Chapter 16: WHEN YOU HAVE NO CHOICE, WELL YOU HAVE NO CHOICE (7)
The time was no longer for whining. Everyone had to get their ideas straight. The commander was gone, and it was something they couldn't go back on. Later, when it would come to organizing the funeral, they could still be decided to stuff him. The practice was rare for humans, the stuffing was often reserved for pets but it cost less than a replica in wax. Thus, they could think of making him rest sitting at his desk as a form of memory, or standing and thus take it with them during the jousts but yet again, it would only influence the soldiers' motivation, with no effects on the strategic choices the thinking-heads of the third regiment should make in the future.
Yes the problem resided effectively in those strategic choices. To dictate the strategic directions for the jousts was not the only task assigned to the commander. Of course, he had to deal with a whole bunch of administrative procedures every day. But ultimately, by giving a lot of themselves, these tasks could very well be carried out collegially.
If the real specialty of the commander remained camouflage, he had notions of military strategy. After all, no one could claim to command an entire regiment without having completed the "strategy: what for?" module the staff highly recommended.
This module, in the form of a weekend seminar, was reserved for truly senior officers. A person like Moa was not even eligible to know the program. It was animated by semanticists whose goal was to make the higher-ups understand that the choice of their words was an important matter. For a semanticist, all was verbal.
Seminars were a popular method of continuing education in the military. Originally, these seminars had blossomed like a cherry blossom at the beginning of spring when a law had legalized the fact that a person without particular competence could be proud of the title of lecturer and could charge prohibitive rates to share their non-culture, their non-experience and their non-knowledge to other professionals, provided that the said-professionals did not lodge a complaint for fraud in the week following the seminar.
Finally, like the flowering of the cherry blossoms where a spring breeze dispersed the pink and white petals to the four winds, adding to the spectacle, everything had been ephemeral because, as gusts of wind, many complaints had been filed even before the seminars ended, adding to the judicial circus. Justice had decided: to file a complaint before the end of the seminar was a formal defect under the law. The seminars therefore still existed but only start-ups and the army liked to use this mode of education.
Among these seminars, one of the most popular was led by pharmacists and the message that came out was that everything was poisonous. At the end of this seminar, it was not uncommon to see the participants tend to stop eating, avoid drinking and limit their breathing to the strict minimum. There had been some deaths from undernourishment. Another was conducted by nutritionists and ended with the intervention of a famous dietitian who recalled that food was the basis of everything and that it was necessary to choose seasonal fruits and vegetables, from reasoned agriculture and in close and fair distribution networks and as every time the seminar was concluded, the refectories were subject to great disruption. Fortunately, it never lasted much more than a few days, a new seminar would explain that everything was not as they had been told but as they were going to tell them.
In the seminar about military strategy, one of the lesson was entitled "how to make people think you have work when you effectively didn't", another was "the conjunction, your ally to pass an incomprehensible order" or "don't say them they will die, the metaphor, the weapon of a good leader", the program was rich and there was alcohol, snacks and sex to motivate everyone.
So naturally Dekor was the regiment's chief strategist. Several officers were more or less qualified to give their opinion but ultimately, their opinions remained advisory. There was no time to hold a referendum when a decision had to be made, so Dekor was the only master on board. He often decided alone because when too many people gave too many opinions, the result was an unspeakable mess. In these times, he had his ideas and he would have died with these ideas. Besides, he probably didn't have time to change them before he died.
Right now, the most urgent thing was certainly to define the strategy for the afternoon. The main guidelines had already been mentioned the same morning, during the briefing. It was a necessity to warn the soldiers a bit of time earlier for them to warm up; it was a necessity to warn the officers for them to get into peak condition and during the briefing there was enough time to tackle the theme. This was always the case, and in general the events of the morning were of nature to have to modify the already decided strategy for the afternoon. On the one hand, it would have been harmful for the soldiers to whom the plans had already been exposed. On the other hand, the strategy was often quite similar everyday and it was not followed. This morning, commander Hacion had just said that they would be doing it the same as the other days.
Could they be completely sure it was the same today? You could never say for sure. What others thought was often a question that bothered those who did not understand how they could systematically end up with a misunderstanding.
