IGMS Issue 27 by IGMS

Author:IGMS [IGMS]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hatrack River Enterprises
Published: 2012-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

By a Thread

by Flávio Medeiros Jr.

Artwork by Jin Han

* * *

A man has a lot of time to think when darkness and silence are absolute. In those moments, in which he discovers he is irreparably abandoned to himself, the mind becomes his only companion, even though, at least in my case, it may not be the most desirable one.

I turn off the weak gas lamp, which provides my only source of light, since the flame consumes oxygen: at that moment my most precious possession. Moreover, all I could see were the walls of the narrow cubicle that I call the "commander's cabin", and in the hatch's glass a distorted image of the shadows of my face, furrowed from years of hard battles. We're not deep enough for the ocean outside to be so completely dark; which means that it's still night. From time to time a creek runs the full length of the submersible, as if, in its sleep, it briefly adjusts itself in its bed of mud. But most of the time we're reduced to this: a handful of troubled souls in the belly of a submarine tomb. My men await me with canine fidelity. I, with all my experience and fisherman's patience, also wait. Strategy is nothing more than the most refined intelligence put to service in war, even though, in principle, "intelligence" and "war" can appear to be two incompatible words when placed in the same sentence.

Despite being built on the foundation of thousands of dead, this conflict, which had lasted hundreds of years -- but with the advent of hypocrisy by the governing received the euphemistic name "Cold War" -- had its origin in a sequence of brilliant strategic maneuvers. First, when English pirates made useful their artifices and intrigues to wrest the Aztec Empire from the hands of the Spanish, and shortly thereafter transformed those plumed savages into the principal allies of the British Empire. On the other side, when the vanquished Spanish knocked on the doors of the French Empire in search of aid, the French made the intelligent play of annexing the Spanish Peninsula and its domains. Adding this to the invasion of Prussia and the alliance with the Russian Czar, the formation of the principal power of Continental Europe came to pass. To the British remained almost absolute control of the Americas and distant possessions in Asia and Africa, which made them the largest empire in the world, also however, the most disperse, weakened by excessive distances. Thus was established the fragile balance of antagonistic forces which commanded the planet, which persisted through the eras like an eternal dispute of two invisible vampires, thirsty for blood.

It has been some time since the principal countries in the conflict have realized significant territorial invasions. The war remains limited to skirmishes in distant waters or in neutral territories, or in the unsteady border regions. Most of the time, in places so distant from the great population agglomerations that the press plays an important role in

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