by Kris Vågen

2045.

They search him at the docks still. They'll always search him at the docks, because he's a greasy spic motherfucker and that's what they do.

Some people, it's enough to show them the tags. Oh, their looks go, you're a vet. We're so sorry, sir, we didn't mean to be rude.

It took half a century but war's finally glorious again. Granddaddy would be pleased as punch.

For the ones that don't buy the tags, he has to sit around and cooperate and scrape like a good dog. The pat-downs, the searches, the interrogations. The bland stupid incomprehension when they say 'Name' and you say in your thick fucking accent 'James Kilroy.'

That bastard, he'd picked the wrong fucking protégé. He coulda 'least gone for an Italian. How the fuck do you explain to spaceport authorities that you're the new equal-opportunity inheritor of the actual no-shit One Man Army? Right, and that cannon rifle on your back, it's just a hunting gun, honest, you and your dad just love hunting armadillos with classified heavy arms.

It never helps that you can actually produce the paperwork for it, either, 'cause someone sees that face and your name and your greasy spic smell and they go, 'yeah right.'

A day here or there in interrogation never bothers Kilroy too much because at this point he's used to hassle. He's not used to the biting sarcasm that seems to come with the job position. Something about being the bona fide savior of the known universe really sticks the humor in your gut. You know, right there with the bile.

This time they don't detain him, though. This time there's just glances and tones and, all right, Mister Kilroy, please step on through. Shuttle time is ten. Please check your carry-on in with the boarded baggage desk. Prepare to show passport and declare all lunar activity upon arrival. Do not touch the rail. Do not touch the glass. Fuck you and die.

Well, so they don't say the last one out loud.

The Lunar War was the Presidency's big break, no doubt. Revolting colonists, embargoes, tea taxes-- it was a page right out of eighth grade history, which was probably about where the guy's formal education had crashed and burned. Now Fort Franks had been scraped right off Mare Imbrium and the United States had reasserted control of the selene territories, and soldiers were heroes again. G.I. Joe, fighting for freedom, wherever there's trouble. Three cheers for the grunts.

The day of Operation Armstrong, Kilroy --way back before that was his name, way back before any of this mess-- had sat up against the ruins of the Franks oxygen supply center, strung out and exhausted and disillusioned, with Robinson's white boy rock music playing over the comm lines. He'd carved a dead name into the side of a busted metal hull while the cowboy president praised them about the first grand war of the new generation. And Kilroy-the-not-Kilroy had thought, fuck you, war is dead. War is dead, God is dead, and now Kilroy is dead too.

He met Kilroy standing in the dust of Mare Imbrium, saying, 'All the world's a storm, kid.'

And the next month, he was Kilroy.

None of this was going to be shared with Mama. No, he was going to go to his grandpa's funeral, use his old name, speak in the old language, and then disappear. He'd stand at his grandfather's grave and say 'Look, abuelo, we did it. Soldiers aren't the scum of the earth anymore, now we're the scum of the whole universe.

'And abuelo, the name you once said to me, the stories you told me and Maria at bedtime in the old house, about the old wars and the great soldier, the one last good soldier, that never died even though he never lived, well, that's me now.'

Grandpa would understand what it meant, even if no one else did.

Chaderick had looked less than happy when Kilroy told him he was going to the funeral. 'It's messy, these kinds of things, kid,' he'd told him by a satellite line from Hawaii. 'Because you've been listed KIA since '43, you know. Jaime Pasalaqua doesn't exist anymore.'

On the shuttle down to Houston he sat next to a boy maybe eight, fat and squinty, and he was staring at the cannon rifle Kilroy propped between his knees.

"You a soldier, mister?"

Oh, the wonder, the magic in that kid's voice, like he was meeting Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the cowboy president, all at once.

"I'm freelance, actually," Kilroy-used-to-be-Pasalaqua told him.

"Oh." You could just feel the cold burn of disappointment in the kid's throat. Still, he brightened, turned to the next seat. "Mom, what's a freelance?"

"It means I work how I want to," Kilroy answered for her. "Like Robin Hood. You know Robin Hood?"

He didn't.

Chaderick had said, 'After you see your grandpa, there's some terran work for you. Classy job, no pressure. Ease you in slow, like. Don't want you running for a replacement so soon. They're getting harder to sniff out, you know. These last boys, they been dodgy. Picked any old kid off the street if he had metal. But you, you're gonna do things right for me, I know it. You gonna set it back proper.'

Jaime Pasalaqua the Former looked down at the kid in his seat and thought, I was training for the army when I was that age. I was playing videogames.

Proven to help with your accuracy, you know. Colder, cleaner, sharper shot.

And did you remember, those old missions. The glory and the fanfare and bravo, soldier, you done your imagined country proud. He guessed everyone was reaching for that feeling. Some sort of noble root at it all.

Grandpa was getting buried at Arlington, a river's hop from D.C.. Kilroy had told Chad this when he'd filed the pap for a shuttle down to Earth. Which is why Chaderick had handed him the mission he had.

James Kilroy, after all, was an agent of a higher justice than politics and countries and gods. This is what Chaderick said. Chaderick said, James Kilroy is the patron saint of soldiers. So he fights for man. In its oldest, primal state of survival and the blessings of nature's fortune.

'You'll see how it goes when you're in a little longer,' said Chad. 'I been doing this gig a long, long time.'

Kilroy had looked at the diagrams Chaderick had sent over the satellite line.

'So long as the gravesite's out of the blast range,' he'd said. 'Abuelo wants his rest.'

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finished at 0018, 9 January 2006.

No 'Nam vets or armadillos were harmed in the making of this short story.