Perhaps this afternoon, the commander thought of adapting the strategy. This has not been the case for a long time now but it was not without precedent. Everybody remembered it happened once in the past.
At the time, no one understood this decision. After all, the morning jousts had happened as everyone had predicted, that was to say badly, and nothing extraordinary should have happened in the afternoon. When a train was launched, its inertia meant that it could not stop easily. The same was true with the results of the jousts. Momentum was hard to break.
This particular noon, the commander had a singular behavior. For a few days already he had suffered from a tooth and could no longer hold it so he had spent the morning at the dentist. What he did not know, what no one knew at the time and no one would know after because nobody had been interested in finding out was that there had been a problem in the pharmaceutical laboratory delivering novocain. The production chains had been reversed between the completely legal activity of drug production and the less legal activity of cocaine production. When the novocain was delivered to the drug addicts, the laboratory had to face the loss of a significant number of its street-dealers, murdered by their customers.
The story did not make a big ruckus because these people were fringe elements killing each other. The impact on society was negligible and solving murders was not the first concern of the police forces, already busy enough to solve the conflicts of neighborhoods which did not fail to occur in the residential suburbs.
A little euphoric to put it mildly, the commander had proposed a revolutionary strategy for the afternoon. To those who had attended the meeting, he had given the impression of invulnerability. They had put this choice and his behavior on the joy of finding a painless dentition and the bold decision to innovate a little to celebrate.
The afternoon ended with a massacre in the coalesced troops. From memory, it was the worst half-day record that Moa had even had to count.
Finally, to stop the moving train, he had made it derail.
Discussing probability in regards of the fact that the results this morning were not bad; was it significant, insignificant, it did not help. Some of the officers thought that it was not a bad idea to be a little enterprising, for once not to strike a trodden path and to try to snatch the victory. They thought the commander had the same idea, hoping thus to rise to his intellectual level and giving themselves importance in kind of the dead.
Commentators with pop psychology could always object by asking a question like: "what strategy are you talking about?" And could add comments like: "because there never seemed to be one." Indeed, for an outsider eye, military strategy was difficult to understand. It was even more difficult to perceive little minute adjustments. An untested eye could not perceive a joust at this level of lecture. For them, the death of the commander was annoying but it should reassess the course of the jousts.
It was being poorly aware of the cogs operating the third regiment. Imagine an infantryman who risked his life during jousts. Was it humanly possible to tell him that he was going to fight without following any plan, without a doctrine of attack and defense? Why not directly tell him that he was sent to the massacre, directly in a slaughterhouse where he would end up in minced meat?
There was no point in graduating from technocratic factory school to answer these questions. It was even better not to graduate from there as the response was common sense and not newspeak. It was crystal clear, this wasn't possible. The result would be a collapse in the morale of the troops. They needed to think that in their back, men and women were thinking about them and were doing everything in their power to get them back to their families after a hard day of contests, even if these considerations were hypocritical.
It was something everybody was aware of when on the front lines. It was something that technocrats did not know, especially because one of the criteria for entry into these specialized schools was precisely to be devoid of common sense and their career advancement was all the easier as they were not confronted with the realities on the ground.
But what's to be done now? This was the question that the officers' brains were debating.
With this death, they were in beautiful sheets. The launderers were not supposed to change the bedding sets for a few days, even if it was not a bad idea, this was the opinion of a colonel.
Another officer of the same rank pointed out that this remark was not the finest he could think of but that it had the merit of relaxing the atmosphere.
Finally, a third colonel voiced his thoughts in his turn. Perhaps the commander had documents with him with the strategic directions he had thought of, a notebook, a post-it, something. In any case, it was worth searching the body to check.
From a hierarchical point of view, Moa was at the top of the basket on the whole of the third regiment. He was only a non-commissioned officer, but compared to the mass of soldiers who would never know the joy of being promoted to such a rank, he was part of this minority of soldiers who enjoyed a characteristic outfit with stripes saying to others that he had the right to give them orders. If a regiment was a small planet, the mass of soldiers would be its crust and officers like Moa would be its atmosphere.
However, at meetings where all were officers, Moa belonged to the troposphere with many other layers above him. The midday briefing was not the place where he could enjoy the privilege of ordering other but where, conversely, he could be ordered.
