realism vary from kid to kid, of course. When IRLIBSYR's Evan Ingersoll starts lobbing warheads at SOVWAR's belt of Third-Wave reserve silos in the Kazakh, and it becomes pretty clear that AMNAT has won IRLIBSYR to its side by making sinister promises about the ultimate disposition of Israel, Israel, even though n.o.body's Israel out there today, seems in a fit of pique to have somehow persuaded SOUTHAF, who today is Brooklyn NY's little hard-a.s.s Josh Gopnik - the same Josh Gopnik who by the way subscribes to Commentary Commentary - to expend all sixteen of its green fuzzy warheads in a debilitating enfilade against AMNAT dams, bridges, and bases from Florida to Baja. Everybody involved orders total displacement of MAMA populations. Then, without any calculation whatever, INDPAK, who today is J. J. Penn - a high-ranked thirteen-year-old but not exactly the brightest log on the Yuletide fire - dumps three poorly tied jockstraps' worth of MIRVs on Israel, landing most of the megatonnage in sub-Beersheba desert areas that didn't look much different before the blasts. When roundly kibitzed from the shelter of the Gatorade pavilion under Scht.i.tt's tower by Troeltsch, Axford, and Incandenza, Penn shrilly reminds them that Pakistan is a Muslim state and sworn foe to all infidelic enemies of Islam, but can do little but fiddle with the strings of his launcher when Pemulis cheerfully reminds him that n.o.body's Israel today and there isn't so much as a Combatant's sock on that part of the courts. It is not a matter of the principle of thing, ever, in Eschaton. - to expend all sixteen of its green fuzzy warheads in a debilitating enfilade against AMNAT dams, bridges, and bases from Florida to Baja. Everybody involved orders total displacement of MAMA populations. Then, without any calculation whatever, INDPAK, who today is J. J. Penn - a high-ranked thirteen-year-old but not exactly the brightest log on the Yuletide fire - dumps three poorly tied jockstraps' worth of MIRVs on Israel, landing most of the megatonnage in sub-Beersheba desert areas that didn't look much different before the blasts. When roundly kibitzed from the shelter of the Gatorade pavilion under Scht.i.tt's tower by Troeltsch, Axford, and Incandenza, Penn shrilly reminds them that Pakistan is a Muslim state and sworn foe to all infidelic enemies of Islam, but can do little but fiddle with the strings of his launcher when Pemulis cheerfully reminds him that n.o.body's Israel today and there isn't so much as a Combatant's sock on that part of the courts. It is not a matter of the principle of thing, ever, in Eschaton.

