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<\/a>P<\/span>olitical science was not his field,<\/strong> but Eugene McCarthy Bennett, PhD, developed a new political theory as he sat on the cat-clawed sofa in his living room, drinking lukewarm beer and watching the six o\u2019clock news. \u201cThe government has a carefully hoarded stock of old G.I. mail,\u201d he told Stallone, his orange tabby. \u201cWhenever they plan to launch a really serious assault on sanity, they first distract us by releasing one of those old letters.\u201d In a flash of sudden movement, he grabbed the cat by the neck and forced it to look at the TV. \u201cSee<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\nDavid Price-Waterhouse\u2019s video simulacrum was onscreen, delivering the news of the latest troop commitments with the same confident, sober, and serious expression it used when talking about airliner crashes, terrorist attacks, or for that matter, Senior-size Pampers.<\/p>\n
Stallone\u2019s eyes narrowed, in the expression of contemptuous compliance cats use so often when dealing with humans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe President,\u201d Price-Waterhouse intoned, \u201cwhile still refusing to divulge his whereabouts following last Sunday\u2019s coup attempt by CBN reporters, issued this statement.\u201d The TV cut to a medium shot of President Franecki standing behind the presidential lectern, his hands tightly clenched, a nondescript blue curtain hanging limply in the background. The President appeared haggard and unkempt\u2014as did everyone, compared to Price-Waterhouse\u2014but he seemed oddly cheerful for a man whose sense of personal honor was currently killing a hundred American soldiers per day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a legal, moral, and sacred<\/em> commitment,\u201d Franecki thundered, the lectern\u2019s audio enhancers adding a Vaderesque rumble to his voice, \u201cto support Presidente Misconcepcion\u2019s government in every way we can! To those naysayers who claim his regime is a corrupt dictatorship that deserves to fall, I say, balderdash! To those faint hearts who say it\u2019s a teetering wreck that wouldn\u2019t last a day without our troops, I say, bull pizzle!<\/p>\n \u201cTo those vermin<\/em>, those filthy Red sympathizers who say this noble mission, this holy<\/em> war, is a bottomless sinkhole, and that Mexico is just another Costa Rica, I say\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n Franecki slammed a fist down on the large red button before him and the front panel of the lectern exploded in a barrage of machine-gun fire and blasting antipersonnel mines. Stallone let out a terrified hiss, squirmed free of Eugene\u2019s hands, and ran off to hide in the kitchen.<\/p>\n \u201cOn a lighter note,\u201d Price-Waterhouse continued seamlessly, \u201cthe last Postmaster-General of the United States, Everett Foge, came out of retirement today to hand-deliver a letter to Dr. Eugene McCarthy Bennett, Brin Professor of Theoretical Physics at California Tech.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSee<\/em>?\u201d Eugene crowed at Stallone. \u201cThey needed a fluff piece for balance!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe letter,\u201d Price-Waterhouse said, with a smug and condescending smile, \u201cwas mailed in 1944 by Doctor Bennett\u2019s grandfather, Colonel Ulysses Grant Bennett. In a typical example of the incompetence of the old neo-socialist Federal Postal Service, the letter lay undiscovered in a filing cabinet for more than sixty years. It was found recently by workmen demolishing the Central Post Office Building in Newark, New Jersey.\u201d<\/p>\n The camera pushed in for a close-up of Eugene\u2019s face as he tore open the envelope and began to read. \u201cIt\u2019s to my grandmother,\u201d the Eugene on TV said at last. \u201cIt\u2019s personal.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDoctor Bennett,\u201d Price-Waterhouse voiced over, obliterating Eugene\u2019s next line, which was, So get that goddam camera out of my face!<\/em>, \u201cis the only child of Colonel Bennett\u2019s only child, Captain Dwight David Bennett. This makes him Colonel Bennett\u2019s only grandchild. Colonel Bennett\u2019s son\u2014Doctor Bennett\u2019s father\u2014was killed fighting the Vietcong in Saigon during the 1968 Tet Offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI never met my father,\u201d the Eugene on the couch told the television sadly. \u201cJust as he never met my grandfather. I am the unknown child of an unknown child.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThirty-eight and still single,\u201d Price-Waterhouse continued, \u201cDoctor Bennett is perhaps the last in a line of Bennetts whose service to the country dates back to the American Revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNow you sound like my mother,\u201d Eugene taunted the TV. \u201cCome on, I\u2019m not embarrassed enough. Why don\u2019t you drag her<\/em> into this?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDoctor Bennett\u2019s mother,\u201d Price-Waterhouse obligingly added, \u201cDorothea Epstein-Bennett Sanchez, who is currently in jail awaiting charges stemming from last month\u2019s incident in which thirty Senior Panthers chained themselves to the White House gates, named him after 1960\u2019s peace activist Senator Eugene McCarthy. By curious coincidence, today is the 90th anniversary of the birth of Senator McCarthy, and in his home state of Minnesota the traditional effigy-burning\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n The television went black. Eugene blew across the lens of the remote in his hand as if it were the smoking barrel of a gun. \u201cGotcha, varmint,\u201d he said with what he believed to be a flinty-eyed smile. Then he dropped the remote and reached over the arm of the couch, groping for the beer can on the end table.<\/p>\n He came up with the letter again.