The outcome of this scenario was not his fault, but he would be blamed for it nonetheless. The rank of general was lonely at best, but Song did little to engender good feelings from his comrades — the men who would normally have watched his back during these perilous times. He drank in moderation — surely a reason not to be trusted — and despised parties. He steered clear of side “investments.” There was no private villa for him with a live-in mistress in the mountains outside Beijing. Men with bent or broken morals felt judged whether one judged them or not, and Song Biming found himself a pariah at staff meetings, where discussions always seemed to turn to growing bank accounts and manly prowess with nubile young women. Song had no stories — or at least none of interest to the other generals. None of those men wanted to hear about how Song’s buxom but slightly chubby wife of thirty-one years made the best pork buns in all of China. He listened politely to their whore stories, noting that though most of the exploits had to be highly embellished, sex with his wife sounded vastly superior to any of their imagined escapades. His wife was a good woman, enough of a natural expert in that realm to keep him more than satisfied. She was inquisitive about his work, interested but not nosy, and ambitious enough to push him when he needed to be pushed. She’d resigned herself early on to the fact that she was not his first choice for a wife — and was fine with that, as long as she was his last. So far, he’d kept his end of that bargain. She’d given him more than three decades of unquestionable support, and a fine daughter, who had, in turn, given them a beautiful granddaughter, Niu, who was the light of his life — and the only thing that could take his mind off the tragedy of his work.
Song was a proud man. One did not get to be a general in the People’s Liberation Army without having a certain measure of gravitas and ego. But this downward spiral of fortune made him feel sorry for his family. His wife had been nothing but faithful, pinning all her hopes and dreams on his career. She certainly didn’t deserve this. Any semblance of status he’d ever had was rapidly slipping away — in no small measure because of General Bai Min. Something had to be done — and soon.
Song’s hand began to tremble with rage and he set the cup down on his desk in a puddle of spilled tea. Bai, that deceitful old dog, would find much pleasure in the results playing out on the screen. China was losing this simulation — as she always did eventually, when correct data was used in the program. Unlike war games involving actual troops, the enemy in this simulation did not lay down arms at the appropriate moment to make China look good. Computers did not lie — unless they were told to, and even then they spat out the only truth they knew. Song was ever exacting in his requirements that his programs be realistic and accurate to the nth degree, running thousands of permutations for each battle. He was privy to the latest intelligence data — which he insisted be raw, not preanalyzed or, as the Americans said,
Religion took the blame for a great many wars; God was merely an excuse. The root of most conflict boiled down to two things: territory or women. President Zhao craved territory, not enough to start a war, not yet. No, the next conflict would only appear to be fought over territory. If a war with the West happened in the near future, it would be Song and Bai’s feud that started it.
Song breathed deeply, regaining enough control to pick up his tea. He needed to return to the matter at hand — watching his computer program demonstrate how the West would soundly beat China. Light after light blinked out, one after another on the screen, signifying the loss of Chinese assets. Computer simulations unfolded much faster than they did in real time, adding to Song’s misery. What was that quaint American saying? That was it.
The motherland did well at the beginning of each scenario — but she always lost in the end. And Song always had to watch.
Formerly a PLA training hall, the moldering bunker sloped downward from the entry toward the wall with the map where the instructor’s lectern would have been. Twenty-two uniformed subordinates sat in near darkness at two rows of desks in the amphitheater-like room, facing the map as they pecked on computers or mumbled into their radio headpieces. Most of them were conscripts, forced into doing their bit.