Except for the SOUTHAF flurry and INDPAK b.o.n.e.r, 11/8's game proceeds with much probity and cold deliberation, with even more pauses and hushed, chin-stroking conferences today than tend to be the norm. The only harried-looking person on the 1300-m.2 map is Otis P. Lord, who has to keep legging it from one continent to another, pus.h.i.+ng a rolling double-shelf stainless steel food cart purloined from St. John of G.o.d Hospital with a blinking Yus.h.i.+tyu portable on one shelf and a 256-capacity diskette case about two-thirds full on the other, the shelves' sides hung with clattering clipboards, Lord having to dramatize manually the effortless dictates of real logic and necessity, verifying that command decisions are allowable functions of situation and capacity (he'd shrugged his shoulders in a neutral Whatever at SOUTHAF and INDPAK), locating necessary data for subterranean premiers and dictators and airsick presidents, removing vaporized articles of clothing from sites of devastating hits and just woppsing them up or folding them over at the sites of near-hits and fizzle yields, triangulating EM-pulse estimates from confirmed hits to authorize or deny communication-capacity, it's a nerve-racking job, he's more or less having to play G.o.d, tallying kill-ratios and radiation-levels and parameters of fallout, strontium-90 and iodine levels and the likelihood of conflagrations v. firestorms in MAMAs with different Mean-Value skysc.r.a.per-heights and combustible-capital indices. Despite chapped hands and a badly running nose, Lord's response-time to requests for data is impressive, thanks mainly to the sly D.E.C. hookup and the detailed decision-algorithm files Pemulis had auth.o.r.ed three years back. Otis P. Lord informs SOVWAR and AMNAT that Peoria IL's topographic flatness ups the effective kill-radius for SOVWAR's 5-megaton direct hit to 10.1 clicks, meaning half of this MAMA-POP burns to death in evacuatory traffic jams out on Interstate 74. An AMNAT Minuteman can hold an absolute maximum of eight MIRVs map is Otis P. Lord, who has to keep legging it from one continent to another, pus.h.i.+ng a rolling double-shelf stainless steel food cart purloined from St. John of G.o.d Hospital with a blinking Yus.h.i.+tyu portable on one shelf and a 256-capacity diskette case about two-thirds full on the other, the shelves' sides hung with clattering clipboards, Lord having to dramatize manually the effortless dictates of real logic and necessity, verifying that command decisions are allowable functions of situation and capacity (he'd shrugged his shoulders in a neutral Whatever at SOUTHAF and INDPAK), locating necessary data for subterranean premiers and dictators and airsick presidents, removing vaporized articles of clothing from sites of devastating hits and just woppsing them up or folding them over at the sites of near-hits and fizzle yields, triangulating EM-pulse estimates from confirmed hits to authorize or deny communication-capacity, it's a nerve-racking job, he's more or less having to play G.o.d, tallying kill-ratios and radiation-levels and parameters of fallout, strontium-90 and iodine levels and the likelihood of conflagrations v. firestorms in MAMAs with different Mean-Value skysc.r.a.per-heights and combustible-capital indices. Despite chapped hands and a badly running nose, Lord's response-time to requests for data is impressive, thanks mainly to the sly D.E.C. hookup and the detailed decision-algorithm files Pemulis had auth.o.r.ed three years back. Otis P. Lord informs SOVWAR and AMNAT that Peoria IL's topographic flatness ups the effective kill-radius for SOVWAR's 5-megaton direct hit to 10.1 clicks, meaning half of this MAMA-POP burns to death in evacuatory traffic jams out on Interstate 74. An AMNAT Minuteman can hold an absolute maximum of eight MIRVs irregardless irregardless of whether the t.i.tanic jockstrap little LaMont Chu promoted out of the sedated Teddy Schacht's gear bag on the bus Friday night can hold thirteen dead tennis b.a.l.l.s. Given standard climatic conditions, the fire area from an air-burst will be 2 of whether the t.i.tanic jockstrap little LaMont Chu promoted out of the sedated Teddy Schacht's gear bag on the bus Friday night can hold thirteen dead tennis b.a.l.l.s. Given standard climatic conditions, the fire area from an air-burst will be 2 times larger than the blast area. Toronto has enough sub-code skysc.r.a.pers within its total area to guarantee a fire-storm off a minimum of two strikes within times larger than the blast area. Toronto has enough sub-code skysc.r.a.pers within its total area to guarantee a fire-storm off a minimum of two strikes within 2.

