General Relativity

1

The sun was sitting just on top of the horizon, and made the clouds and mist around it glow with bright oranges and reds. The tundra was cold to the touch and had patches of snow here and there all about its soppy, grassy surface. Then the black helicopters could be seen: they moved in and landed all about the plain, landing more than a dozen at a time. The men inside moved out and away from the choppers as soon as they touched down, and each black helicopter then climbed back into the sky and returned the way it had come. The skies were crowded with the black choppers, and once Billy Calhoun had exited his own and begun to find the others in his company, he glanced off into the distance and saw hundreds of them in every direction, near and distant, all either moving toward or away from the landing site. They came out of the sky in waves, gracefully descending, dropping off a dozen men in their blue coats, their knapsacks and blanket rolls and muskets held close to their bodies, and then just as gracefully lifted up and flew away. The sight made Billy think of the feeding frenzies of birds or sharks, the sheer quantity of helicopters, the way they came from every point in the sky and descended to the same ten acres, their ceaseless activity, the fluidity of their motion, the way they seemed to be guided and controlled by a single consciousness and purpose, like some thousand-headed beast.

Billy knew what he was meant to do: find his company commander, fall into line, and await orders. All around him men were falling into line, each according to company, regiment, brigade, division and corps. And the choppers kept coming, kept dropping off more, until the mass of men on the ground threatened to collapse the very earth with their weight, with the magnitude of their numbers. Billy noticed the sun on the horizon, and wondered if it were dawn or sunset. He didn't have any idea which. The men all moved with a sense of purpose and direction, each knowing exactly what he must do, each finding his proper regiment and company, and falling into line in his proper place. The faces of the men were vacuous and doughy, their eyes blank and impenetrable, their skin puffy and clean. They moved about, hardly uttering a word, except for the commands shouted here and there by officers. Billy, like them, knew what he was to do. He was to find his company, fall into line, and await orders. That was all anyone was doing. That was the only thing in the world that was going on: nothing else existed. Billy found his company. He fell into line, in between Ducky the Coward and Greg, who cheated at cards. He awaited orders. But something was bothering him. Though he knew Ducky the Coward's name, deducted from his name that he must be a coward, and knew Greg-who-cheated-at-cards must cheat at cards, he had no idea who these people were. He had never seen Ducky the Coward act like a coward; he had never seen Greg-who-cheated-at-cards play cards. He had never seen any of these people; he had no memory of anything prior to this day; he didn't know if it was dawn or sunset; he didn't know what army this was or what operation he was in. This started to disturb him more and more, and finally he turned to Ducky the Coward and said, "What are we doing here? What's going on?" "We're awaiting orders," said Ducky with a terrified look on his face. "Well I know that," said Billy. "But what war is this? What army is this? Why did we arrive in helicopters if we are carrying 19th-century weapons?" "Look," said Ducky, "we're to await orders from our company commander. I assume this mission is classified; otherwise we'd know what we're doing here. I'm sure everything will be made clear very soon." Billy realized Ducky the Coward didn't know much more than he, and though he was still very confused, he felt suddenly like an imbecile for his questions. After all, he knew what he was supposed to do (await orders), so were these more general questions really that important? Perhaps none of these men knew what was going on here. Yes: it would be made clear very soon, and it would only show impatience and stupidity to start asking everyone general questions no one knew the answers to, questions that would be answered soon enough. He stood and awaited orders, his rifled musket gripped in a cold, numb right hand at the base, his other hand stuffed into his coat pocket.

An hour later, he was still awaiting orders, and the sun had neither risen or set, but merely moved in a slow circle a few degrees about the horizon.