Nov. Bargain, Part the Fourth.

I intend to finish Part the Third, I really do - but this bit of work came burrowing out of my mind this morning almost whole and entire, and I had to get it out of the way. utsuri, remember how I mentioned a number of alternate universe possibilities when I made the original Sergeant Preston bargain?

Ichneumon - a crossover of sorts
with apologies to WXYZ Studios (Detroit), and to Robert A. Heinlein
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A very odd thing...

Today I checked out of my Red Cross assignment. I've got the hotel tonight; I drive to LA tomorrow at gross o'clock. However, my assignment here is officially over.

Since I got out relatively early, I drove over to the museums in Balboa Park and went to the Aerospace Museum. It was 3:30; the place closes at four. since it's small I figured I would have an easy time seeing all the stuff I was interested in as long as I skipped the other stuff. I went through the Aerospace Hall of Fame, which had quite a lot of stuff on various aviation and spaceflight and related-fields pioneers, and then got to the models, replicas, and restored early planes.

And the World War I posters.

The poster... ai, I had forgotten what they were like. Encouraging rationing by invoking the image of soldiers and their families in need. Saying the US had fought starvation in Belgium for three years and by means of conserving food locally we could go on to win that particular battle. Begging people to enlist to protect the free people of Europe, to protect our country - or at least to buy war bonds - or something. I found myself thinking, looking at the posters and the planes and the mannequins in the replica uniforms, that if only I could trust our government the way people seemed to back then...

(yes, I know, not everyone did- but it was easier then than it is now.)

I swallowed, looking from the posters to the restored Fokker triplane to the SPAD replica to the men in the English uniforms, and wondered if there were anything at all I could do in this day and age that even remotely compared to what they were willing to do. If I could have joined the armed forces after my LASIK, or even before, when I still thought I might go to medical school- if nothing else, the GI Bill paid for a lot, you know? But I knew I'd make a lousy soldier, I knew I'd never be able to withstand things the way they did...

And then I looked down. I was wearing logo clothing today, you see; today was the red polo shirt I call the NASCAR Shirt. It's got a Disaster Services patch on one shoulder, an American Red Cross patch on the other shoulder, a similar patch over the left breast, and an enormous American Red Cross Disaster Services patch covering most of the back. I looked from the support-the-war posters a little bit to the left, and spotted a 1917 Red Cross poster.

It occurred to me that if the replicas and the mannequins before me came to life - if I took a step and walked into the time from which the airplanes around me came - these men would recognize me for what I was, or at least for what I did. They'd see the logo. This was before Henry Head-Up-His-Ass Stimson forced the American Red Cross to sell coffee and donuts to the troops in England instead of giving them out for free (the British soldiers were complaining that their services didn't give them free stuff like that). This was when the Red Cross was pretty much universally known as the friend of the soldier, the shield on the battlefield - these men would see what I was wearing, and while they might not understand my exact Red Cross duties, they'd know that I was serving in a way that was far, far more appropriate for me than anything to do with a gun.

It helped. I am no soldier and I don't think I could ever be, but it really did help. We also serve who only compute and wait.

Now, if y'all will excuse me, the kid behind me at the cybercafe is listening to something that uses EXTREMELY vulgar words far too often to be healthy. I'm going to go strangle him.