(1 / total Toronto area in m.2) of target center. Five megatons of heavy-hydrogen fusion yields at least 1,400,000 curies worth of strontium-90, meaning microcephalic kids in Montreal for roughly twenty-two generations, and yes wiseacre McKenna of AMNAT the world will probably notice the difference. Struck and Trevor Axford hoot loudly from under the green GATORADE THIRST AID GATORADE THIRST AID awning of the open-air pavilion outside the fence along the south side of the East Courts, where (the pavilion) they and Michael Pemulis and Jim Troeltsch and Hal Incandenza are splayed on reticulate-mesh patio chairs in street clothes and with their street-sneakers up on reticulate-mesh foot-stools, Struck and Axford with suspiciously bracing Gatorades and what looks like a hand-rolled psychochemical cigarette of some sort being pa.s.sed between them. 11/8 is an E.T.A. day of mandatory total R&R, though the public intoxicants are a bit much. Pemulis has a bag of red-skinned peanuts he hasn't eaten much of. Trevor Axford has overinhaled from the cigarette and is hunched coughing, his forehead purple. Hal Incandenza is squeezing a tennis ball and leaning out far to starboard to spit into a NASA gla.s.s on the ground and struggling with a strong desire to get high again for the second time since breakfast v. a strong distaste about smoking dope with/in front of all these others, especially out in the open in front of Little Buddies, which seems to him to violate some sort of issue of taste that he struggles to articulate satisfactorily to himself. A tooth way back on the upper left is twinging electrically in the cold air. Pemulis, though from his twitchy right eye he's clearly had recent recourse to some Tenuate (which helps explain the uneaten nuts), is currently abstaining and sitting on his hands for warmth, peanuts on the floor well away from Hal's NASA gla.s.s. The pavilion is open on all sides and compliments of Stokely-van Camp Corp. and little more than like a big fancy tent with a green felt cover over the expanse's real gra.s.s and white-iron patio furniture with reticulate plastic mesh; it's mostly used for civilians' spectation during exhibition matches on the East Show Courts 7, 8, 9; sometimes E.T.A.s cl.u.s.ter under it during drill-breaks in the summer in the heat of the day. The green awning gets taken down when they go into the Lung for the winter. Eschaton traditionally commandeers Courts 69, the really nice East Courts, unless there's legit tennis going on. All the uppercla.s.s spectators except Jim Struck are former Eschaton devotees, though Hal and Troeltsch were both marginal. Troeltsch, who's also pretty clearly had some Tenuate, is left-eye-nystagmic and is calling the action into a disconnected broadcast-headset, but Eschaton's tough to enliven, verbally, even for the stimulated. Being generally too slow and cerebral. awning of the open-air pavilion outside the fence along the south side of the East Courts, where (the pavilion) they and Michael Pemulis and Jim Troeltsch and Hal Incandenza are splayed on reticulate-mesh patio chairs in street clothes and with their street-sneakers up on reticulate-mesh foot-stools, Struck and Axford with suspiciously bracing Gatorades and what looks like a hand-rolled psychochemical cigarette of some sort being pa.s.sed between them. 11/8 is an E.T.A. day of mandatory total R&R, though the public intoxicants are a bit much. Pemulis has a bag of red-skinned peanuts he hasn't eaten much of. Trevor Axford has overinhaled from the cigarette and is hunched coughing, his forehead purple. Hal Incandenza is squeezing a tennis ball and leaning out far to starboard to spit into a NASA gla.s.s on the ground and struggling with a strong desire to get high again for the second time since breakfast v. a strong distaste about smoking dope with/in front of all these others, especially out in the open in front of Little Buddies, which seems to him to violate some sort of issue of taste that he struggles to articulate satisfactorily to himself. A tooth way back on the upper left is twinging electrically in the cold air. Pemulis, though from his twitchy right eye he's clearly had recent recourse to some Tenuate (which helps explain the uneaten nuts), is currently abstaining and sitting on his hands for warmth, peanuts on the floor well away from Hal's NASA gla.s.s. The pavilion is open on all sides and compliments of Stokely-van Camp Corp. and little more than like a big fancy tent with a green felt cover over the expanse's real gra.s.s and white-iron patio furniture with reticulate plastic mesh; it's mostly used for civilians' spectation during exhibition matches on the East Show Courts 7, 8, 9; sometimes E.T.A.s cl.u.s.ter under it during drill-breaks in the summer in the heat of the day. The green awning gets taken down when they go into the Lung for the winter. Eschaton traditionally commandeers Courts 69, the really nice East Courts, unless there's legit tennis going on. All the uppercla.s.s spectators except Jim Struck are former Eschaton devotees, though Hal and Troeltsch were both marginal. Troeltsch, who's also pretty clearly had some Tenuate, is left-eye-nystagmic and is calling the action into a disconnected broadcast-headset, but Eschaton's tough to enliven, verbally, even for the stimulated. Being generally too slow and cerebral.

Struck is telling Axford to put his hands over his head and Pemulis is telling Axford to hold his breath. Now, in a stress-heightened voice, Otis P. Lord says he needs Pemulis to real quick come zip inside through the Cyclone-fence gate south of Court 12 and walk across the theater's four-court map to show Lord how to access the EndStat calculation that every thousand Roentgens of straight X and gamma produces 6.36 deaths per hundred POP and for the other 93.64 means reduced lifespans of (Total R100) (.0636(Total R100)2) years, meaning n.o.body's exactly going to have to be pricing dentures in Minsk, so to speak, in the future. And so on.

