"Z. in Weimar"

PART III - “DOWN WITH THE TRAITORS, UP WITH THE STARS!”

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“Pilot to bombardier! Pilot to bombardier!”

Heavy bombers flew in low over Romulus-1, the Martian capital, the most advanced terra-formed region of the planet. The city rivaled the best on Earth, housing millions amid a skyline of starscrapers and cathedrals. As air raid sirens screeched, civilians scrambled to their shelters, while volunteers joined space sailors in manning the AA guns.

The opposing sides built their armies rapidly. Pioneer Defense Contractors split into two, with Earth sailors following Lawrence and the Martians following Kajanas. Volunteers from each planet flooded the ranks, and were hastily put to work in pie and paint factories. Robots did the majority of labor, but propaganda works better when you have hot-blooded men and women on the frontlines.

Lawrence’s sailors switched from harvesting duties to bombing duties. Their spaceplanes, which once carried locust drones, now traded them for rhubarb pies with military-grade custard. The AA fire was fierce; crimson paint splattered across the windshields of several bombers, forcing them to return to orbit. The rest soldiered on, arriving over the city’s downtown. There were no targets beyond the city itself - saturation bombing.

The bombardiers dropped their loads on cue. All across Romulus-1, thousands of pies dropped from thousands of bombers. They struck indiscriminately - strawberry hit churches, blueberry hit schools, rhubarb hit hospitals. Civilians screamed in terror when a particularly stale fruitcake hit a paint depot, setting off a crimson tidal wave down the avenues. Despite it all, Martian flags - black stag with flaming red planet - still waved defiantly from rooftops.

The scene cut from the bombed Romulus-1 to a newscaster sitting solemnly behind a desk, hands folded. “One month in, and the Earth-Mars Prank War continues with no end in sight. The two planets regularly trade aerial blows, with last night’s bombing the largest yet. Both Lawrence and Kajanas have ignored calls from the civilian government to end the conflict. President Stanley Vice-President’s attempts to mediate the war have quieted since a brazen pie-gun attack by a Polymermen civilian paramilitary sent him fleeing to the presidential emergency shelter. As for Congress-”

Scene cut to the grand floor of the Human Congress. Senator Earl Bongo (Q-TX) stood. “Ahem. My fellow Congressmen…fuck Mars!”

Amid shouting, Senator Katie Soul (U-R1) raised her middle finger. “Hey, fuck you!”

“Rabble rabble!” yelled the Congressmen in general. “Rabble rabble rabble!”

Back to the newscaster. “As human governance faces its first crisis in centuries, Congress is clearly overwhelmed-”

Brief static. Now back to the newscaster, adjusting his collar, glancing offscreen. “A-As human governance faces its first crisis in centuries, Congress is clearly up to the task!”

Zipper ended the feed on her Brain-Implant. The Dime Boys sat around a small cafe in one of Saint Francisco’s many hills. The city rose and fell like waves, each hill seemingly higher than the last, and Zipper was plum worn-out. She was hoping to take a trolley, but a Martian paint-missile knocked out the tracks a couple blocks back, forcing her to walk.

She wore her suit-and-tie with Great War trenchcoat, as was customary for Do-Nothings as the war escalated, but she just wasn’t feeling it no more.

“We just wanted to create and heal the community,” Joe Weeze said when interviewed one week ago. “We didn't want Lawrence to use our band's old name as the name for his civilian supporters. We don't stand for that. We don't stand for violence. We don't want any of this.”

Neither did Zipper.

“What happened?” she asked Sue and Nat, idly swishing her coffee. “Just a little bit ago, everything was peachy. Everyone seemed happy. Then boom. It’s one crisis after the other. It’s so tiring. And people, good people, are getting swept up and getting so angry with each other. How’d it end up like this?”

She recalled the graffiti in Toyko. This Must Be The End of The World. She wrote as an afterword And I Feel Fine. But did she really?

Zipper put her head in her hands. Alright, Zipper, let’s recap. You still got no hobbies or skills. You got friends though, so that’s a plus. But the world’s going to war, there’s a new crisis every day, the government seems incompetent. And your role model, who seemed so graceful and slick, is calling herself the Caesar-Messiah. But she’s no Messiah, she’s just your former club president in high school. Even the coming fourth millennium is warping her into something she’s not…

Sue and Nat didn’t answer. Maybe it was ‘cuz Zipper was mumbling, but it was also because Nat was explaining the concept of the creeping barrage to Sue. Nat wore a souvenir Stalhelm and moved her hands animatedly, because for a Great War otaku, this was her time. Sue, as a general otaku, wore a Brodie helmet to better cosplay as Caroline Broomsbury-Hudspeth of Furandāsupopīgāruzu (“her kuudere personality fits my own”).

Her two chums play-pretending at war pissed Zipper off, which also made her feel guilty, ‘cuz such feelings meant that she was getting swept up in the anger too. Was it righteous anger? She couldn’t tell no more. Life’s hard enough when you’re trying to get your feet wet. Now throw in getting your feet wet during the greatest crisis in a long time and it’s enough to make anyone feel disorientated.

