The Colonel was a good guy. He always knew it, but he'd forgotten to remember
this a time or two. When he joined the Army he'd been presented with a
choice. Go to prison, or join the Army. He decided to always be a good guy
after that. After all, the good guys always won, and all games, even the ones
people never realized were games, were meant to be won. He was a smart man,
but even smart people make mistakes.

He straightened his cute little Army hat and smoothed the skirt of his dress
uniform. It always seemed gay to him, but women loved him. Women always
loved him, and he always loved women. Give and take. Give to take... Give
to take women. The service was rough sometimes, but it beat being shot at and
loathed. To be shot at and loved was always better. Everyone loved him;
sometimes it was confusing to be such a hero in everyone's eyes. The world
was always like this, in one way or another. He considered the eradication of
wrongness a toast to quitting drinking. He had to sober up for this anyway.

He never did drugs, though.

Some documents were important, so important people lived and died to get them
where they needed to be. This wasn't one of them. He halfway sighed, then
caught himself. Today was shaping up to be one of those days. One of those
gay days.

It can be confusing to serve a country so free. It's a bit enraging to give
up one's freedom to lay down in a rut like no civilian in their own rut would
ever understand. Out of the frying pan, into the fire... He hadn't been
active duty for a while, but times were changing again. He hadn't wanted to
teach Junior ROTC, and it had showed. He'd been there for a reason, and now
he was putting that behind him, as always, a little too early.

These aimless little addicts were barely worth defending, sometimes. It was
easy to feel this way any time he spent too long putting up with civilians.
It was just easier to forget what cushy lives they weren't appreciating.
Idiots were being idiots again, and he'd been pressed back into a more
relaxing job in the field. Things were getting shittier than ever, and he was
trying to make sense of this in a way that kept him from choking anyone. It
was always harder to blame one's own self than to look at the whole mass of
idiots as one really despicable, damned near retarded entity. Sometimes
forgiveness was harder than just lining them all up against the wall.

Forgiveness is a strange concept. The mere mention of forgiveness sometimes
put people into a state of paranoia. Why do you want to talk about
forgiveness? That's fishy. Times were just that way... Someone had sized up
the nation he gave up most of his liberties to try half-assedly to hurt, then
to serve, and gotten really shitty for a second. This was a better job for
him. For some of these bastards, justice had been instantly served. There
were always more out there. They came from under the weirdest of rocks,
sometimes. Forgiveness was not his profession.

It was better not to be an NCO, now, too. Provisions for the common defense
were in short supply now that the world had changed. Despite everyone's best
efforts to fuck each other over, his viewpoint had never changed that much.
He'd always known it was wrong to hurt others, but sometimes there just wasn't
another choice. At least it made the right choice more obvious.

He'd been totally blindsided by what everyone had been. If they hadn't heard
by now they should have said something sooner, well... at this point they
were keeping their mouths shut with rivets if need be. Those stupid little
addicts certainly were. It wasn't clear at this point who had played what
part in this incident, but the nation was reeling. It would be for decades,
it had been for centuries already, according to a historian he knew. He
didn't fancy himself a historian, but she told him he knew his shit. The
truth was... He knew history, but he knew psychology even better. He liked
history more, though.

There were always new chances to prove there was more to the service than the
gay army hat. Someday soon he was gonna be happy, he was gonna let himself be
happy. There were some things to take care of first, though, like this
document. If it turned out to be a historical document he'd never forgive
anyone again. He'd never be happy if that happened. Fucking homoerotic
literature, if you asked him. No one did, so he kept his mouth shut. He
didn't need rivets. He didn't need women, he just liked them a lot. Times
like this were more trying than combat. Which is really what these times
were, despite the fact these bastards had totally disregarded how prepared the
nation was for anything.

This document was probably part of it. Disguised as homoerotic literature,
this was terrorism. This was the worst thing that had ever happened in
hundreds of years. This was another fork of the attack, and the only silver
lining now was how arrogant the bastards were being. It showed him exactly
who was who, and they were leveraging homosexuality. It wasn't just queer, it
was wrong. It was not something he stood for, had ever stood for, or would
ever.

These were just his orders, and he prayed for simplicity. Even if it meant a
firefight, it was better than this bullshit. He prayed someone higher up
would notice, would catch this mistake he was not even willing to admit he'd
read about. Just one last loose end to tie up, then he'd be done with this
stage of this... well... he steeled himself to say nothing, but he was gonna
know what he believed now. He was gonna say nothing, if anyone asked, he just
delivered this, too busy to read it. He was gonna think about this one as a
secret message disguised as homoerotic literature. It wasn't what it was,
nothing was anymore.

It was shitty how self-conscious he was now about the uniform he'd always
thought was ugly, but took pride in wearing almost always. This was
terrorism, and this document was the gay part of it. He took a deep breath,
shut his eyes, hated everyone, and left to deliver it anyway. This was a rape
case. His nation had been brutally fucked.