After about half the planet's extant megatonnage has been expended, things are looking pretty good for the AMNAT crew. Even though they and SOVWAR are SPAs.e.xing back and forth with chilling accuracy - SOVWAR's designated launcher is the butch and suspiciously muscular Ann Kittenplan (who at twelve-and-a-half looks like a Belorussian shot-putter and has to buy urine more than quarter-annually and has a way more lush and impressive mustache than for instance Hal himself could raise, and who gets these terrible rages) but so Kittenplan's landed nothing worse than an indirect hit all afternoon, while AMNAT's launchman is Todd ('Postal Weight') Possalthwaite, an endomorphic thirteen-year-old from Edina MN whose whole infuriating tennis-game consists of nothing but kick serves and topspin lobs, and who's been the Eschaton MVL 128 128 for the last two years, and accuracy-wise has to be seen to be believed - still, both sides have artfully avoided the escalation to SACPOP that often takes both super-Combatants right out of the game; and AMNAT's president LaMont Chu has used the excuse of Gopnik's emotional strikes against the U.S. South, plus Penn's arational lobbing at an Israel that at the summit was explicitly placed under AMNAT's mutual-defense umbrella, has used these as golden tactical geese, racking up serious INDDIR-points against a SOUTHAF and INDPAK whose hasty defensive alliance and shaky aim produce nothing more than a lot of irradiated cod off Gloucester. Whenever there's a direct hit, Troeltsch sits up straight and gets to use the exclamation he's. .h.i.t on for a kind of announcerial trademark: 'Ho- for the last two years, and accuracy-wise has to be seen to be believed - still, both sides have artfully avoided the escalation to SACPOP that often takes both super-Combatants right out of the game; and AMNAT's president LaMont Chu has used the excuse of Gopnik's emotional strikes against the U.S. South, plus Penn's arational lobbing at an Israel that at the summit was explicitly placed under AMNAT's mutual-defense umbrella, has used these as golden tactical geese, racking up serious INDDIR-points against a SOUTHAF and INDPAK whose hasty defensive alliance and shaky aim produce nothing more than a lot of irradiated cod off Gloucester. Whenever there's a direct hit, Troeltsch sits up straight and gets to use the exclamation he's. .h.i.t on for a kind of announcerial trademark: 'Ho-ly CROW!' But SOVWAR, beset from two vectors by AMNAT and IRLIBSYR (whose occasional lob Israel's way AMNAT, drawing a storm of diplomatic protest from SOUTHAF and INDPAK, keeps instructing Lord to log as 'regrettable mistargetings'), even with cutting-edge civil defense and EMP-resistant communications, poor old SOVWAR is absorbing such serious collateral SUFDDIR that it's being inexorably impelled by game-theoretic logic to a position where it's going to pretty much have no choice but to go SACPOP against AMNAT.

