Skip to main content

Need help identifying short story about retired military colonel who fought war at end of time


I read this story in an anthology in the eighties or early nineties. It was about an old man who lived outside a western-like town, though that might have just been how I imagined it. He goes to town and some ex-military thugs are there causing problems. Flaunting some odd interdimensional military tech of some sort. He doesn't want to intervene as doing so would be bad but in the end he must.



By intervening, his military identity is revealed and that causes him (some paradox or causality law) to have to go back and fight the war again.



The war is at the end of time or the universe. The man is maybe a colonel of the sky something... Not much to go on; I have been searching my collection and wracking my brain for years trying to recall the story.



Answer



This is almost certainly "A Dry, Quiet War" by Tony Daniel originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction in 1996 and heavily anthologized.


Returned to a small town with a western (as in US western frontier) technological flavor. The story opens with:




I can't tell you how much it to me to see the two suns of Ferno set behind the mountains east of my home. I had been away twelve billion years. I passed my cabin to the pump well [...]



from a war in the future:



All dead. All those millions of dead people. But it was the end of time, and they all had to die, so that they—so that we all, all in time—could live



The town is beset by technologically advanced bandits:



"Bex [a personal friend of the protagonist] are you hurting?" I said to her. She looked down , then carefully spread her legs. "He caught me and then used the trunch on me"




The protagonist is an officer:



"Colonel Bone," he began "If I'd knowed it was you..."



And there is a cost to exhibiting his power in the time frame of the story, but the details are a huge spoiler.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...
Post a Comment
Read more