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OFFICE JOB by Lachlan MacQuarrie

It was the inconsistency of it that rankled him.

(he expected battle to be glorious or horrendOus, depending on who brought you up. Jake quite be— lieved it was going to be a horrendous mess of slaughter and fire, as his father had told him of his war. But this quiet SEE—conditioned room, full of blinding lights and soft voices was not war at all — it was just an office job.

Why couldn't war be like the descriptions, he thought. At least we would be prepared for it. Expecting excitement, I almost fell asleep during our first engagement! Why not? After all, all one does is line up those lines on the screen, and press the blue button when the Commander says, and then the dot disappears.

"My commander says I've just killed three thousand people, but I might as well be having afternoon tea for all that is happening in this control room. I wonder if the enemy Weapons Officer (if there is an enemy, a qUestion' ‘03 which I have no proof one way or another) thought the same before the dot of his ship disappeared from my screen. I've never seen the enemy, I wonder what they look like," he mused.

That's interesting. That little dial is over into the red. I wonder what it sig. . . . . .

And in the flash of energy he was no more.

TAG! Y‘OU'RE lT "

by Madguarrie

I flicked on the com- screen and answered the , alien“ spaceship's challenge in my heavily-accented Verrokhan, "'lhis is the lIlerran Space Forces , battlecruiser Firy and we're going to blow you mothers out of the sky!"

The Verrokh canmander did a pretty good job of spluttering (considering his lack of a loner mandible or tongue as we know it) in amazement. ' "That's impossible! We exterminated the. . . . "

" . . .Terrans three hundred years ago" I finished for him. "In the thousand years of the Verrd<h Empire, your lords made only one mistake. They ordered the attack on Mother Terra, and on the human race. And now we're coming to kill you!"

I snapped off the com- screen and relayed word of the contact to HQ. The destruction of the Verrokh Fleet took seventeen sewnds.

The bombardment of the Verrokh planets took three days. We completely ' exterminated the vermin.

Funny, that's what the captured Verrokh reports of the attack on the human race three hundred years ago say. . . x

U

/

c/ry . nae/:7 +

FLOWERS FOR ALL OCCASIONS

"Say it with Flowers Say it with Oars" V .

62 Grafton St.

CORSAGES, GREEN PLANTS, FLORAL ARRANGEMENTS, DRIED AND SILK ARRANGEMENTS

CIaUde & Beryl- Field}-

Phone: 892-4588 892-591 1

Charlottetown, P.E.L V -

u .

THE Urinsuu,~ Thursday, November ‘2"2,'“‘197~9'§"Vpage 3

I LITERARY

POEMS BY DIXIE LEE MacDOHALD'

Narcissus spoke to me

when I opened the closet one day, I he was sitting in my shabby shoes, , and muttering, sputtering,

I closed the door. ,

Werse was when he followed me

to school one day, between the pages

of my math, he laughed at my studied. lines of brow and how I fooled him,

he thinks he got to me, but I

'I hate him. ~

Mothers rock your_babies

croon and swing them high

wrap them round your bodies

when they chance to cry.

Mothers dance your darlings

lift them to the sky. I

Tell them of God and great things before you tuck them beddy-bye ‘ ’cus time ista terrible teacher,

Soon enough your darlings dance alone, with the body of a stranger,

to the sorrow of the music moan learning to stay out of danger,

by creeping into bed alone.

Free of death, at last, passed into the sodden gravep

- I laugh .

At the nodding faces, saying yes it '3 true, I'm through.

So long in coming, that final numbing A

there was no decision, deaths in living.

Avenge,but how, the-German Jen

'w'hose‘bones‘ are burned or. rotted through. ~ ‘Avenge - revenge, the echo resounds

off my tongue with the same brutalysound ~ _ that the rat-at-tat-tat of‘the machine guns rattle to the ones rounded up, in a herd like cattle

_ made as they ripped through the silent sleun

effortless, ‘like empty carcassesor stone they fell to their fate like baited game. And‘the legacy they left is hating shame. Avenge 1-- rev-enge, oh rat-at-tat-tat.

Yes, Hitler died, the slimy rat.

We wanted to kill him, he should haye paid.

Education

We are each others homework: And I learn the lesson of yOur lips.