Now SOVWAR premier Timmy ('Sleepy T.P.') Peterson pet.i.tions O. P. Lord for capacity/authorization to place a scrambled call to Air Force One. 'Scrambled call' means they don't yell at each other publicly across the courts' map; Lord has to ferry messages from one side the other, complete with inclined heads and hushed tones etc. Premier and president exchange standard formalities. Premier apologizes for the Prince Albert crack. Hal, who's declining all public chemicals, he's decided, has a gander at Pemulis's rough tallies of Combatants' INDDIR/SUFDDIR ratios so far and agrees to bet Axford a U.S. finski no way AMNAT accepts SOVWAR's invitation to possible terms. During actionless diplomatic intervals like this, Troeltsch is reduced to saying 'What a beautiful day for an Eschaton' over and over and asking people for their thoughts on the game until Pemulis tells him he's cruising to get dope-slapped. There's pretty much n.o.body around: Tavis and Scht.i.tt are off giving what are essentially recruiting-talks at indoor clubs in the west suburbs; Pemulis'd let Tall Paul Shaw take the multi-emblazoned tow truck to take Mario down to the Public Gardens to watch the public I.-Day festivities with the Bolex H64; the local kids often go home for the day; a lot of the rest like to lie in the Viewing Rooms barely moving all I. Day until the dinner gala. Lord tear-a.s.ses back and forth between Courts 6 and 8, food cart clattering (the food cart, which Pemulis and Axford picked up from a kind of a seedy-looking orderly at SJOG hospital that Pemulis knew from Allston, has one of those crazy left front wheels that e.g. seems always to afflict only your your particular grocery cart in supermarkets, and makes a h.e.l.l of a clattering racket when rushed), ferrying messages which the 18-and-Under guys can tell AMNAT and SOVWAR are making deliberately oblique and obtuse so Lord has to do that much more running: G.o.d is never a particularly popular role to have to play, and Lord this fall has already been the victim of several boarding-school-type pranks too puerile even to detail. J. A. L. Struck Jr., who as usual has made a swine of himself with the suspiciously bracing cups of Gatorade, is abruptly ill all over his own lap and then sort of slumps to one side in his patio-chair with his face slack and white and doesn't hear Pemulis's quick a.n.a.lysis that Hal might as well give Axhandle the $ right now, because LaMont Chu can pa.r.s.e a Decision Tree with the best of them, and the D. Tree's now indicating peace terms in whatever a D. Tree's version of neon letters is, because the biggest priority for AMNAT right at 1515h. is to avoid having to SACPOP with SOVWAR, since if the game stops right now AMNAT's probably won, whereas if they SACPOP with SOVWAR, trading ma.s.sive infliction of INDDIR for ma.s.sive body-shots of SUFDDIR, staying more or less even with each other, AMNAT'll still be the same number of points ahead of SOVWAR overall, but it'll have taken such heavy SUFDDIR debits that IRLIBSYR - never forget IRLIBSYR, brilliantly if obnoxiously Imam'd today by eleven-year-old eyebrowless Evan Ingersoll of Binghamton NNY - by staying out of the SACPOP-fest and lobbing sporadically at SOVWAR just often enough to rack up serious INDDIR but not quite enough to p.i.s.s SOVWAR off enough to provoke the retaliatory SS10-wave that would mean significant SUFDDIR, could well have a serious shot at overtaking AMNAT for the overall Eschaton, especially when you factored in the particular grocery cart in supermarkets, and makes a h.e.l.l of a clattering racket when rushed), ferrying messages which the 18-and-Under guys can tell AMNAT and SOVWAR are making deliberately oblique and obtuse so Lord has to do that much more running: G.o.d is never a particularly popular role to have to play, and Lord this fall has already been the victim of several boarding-school-type pranks too puerile even to detail. J. A. L. Struck Jr., who as usual has made a swine of himself with the suspiciously bracing cups of Gatorade, is abruptly ill all over his own lap and then sort of slumps to one side in his patio-chair with his face slack and white and doesn't hear Pemulis's quick a.n.a.lysis that Hal might as well give Axhandle the $ right now, because LaMont Chu can pa.r.s.e a Decision Tree with the best of them, and the D. Tree's now indicating peace terms in whatever a D. Tree's version of neon letters is, because the biggest priority for AMNAT right at 1515h. is to avoid having to SACPOP with SOVWAR, since if the game stops right now AMNAT's probably won, whereas if they SACPOP with SOVWAR, trading ma.s.sive infliction of INDDIR for ma.s.sive body-shots of SUFDDIR, staying more or less even with each other, AMNAT'll still be the same number of points ahead of SOVWAR overall, but it'll have taken such heavy SUFDDIR debits that IRLIBSYR - never forget IRLIBSYR, brilliantly if obnoxiously Imam'd today by eleven-year-old eyebrowless Evan Ingersoll of Binghamton NNY - by staying out of the SACPOP-fest and lobbing sporadically at SOVWAR just often enough to rack up serious INDDIR but not quite enough to p.i.s.s SOVWAR off enough to provoke the retaliatory SS10-wave that would mean significant SUFDDIR, could well have a serious shot at overtaking AMNAT for the overall Eschaton, especially when you factored in the f f(x) advantages for bellicosity and nonexistent civil defense. At some point Axford has pa.s.sed the remainder of the cigarette back over toward Struck without looking to see that Struck is no longer in his chair, and Hal finds himself taking the proffered duBois and smoking dope in public without even thinking about it or having consciously decided to go ahead. Sure enough, poor red-faced runny-nosed Lord is making way too many clattering trips between Courts 6 and 8 for it to mean anything but peace terms. Evan Ingersoll is positively strip-mining his right nostril. Finally Lord stops with the running back and forth and positions himself in the ad service box of Court 7 and loads a new diskette into the Yus.h.i.+tyu. Struck moans something in a possibly foreign tongue. All the other uppercla.s.s spectators have scooted their chairs well away from Struck. Troeltsch extends a blood-blistered palm and rubs the tips of the hand's fingers together at Hal, and Hal forks over the fin without handing the thin cigarette back over to Axford, somehow. Pemulis has leaned forward intently with his pointy chin in his hands; he seems completely absorbed.