The rocket struck without warning. The paint-missile hit a shopping mall a few blocks away, the shockwave enough to make Zipper’s teeth chatter. Low rumblings indicated the impact of other missiles across the city. 

Nat immediately fixed her helmet and dashed off. She was part of a civilian volunteer corps, after all. Nothing partisan, she claimed - this group was politically neutral, just wanting to clean up the damaged city, but neutrality was rapidly going out of vogue these days. Sue dashed off after Nat, Eye-Implant livestreaming, trying in vain to become a war influencer. Zipper sighed and followed them out, hands in her pockets, because humans mostly stood around while medical-bots and labor-bots sorted out the aftermath of paint-missiles.

However, when they got to the paint-flooded mall, the Dime Boys screeched to a halt. Trouble up ahead. A group of Do-Nothings were already helping clear up the mess with repair-bots, but then a gang of Polymermen arrived. The Polymermen immediately opened fire with pie-guns, knocking out several Do-Nothings. The Dime Boys were about to step in, but the Do-Nothings revealed paintball-submachine-guns; this must’ve been a Marsist-Leninist faction. As the mall continued to flood and crumble, the two sides fought, tackling each other into the paint and muck. More missiles streaked overhead, while pie-bombers took off for orbit. A perpetual streak of red from the glow of anti-paint-missile lasers and SAM rockets stained the sky.

The Dime Boys trudged back up a hill, not even flinching from rocket impacts anymore. They passed by an angry crowd of civilians gathered in front of a robo-center - drone deliveries were delayed by as much as two days due to the war, driving everyone into a frenzy, angry enough to get out of the apartments, stir up trouble, and panic-buy copious amounts of toilet paper. The Dime Boys gave them a wide berth.

“I used to think I took the Do-Nothings too seriously,” Fujiwara Kaede said when interviewed two weeks ago. “But now I realize I didn’t take the movement seriously enough. As Chairman of the Do-Nothing Popular Front, I will not rest until the Polymermen are subdued and Lawrence is removed from power. We’re not Red Planet stooges. We just believe in doing what’s right. Mainstream Do-Nothings, Marsist-Leninists, anarchists, furries - lend me your ears! If the Polymermen wish for violence, then violence we shall deal unto them.”

“Yaho!” proclaimed Kyoko, dressed like a catgirl. “Buy war bonds for the Do-Nothing cause, nyan?”

The Dime Boys arrived in a paint-stained park under the shadow of a SAM battery. With all the benches damaged or covered in paint, they sat in a patch of dead December grass.

“They said this was gonna be over by Christmas,” said Zipper. “And it’s December 29th.”

Sue nodded glumly. “Supply chain issues meant no fried chicken this year.”

Nat used her helmet to play a sad little drummer boy song.

“What are we ‘sposed to do,” Zipper mumbled, “When the world’s on fire and we’re just small people caught up in it all? I was on the verge of self-discovery, dig. Why’d the crisis have to come now? Couldn’t it have waited a few years? Couldn’t it have not come at all? They say we’ve never had it so good, that this is the best time in human history, and yet…why’d we have to be born into this day and age?”

Sue removed her Brodie, revealing a set of war-bond cat-ears. “Aw, c’mon, pal. It’s not so bad. It’s not every day you get to experience the end of the world. We’re among a privileged few who get to live through historical times. This explosion of emotion. It’s Neo-Romanticism at its finest.”

“Somehow, living through history doesn’t seem all that fun.”

Nat stood and gave Zipper a crisp salute.

Zipper shook her head. “Just ‘cuz there’s an inferno out there doesn’t mean I want to add my heart to the fire. The more hearts get added to the fire, the more extremists there are at the ends, and the less there are in the middle. Where did all the normal people go? Though I guess you can’t have normal people in a crisis…”

She buried her head in her hands, fingers running through auburn hair. “I just want things to go back to the way they were, dig?”

While Nat explained combined arms offensives to a filming Sue, Zipper reluctantly opened her newsfeed. A broadcast centered around a map depicting the factory-fortress Presidio at the tip of the city, with the grounds of the Neoclassical-style Kingdom of Fine Arts surrounding it. 

"For two weeks now," the broadcaster explained, "The Do-Nothing Popular Front has occupied the Kingdom of Fine Arts, while a detachment of the Home Division - the only military unit not under Pioneer control and still loyal to the central government - has controlled the Presidio. Both are blocking Lawrence's access to what was one of his major pre-war sources of A-Polymer, weaponry, and baked goods. Lawrence has threatened to seize the two complexes through force by the end of the year. As if daring him to, Joe Weeze and his Do-Nothings are hosting a 'Give Peace a Chance, Dig' concert at the Kingdom on December 31st..."

Zipper closed the feed, the broadcast disappearing from her mind’s eye. The news never seemed to help.

When she looked through her fingers, her eyes rested on a large mural across a park wall depicting a muscular Lawrence with the phrase - SAVE US, CAESAR, AND RESTORE GREATNESS TO HUMANITY.

Gee whiz, Zipper, why don’t you add And I Feel Fine to that?