The Lotus Eaters

are at least three common problems with these philosophies. One is the Year Zero problem. Another is the assumption of a closed system problem. The third, related to the second, is the illusion, perhaps better said, delusion, of the possibility of permanence.

It is the last, the delusion of permanence, that allows the millennialist to avoid the need to realistically define and measure good and evil not merely by their intensity and scope, but also by their practical duration. Assuming permanence, an infinity of good results, allows the millennialist to accept, even to advocate, any and every practical amount of evil because, measured on the scale of a presumed infinity, any good, however trivial, must outweigh any evil, however vile, done to achieve it. Kill twenty million. Nay, kill two hundred million. Even these levels of atrocity cannot compete with even a tiny permanent improvement in the lot of mankind. That this is intellectually sloppy bothers the millennialist not at all.

Of course, nothing is permanent without being in a closed system. Millennialist philosophies are illegitimate for that reason alone.

The Year Zero problem, the problem that society and custom are as they are and will carry their effects over into the future, can, of course, be overcome . . . provided one is able to identify and willing to kill everyone whose values are conditioned by having, unfortunately, been born prior to the millennialist turning back of the clock to some presumed, and mythical, Golden Age. Unfortunately, even were it possible, this leaves alive only people with no values whatsoever.

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,

Historia y Filosofia Moral,

Legionary Press, Balboa,

Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468

Anno Condita 471 Hotel Rustico, San Antonio, Balboa, Terra Nova

The town was situated in the caldera of a long dormant volcano. Because of that volcanic soil, the caldera was lush and green beyond the power of mere words to describe. Mathematics could describe it, after a fashion. Simply multiply the greenest thing imaginable by something approaching infinity. That would have been a fair approximation.

The hotel, itself, was almost snug up against the sheer western side of the caldera. This area was, if anything, greener still, except where it was an explosion of flowers. Too high up for mosquitoes, the place was almost supernaturally healthy. Some of this health may have derived from the sheer joy of being there.

Many well to do Balboans kept holiday places there, some, like the hotel and its name, quite rustic, other nearer to palaces. Legate Pigna, for example, of the Seventh Legion, kept a place there, as did several twigs of the Rocaberti family tree. For that matter, so did Arias, the senior man of those police still loyal to the old government and president Rocaberti. It had, in fact, been the policeman who, upon hearing of the mass ass chewing delivered by Carrera to all his senior leaders and staff, had found and sounded out Pigna before inviting him to this meeting.

* * *

'Oh, take the idiotic fake mustache off,' said one of the men gathered in the back room of the Hotel Rustico. 'It's not like any of us don't know who you are, Pigna. It's not like everybody who is anybody in Balboa doesn't know everyone else who is anybody.'

Pigna glared down at the speaker, one of the rump President's nephews, a young but very fat man he knew only by sight. That clan tended to run to fat, anyway, and as far as he was concerned, they all looked alike. He was about to reply when he heard a group of Cadets or perhaps Young Scouts marching by the front of the hotel singing:

'. . . together with the legions then,

Rise up together with the legions then.

In the morning we rise early

Long before the break of dawn,

Trixies screeching in the jungle,

Moonbats scurrying from the sun.

Now assemble, mis compadres.

Gather, boys, and muster, men,

Hand to hand with butt and bayonet,

Let their blood across the homeland run.

And you are welcome, Balboenses.

Side by side we'll make our stand

Hand to hand with butt and bayonet.

We'll rise up together with the Legions then . . .'

'That,' said one of the men present—Pigna assumed he was foreign, probably Tauran, Gallic, from his accent, 'is a chilling thing to hear from the throats of barely post-pubescent teenagers. I'm de Villepin, by the way.'

'Your children don't sing songs like that in Gaul?' Pigna asked.

Villepin shook his head, confirming his origins. 'No . . . not anymore. The bureaucrats would have apoplexy. There they sing about peace and love, the Family of Man, and glories of the Tauran Union.'

'It's aimed at you, you know,' Pigna said. 'They're raising a generation here that, with the best of democratic motivations, wants to rip out your throats and drink the blood.'