Interdependence Day Y.D.A.U.'s Eschaton enters probably its most crucial phase. Lord, at his cart and portable TP, puts on the white beanie (n.b.: not the black or the red beanie) that signals a temporary cessation of SPAs.e.x between two Combatants but allows all other Combatants to go on pursuing their strategic interests as they see fit. SOVWAR and AMNAT are thus pretty vulnerable right now. SOVWAR's Premier Peterson and Air Marshal Kittenplan, carrying their white janitorial stockpile-bucket between them, walk across Europe and the Atlantic to parley with AMNAT President Chu and Supreme Commander Possalthwaite in what looks to be roughly Sierra Leone. Various territories smolder quietly. The other players are mostly standing around beating their arms against their chests to stay warm. A few hesitant white flakes appear and swirl around and melt into dark stars the moment they hit court. A couple ostensible world leaders run here and there in a rather unstatesmanlike fas.h.i.+on with their open mouths directed at the sky, trying to catch bits of the fall's first snow. Yesterday it had been warmer and rained. Axford speculates about whether snow will mean Scht.i.tt might consent to inflate the Lung even before the Fundraiser two weeks hence. Struck is threatening to fall out of his chair. Pemulis, leaning forward intently, wearing his Mr. Howell yachting cap, ignores everyone. He hates to type and keeps his tallies via pencil and clipboard a la deLint. The idling Ford sedan is conspicuous for the excruciated full-color old Nunhagen Aspirin ad on the green of its right rear door. Hal and Axford are pa.s.sing what looks to the Combatants like a suckerless Tootsie-Roll stick back and forth between them, and occasionally to Troeltsch. Trevor ('The Axhandle') Axford has a total of only three-and-a-half digits on his right hand. From West House you can hear Mrs. Clarke and the time-anda-half holiday kitchen staff preparing the Interdependence Day gala dinner, which always includes dessert.

Now REDCHI, itself quietly trying to rack up some unanswered INDDIR, sends a towering topspin lob into INDPAK's quadrant, scoring what REDCHI claims is a direct hit on Karachi and what warheadless INDPAK claims is only an indirect hit on Karachi. It's an uneasy moment: a dispute such as this would never occur in the real G.o.d's real world, since the truth would be manifest in the actual size of the actual wienie roast in the actual Karachi. But G.o.d here is played by Otis P. Lord, and Lord is number-crunching so fiendishly at the cart's Yus.h.i.+tyu, trying to confirm the verisimilitude of the peace terms AMNAT and SOVWAR are has.h.i.+ng out, that he can't even pretend to have seen where REDCHI's strike against INDPAK landed w/ respect to Karachi's T-s.h.i.+rt - which is admittedly kind of mashed and woppsed up, though this could be primarily from breezes and feet - and in his lapse of omniscience cannot see how he's supposed to allocate the relevant INDDIR- and SUFDDIR-points. Troeltsch doesn't know whether to say 'Holy CROW!' or not. Lord, vexed by a lapse it's tough to see how any mortal could have avoided, appeals over to Michael Pemulis for an independent ruling; and when Pemulis gravely shakes his white-hatted head, pointing out that Lord is G.o.d and either sees or doesn't, in Eschaton, Lord has an intense little crying fit that's made abruptly worse when now J. J. Penn of INDPAK all of a sudden gets the idea to start claiming that now that it's snowing the snow totally affects blast area and fire area and pulse-intensity and maybe also has fallout implications, and he says Lord has to now completely redo everybody's damage parameters before anybody can form realistic strategies from here on out.

Pemulis's chairlegs shriek and make red-skin peanuts spill out in a kind of cornucopic cone-shape and he's up in his capacity as sort of eminence grise of Eschaton and ranging up and down just outside the theater's chainlink fencing, giving J. J. Penn the very roughest imaginable side of his tongue. Besides being real sensitive to any theater-boundary-puncturing threats to the map's integrity - threats that've come up before, and that as Pemulis sees it threaten the game's whole sense of animating realism (which realism depends on buying the artifice of 1300 m.2 of composition tennis court representing the whole rectangular projection of the planet earth) - Pemulis is also a sworn foe of all Penns for all time: it had been J. J. Penn's much older brother Miles Penn, now twenty-one and flailing away on the grim Third-World Satellite pro tour, playing for travel-expenses in bleak dysenteric locales, who when Pemulis first arrived at E.T.A. at age eleven had christened him Michael p.e.n.i.sless and had had Pemulis convinced for almost a year that if he pressed on his belly-b.u.t.ton his a.s.s would fall off. of composition tennis court representing the whole rectangular projection of the planet earth) - Pemulis is also a sworn foe of all Penns for all time: it had been J. J. Penn's much older brother Miles Penn, now twenty-one and flailing away on the grim Third-World Satellite pro tour, playing for travel-expenses in bleak dysenteric locales, who when Pemulis first arrived at E.T.A. at age eleven had christened him Michael p.e.n.i.sless and had had Pemulis convinced for almost a year that if he pressed on his belly-b.u.t.ton his a.s.s would fall off. 129 129 'It's snowing on the G.o.dd.a.m.n map, map, not the not the territory, territory, you you d.i.c.k!' d.i.c.k!' Pemulis yells at Penn, whose lower lip is out and quivering. Pemulis's face is the face of a man who will someday need blood-pressure medication, a const.i.tution the Tenuate doesn't help one bit. Troeltsch is sitting up straight and speaking very intensely and quietly into his headset. Hal, who in his day never wore the beanie, and usually portrayed some marginal nation somewhere out in the nuclear boondocks, finds himself more intrigued by Penn's map/ territory faux pas than upset by it, or even amused. Pemulis yells at Penn, whose lower lip is out and quivering. Pemulis's face is the face of a man who will someday need blood-pressure medication, a const.i.tution the Tenuate doesn't help one bit. Troeltsch is sitting up straight and speaking very intensely and quietly into his headset. Hal, who in his day never wore the beanie, and usually portrayed some marginal nation somewhere out in the nuclear boondocks, finds himself more intrigued by Penn's map/ territory faux pas than upset by it, or even amused.

