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Other kids in the platoon came up and hurled their grenades, some of which stuck to tanks, others landing on the ground. The kid next to Wei Ming collapsed to the ground outside the trench with a gaping bullet wound to the back, dropping a grenade that tumbled to a spot two or three meters away. It lay there unexploded; perhaps the kid had forgotten to pull the firing pin. The other grenades exploded, but the three tanks charged onward through the flames and smoke over the trenches, completely unscathed. Wei Ming leapt backward out of his trench and tumbled out of the path of the oncoming tank treads, but many of the other kids were crushed. Then, with a tremendous crash, one tank tipped over into a trench and came to a stop, after hitting and dragging under its tracks a kid right in the middle of throwing a grenade, which exploded, severing the track and dislodging a wheel into the air.

The far-off judge put up a green signal, declaring the game finished. The turret of the crippled Abrams opened with a clang and a helmeted American kid emerged, but at the sight of Wei Ming’s machine gun trained on him, he ducked mostly back inside, leaving just half a head poking out as he called through his translation unit, “Follow the rules, Chinese kids! Keep to the rules! The game is over. Stop fighting!” Once Wei Ming lowered his weapon, he came out, with three other kids on his heels, and climbed off the tank, hands on the guns at their waists as they looked warily around at the surviving Chinese kids on the ground. Then they headed off toward the US base. The last kid, who had a huge translation unit strung round her neck, stopped, turned back toward Wei Ming, saluted, and said what her translator then translated as, “I’m Lieutenant Morgan. You all played well, Lieutenant.”

Wei Ming returned a salute but said nothing. All of a sudden he noticed movement at Morgan’s chest, and a cat poked its head out of the kid’s armored division jacket and meowed. Morgan took the cat out of her jacket and showed it to Wei Ming. “This is Watermelon, our crew mascot.” To Wei Ming, the cat’s ringed markings did make it resemble a watermelon. With another salute, Lieutenant Morgan turned and walked off.

Wei Ming stood still for a while watching the Antarctic horizon shimmer under the spectrum of the southern lights. It was a long time before he walked slowly over to the edge of the trench and his two crushed comrades, and then sat on the soggy ground and burst into tears.

* * *

The fighting taking place on the Antarctic continent was an unprecedented form of battle, and one unlikely to be repeated: a game war. In this war, enemies fought using the format of an athletic competition. High command on both sides set the time and location of the battle, determined the strength of each side, and chose or drafted rules of battle that they all would abide by. Then they fought according to the arrangements, while an impartial jury observed the fighting and decided the ultimate victor. All participating countries had equal status, there were no alliances, and they took turns fighting. Below is a transcript of a conversation between two countries’ high command arranging a competition:

COUNTRY A: Hey, B.

COUNTRY B: Hello.

COUNTRY A: Let’s set out the next tank game. How are we going to play tomorrow?

COUNTRY B: How about another head-on charge?

COUNTRY A: Good. How many are you mobilizing?

COUNTRY B: Oh, 150.

COUNTRY A: That’s too many. Some of our tanks are in a tank vs. infantry game tomorrow. Let’s say 120.

COUNTRY B: Fine. How does Arena 4 sound?

COUNTRY A: Arena 4? Not the greatest. It’s hosted five head-on charges and three ultra-close wall-toppling games, so there are wrecked tanks all over the place.

COUNTRY B: Wrecks can act as cover for both sides. It’ll add variables to the game and make it more fun to play.

COUNTRY A: That’s true. Arena 4 it is. But the rules need to change a bit.

COUNTRY B: The jury can handle that. Set the time?

COUNTRY A: Let’s start at 10 A.M. tomorrow. That way we’ll both have enough time to assemble.

COUNTRY B: Great. See you tomorrow.

COUNTRY A: See you tomorrow!

* * *

Careful thought reveals that this form of warfare is not entirely inexplicable. Rules and agreements suggest the establishment of a system, and a system gains inertia once established; a violation by one side implies the system’s collapse, with unforeseeable consequences. The key point is that this warfare system could only have been established in a children’s world where game thinking was determinative, and could never be reproduced in an adult world.

If anyone from the Common Era had witnessed the game war, what they would have found most surprising would not have been the sports-like form, since such wars could be found, if not quite so glaringly, back in the old days of cold-weapons warfare; no, they would doubtlessly have been shocked, mystified even, by the nature of the roles played by the participating countries. Enemies were established according to the order of play. People later referred to the “athlete role” of the belligerents who competed in battles set up in a manner never before seen in human history.

One other key characteristic of the game war was the specialization of the fighting. Every battle was a single contest of weapons. Integration of forces and cooperative operations were basically nonexistent.

Not long after the Olympics started, the land-based Supernova War transformed into a huge tank battle. Tanks were the children’s favorite weapons; nothing better embodied their fantasies about fighting. During the adults’ era, a remote-controlled tank was guaranteed to be a welcome gift. Once war broke out, their fascination transferred to real tanks and they sent them out onto the battlefield with abandon. All together, the countries brought nearly ten thousand tanks to Antarctica to engage in unbridled tank combat on an immense scale, with hundreds to upward of a thousand tanks pitted against each other in each fight.

On the open plain of Antarctica, these groups of iron monsters raced, fired, and burned. Everywhere you looked were fragments of destroyed tanks, some of them on fire for two or three days and, when the wind let up, releasing long, thin columns of weird black smoke from clusters of wrecks all over the plain. From a distance the land looked like it had a wild head of hair.

Compared with the grandeur and brutality of the tank battles, air combat was a much chillier pursuit. Dogfights ought to have been the most competitive fights of all, but the child pilots had trained for less than a year and had put in less than a hundred hours in high-speed fighters, meaning they had mastered only normal takeoff, landing, and level flight, at best.

The superior skill set and physical fitness required for air combat was simply unattainable for the vast majority of them. Hence, combat between opposing fighter formations could barely even get started; far more planes were lost owing to accidents than were shot down by the enemy. During dogfights, most of a pilot’s concentration was devoted to not crashing, with little energy left for attacking. Moreover, the acceleration produced by a modern fighter in air combat could be over six gees, to as much as nine when evading a radar lock or a tracking missile, more than the children’s fragile cerebral blood vessels could take. There were, of course, a few prodigies, like the American flying ace Carlos (the F-15 pilot who twice evaded missile tracking), but they were in the minority, and avoidable if not provoked.

It was even chillier on the water. Due to the Antarctic’s particular geographic location, ocean supply lines were the lifeline for the armies of every country. A cut supply line was the worst of all possible disasters, and would be like abandoning the children on another Earth.