As the lowest in rank, it was natural that Moa was designated for this task. Approaching the commander's body was still difficult for the others. If the task meant that someone had to end up vomiting, this was not a problem as far as it was not them.
The experience cleared up a doubt that had never been sown: picking a dead person's pockets wasn't his favorite activity. Even if an unprecedented activity could spice up his routine and he was never against the idea of facing a singular order, a new experience opening his horizons, for the case Moa would have happily done without it.
Unlike the other officers, he used to have his snack after the first joust and his stomach had not finished his work. As much when he approached the commander's body right after his death, the body was still warm and although dead, he still had the complexion and temperature of a sleeping person. After several minutes, he still had the complexion of a sleeping person but a sick one with gastroenteritis, he still had the temperature of a sleeping person but placed in a cold room and if the smell of putrefaction had not yet arrived, he had the smell of a sleeping person but put in a butcher's shop.
A kiss would not have awaken the Sleeping Beauty, so he abstained himself of doing so.
And then there was Ferrash's body, the head-dislocated puppet, himself as a sleeping person, put under a hydraulic press. The painting mixed with olfactory art performance was even less bearable for Moa's keen senses.
He was certain he could never have worked as an undertaker.
An order being an order, Moa respected it and rummaged around Dekor's pockets. Apart from a bunch of keys and a few coins, he only found a wallet where identity papers, driver's license, canteen card, bank card and a whole bunch of loyalty cards and VIP access to gay clubs and pubs in the area were kept.
In short, there was nothing that closely or remotely resembled strategic plans for the afternoon or the days that followed. Everyone agreed, these VIP access and loyalty cards referred to establishments that did not open before 10:00 p.m. and they should not have any direct link with the strategy.
The time was for thought, a fast and efficient one. They had no basis for working and the jousts resumed soon after the lunch break.
Furthermore, this death could not be definitively kept secret between the officers present. Already, there were many more officers than the small committee participating in the meeting and they would inevitably ask questions if they did not see the commander but in addition, a secret was impossible to be kept long in the regiment and the simple soldiers would end up noticing something was wrong. This was not they were deemed clever enough to ask the right questions, but if there were no cases of sexual harassment reported, this was eloquent enough to realize that the situation was abnormal.
Following would be mutinies and thunders in the rank of soldiers, the defection of public opinion etc. and politicians would not fail to cut the budgets of the third regiment. The financial situation of the third regiment was already not bright, new cuts would mean even less money and even less money would mean difficulties in obtaining the basic resources an army never failed to squander. In this situation, what was the point of continuing the fight?
It was at this point in the reasoning that one of the officers pointed out that they were still on the street and that, of course, basic comfort was totally acceptable during wartime buy the meeting room was free and if there was the possibility of not being satisfied with basic comfort, it would be a shame not to take advantage of it.
Around twenty pairs of eyes turned to Moa. They contained a mixture of disgust and resignation. Obviously, he was still not welcome at the meeting. His presence was tolerable as long as they were outside, but in a confined space, the question legitimately arose. He already got up once without authorization and it would be necessary to open the window and ventilate for a few moments to make the smell disappear. Bringing him back up would cut their little appetite that they had left and they might have to fast this lunch. Anyway, he didn't know anything about military strategy so his presence was certainly superfluous.
Someone proposed to send him to get a team of undertakers from the infirmary, because the bodies were still there and it was not good for hygiene to let them start decomposing outside a morgue. In addition, if someone passed by and observed the bodies, the rumors could start without them controlling the communication. This was another luxury they could not afford at this hour.
Moa was a little disappointed not to be able to go back to the eighth floor, not because he lacked physical exercise but because he had seen on a coffee table a plate of aperitif cookies and that he did not and would not have opportunity to enjoy them.
However, they were right. He really was of no use in the strategy part of the war. Strategy was something that belonged to experts.
He too had a mission to accomplish. When you had no choice, you had no choice, you could still philosophize but in the end, the best was to resign yourself to your fate and make the best of a bad job. Ultimately, his mission was to go to the infirmary and the infirmary was where Cunnie worked. Hopefully he could bump into his sweetheart again. It was at least a hope that made him forget the aperitif cookies of the eighth floor and it was with this idea in mind that he set out.
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