Pemulis turns back to the pavilion and seems to be looking at Hal in some kind of appeal: 'Jaysus!'

'Except is the territory the real world, quote unquote, though!' Axford calls across to Pemulis, who's pacing like the fence is between him and some sort of prey. Axford knows quite well Pemulis can be f.u.c.ked with when he's like this: when he's hot he always cools down and becomes contrite.

Struck tries to yell out a Kertw.a.n.g on Pemulis but can't get the mega-phone he makes of his hands to fit over the mouth.

'The real world's what the map here stands stands for!' Lord lifts his head from the Yus.h.i.+tyu and cries over at Axhandle, trying to please Pemulis. for!' Lord lifts his head from the Yus.h.i.+tyu and cries over at Axhandle, trying to please Pemulis.

'Kind of looks like real-world-type snow from here, M.P.,' Axford calls out. His forehead's still maroon from the coughing fit. Troeltsch is trying to describe the distinction between the symbolic map of the gear-littered courts and the global strategic theater it stands for using all and only sports-broadcast cliches. Hal looks from Axhandle to Pemulis to Lord.

Struck finally falls out of his chair with a clunk but his legs are still somehow entangled in the legs of the chair. It starts to snow harder, and dark stars of melt begin to multiply and then merge all over the courts. Otis Lord is trying to type and wipe his nose on his sleeve at the same time. J. Gopnik and K. McKenna are running around well outside their a.s.signed quadrants with their tongues outstretched.

'Real-world snow isn't a factor if it's falling on the f.u.c.king map! map!'

Ann Kittenplan's crew-cutted head now protrudes from the kind of rugby-scrum AMNAT's and SOVWAR's heads of state form around Lord's computational food cart. 'For Christ's sake leave us alone!' she shrieks at Pemulis. Troeltsch is going 'Oh, my' my' into his headset. O. Lord is struggling with the cart's protective umbrella, his head's beanie's little white propeller rotating in a rising wind. A light dusting of snow is starting to appear in the players' hair. into his headset. O. Lord is struggling with the cart's protective umbrella, his head's beanie's little white propeller rotating in a rising wind. A light dusting of snow is starting to appear in the players' hair.

'It's only real-world snow if it's already in the scenario! scenario!' Pemulis keeps directing everything at Penn, who hasn't said a word since his original suggestion and is busy sort of casually kicking the Karachi-s.h.i.+rt over into the Arabian Sea, clearly hoping the original detonation will get forgotten about in all the metatheoretical fuss. Pemulis rages along the East Courts' western fence. The combination of several Tenuate spansules plus Eschaton-adrenaline bring his blue-collar Irish right out. He's a muscular but fundamentally physically narrow guy: head, hands, the sharp little wad of cartilage at the tip of Pemulis's nose - everything about him seems to Hal to taper and come to a point, like a bad El Greco. Hal leans to spit and watches him pace like a caged thing as Lord works feverishly over EndStat's peace-terms decision-matrix. Hal wonders, not for the first time, whether he might deep down be a secret sn.o.b about collar-color issues and Pemulis, then whether the fact that he's capable of wondering whether he's a sn.o.b attenuates the possibility that he's really a sn.o.b. Though Hal hasn't had more than four or five total very small hits off the public duBois, this is a prime example of what's sometimes called 'marijuana thinking.' You can tell because Hal's leaned way over to spit but has gotten lost in a paralytic thought-helix and hasn't yet spit, even though he's right in bombing-position over the NASA gla.s.s. It also occurs to him that he finds the real-snow/unreal-snow snag in the Eschaton extremely abstract but somehow way more interesting than the Eschaton itself, so far.