<\/p>\n Turning it over in his hands, he examined it closely. The envelope was smudged, yellowed, and crisp with age. A thin brown stain ran along one edge, probably a legacy from some long-forgotten clerical worker\u2019s spilled coffee. Over the years the address had faded to a pale blue ghost, but the name was still readable: Mrs. U. G. Bennett<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cEven in his last letter, he couldn\u2019t call her by her own name,\u201d Eugene whispered. He shook the envelope lightly; two sheets fell out. One was open, and fluttered into his lap like a dying butterfly. The other was still sealed with a blob of dark red wax. Eugene picked up the open sheet and read the spidery blue script:<\/p>\n Dearest Effie,<\/em><\/p>\n I cannot tell you just where I am, of course, but I can tell you that things are going quite well and that I have every hope of being home in time for the christening. I still favor Dwight David if it is a boy, and the General has already agreed to be his<\/u> godfather, so you had better not let me down, ha ha!<\/em><\/p>\n It will be a marvelous world our son will grow up in. One without war; one without want. Roosevelt will win re-election, of that I am sure, and together he and \u201cUncle Joe\u201d Stalin will forge a peace that will make my profession thankfully obsolete. It\u2019s thoughts like these that help me to carry on, day after day. Out of this horror we will build a future in which no mother\u2019s son ever has to die in battle again. And yet…<\/em><\/p>\n And yet, darling, I\u2019ve had this most dreadful uneasiness as of late. What if it all goes wrong? What if Roosevelt doesn\u2019t survive? What if the Russians are not to be trusted? Last night it was almost a vision: a sea of fire, each flame a tiny, bitter little war ignited by crazed zealots and fanned by profit-hungry military industrialists, extending on into the future like an infinity of mirrors.<\/em><\/p>\n That is the second sheet, Effie. I have always trusted your good sense. Read the details of my vision; tell me what you think. Are these the reasonable concerns of a serious man, or am I just exhausted? I am trying to gather the courage to discuss this with General Eisenhower, but will await your judgement.<\/em><\/p>\n Well, I must be off now. Give my love to everyone, and keep up those Esperanto lessons. We’ll need them in Moscow!<\/em><\/p>\n Yours forever, Ulysses<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Eugene carefully folded the sheet and slipped it back into the envelope. Then he picked up the second sheet, turned it over, and considered the ornate, gothic B<\/strong> impressed into the sealing wax. \u201cA sealed letter from my grandfather,\u201d he whispered softly. He looked up. \u201cStallone?\u201d The cat was nowhere to be found. \u201cStallone, this is it<\/em>!\u201d Dropping the letter, Eugene scooped up the phone on the end table and started frantically punching in the number for his lab.<\/p>\n \u201cHello, Larry? This is Gene. I\u2019ve just found the perfect test case! Fire up the Tardyon Empathic Transmitter. I\u2019ll be there in\u2014\u201d Eugene checked his watch, \u201c\u2014half an hour!\u201d Eugene hung up, then paused a moment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Tardyon Empathic Transmitter,\u201d he whispered softly. \u201cA one-way telegraph to the past. My life\u2019s work, and the acronym had to come out TET. Fate plays such silly buggers…\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [A burst of light, and a cascade of white noise. An odd shimmer rolls through the air, setting the image dancing as if seen through heat waves across the desert, while causality itself is momentarily stood on end.]<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201c…killed fighting the French neo-Colonialists in Saigon during the 1968 Tet Offensive,\u201d Moonbeam Hashflower intoned.<\/p>\n \u201cDoctor Bennett\u2019s mother, who is currently in jail awaiting charges stemming from last month\u2019s incident in which thirty anti-solidarity activists chained themselves to the White House gates, named him after 60\u2019s reactionary leader Ronald Reagan. The former star of Cattle Queen of Montana<\/em>, Reagan flirted briefly with politics and attained his greatest popularity in 1968, finishing a close second in the race for the California governor\u2019s seat. Thereafter he returned to acting, and today Reagan is best known for his Academy Award-winning performance opposite his daughter Patti in the 1981 film, On Golden Pond<\/em>. By a curious coincidence today is the 95th anniversary of Reagan\u2019s birth, and in California today the Screen Actor\u2019s Collective\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n The screen went black. Doctor Ronald Reagan Bennett, Malzberg Professor of Applied Metaphysics at CalTech, blew across the tip of the remote control as if it were a smoking gun. \u201cDie, lackey running dog of imperialism,\u201d he said with a flinty-eyed smile. Then he looked at the letter again.<\/p>\n Dearest Effie,<\/em><\/p>\n You know my dreams for the future, as we\u2019ve discussed them before. But last night I had a horrid nightmare vision: a postwar world in which we forgot our revolutionary democratic heritage and went back to supporting all the old European colonial powers. An ugly, brutal world, in which we became so obsessed with our philosophical differences with the Soviets that we fought a long, bitter, proxy struggle—a \u2018cold\u2019 war, as it were—<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Bennett carefully folded the letter, put it back in the envelope, and turned his attention to the second, sealed page. \u201cA sealed letter from my grandfather,\u201d he whispered softly. He looked up. \u201cFonda?\u201d The cat was nowhere to be found. \u201cFonda, this is it<\/em>!\u201d Dropping the letter, Bennett scooped up the phone on the end table and began frantically punching in the number for his lab.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/center> <\/p>\n