IRLIBSYR's strongman Evan Ingersoll, all of 1.3 m. tall, warmed by baby-fat and high-calorie cerebral endeavor, has been squatting on his heels like a catcher just west of Damascus, spinning his Rossignol launcher idly in his hand, watching the one-sided exchange between Pemulis and Ingersoll's roommate J. J. Penn, who's now threatening to quit and go in for cocoa if they can't for once play Eschaton without the big guys horning in again like always. There's a tiny whirring sound as Ingersoll's mental gears grind. From the duration of the little Sierra Leone summit and the studious blankness on everybody's face it's pretty clear that SOVWAR and AMNAT are going to come to terms, and the terms are likely to involve SOVWAR agreeing not to go SACPOP against AMNAT in return for AMNAT letting SOVWAR go SACPOP against Ingersoll's IRLIBSYR, because if SOVWAR goes SACPOP against an IRLIBSYR that can't have many warheads left in the old bucket by now (Ingersoll knows they know) then SOVWAR'll get to rack up a lot of INDDIR without much SUFDDIR, while inflicting such SUFDDIR on IRLIBSYR that IRLIBSYR'll be effectively eliminated as a threat to AMNAT's commanding lead in points, which is what has the most utility in the old game-theoretic matrix right now. The exact utility transformations are too oogly for an Ingersoll who's still grappling with fractions, but he can see clearly that this'd be the most remorselessly logical best-interest-conducive scenario for both LaMont Chu and especially the Sleepster, Peterson, who's hated Ingersoll for months now anyway without any good reason or cause or anything, Ingersoll can just somehow tell.

Hal, paralyzed and absorbed, watches Ingersoll bob on his haunches and s.h.i.+ft his stick from hand to hand and cerebrate furiously and logically conclude, then, that IRLIBSYR's highest possible strategic utility lies in AMNAT and SOVWAR failing to come to terms.

Hal can almost visualize a dark lightbulb going on above Ingersoll's head. Pemulis is telling Penn that there's a critical distinction between horning in and letting a.s.swipes like Jeffrey Joseph Penn run roughshod over the delimiting boundaries that are Eschaton's very life-blood. Chu and Peterson are nodding soberly at little things they're saying to each other while Kittenplan cracks her knuckles and Possalthwaite bounces a warhead idly on his strings.

So now Evan Ingersoll rises from his squat now only to bend again and take a warhead out of IRLIBSYR's ordnance-bucket, and Hal seems to be the only one who sees Ingersoll line up the vector very carefully with his slim thumb and take a lavish backswing and fire the ball directly at the little circle of super-Combatant leaders in West Africa. It's not a lob. It flies straight as if shot from a rifle and strikes Ann Kittenplan right in the back of the head with a loud thock. thock. She whirls to face east, a hand at the back of her bristly skull, scanning and then locking on Damascus, her face a stony Toltec death-mask. She whirls to face east, a hand at the back of her bristly skull, scanning and then locking on Damascus, her face a stony Toltec death-mask.

Pemulis and Penn and Lord and everyone else all freeze, shocked and silent, so there's just the weird glittered hiss of falling snow and the sounds of a couple crows interfacing in the pines over by HmH. The ATHSCME fans are silent, and four sweatsock-shaped clouds of exhaust hang motionless over the Sunstrand stacks. Nothing moves. No Eschaton Combatant has ever intentionally struck another Combatant's physical person with a 5-megaton thermonuclear weapon. No matter how frayed players' nerves, it's never made a lick of sense. A Combatant's megatonnage is too precious to waste on personal attacks outside the map. It's been like this unspoken but very basic rule.

Ann Kittenplan is so shocked and enraged that she stands there transfixed, quivering, her sights locked on Ingersoll and his smoking Rossignol. Otis P. Lord feels at his beanie.

Ingersoll now makes a show of examining the tiny nails of his left hand and casually suggests that IRLIBSYR has just scored a direct 5-megaton contact-burst against SOVWAR's entire launch capacity, namely Air Marshal Ann Kittenplan, and that plus also AMNAT's own launch capacity, plus both Combatants' ordnance and heads of state, all lie well within the blast's kill-radius - which by Ingersoll's rough calculations extends from the Ivory Coast to the doubles alley's Senegal. Unless of course that kill-radius is somehow altered by the possible presence of climatic snow, he adds, beaming.

Pemulis and Kittenplan now each let loose with a linear series of anti-Ingersoll invectives that drown each other out and make the trees' crows take slow flight.