First Strike!

The screen is unambiguous: your base, and most of North Dakota, will be annihilated by Soviet nuclear warheads in minutes. Before you go to your God like a soldier, you must launch the sleek Minutemen missiles from their silos and let the Soviet taste cleansing atomic fire. To launch the missiles both the left key and right key must be turned. (set: $left to 0) (set: $right to 0) (set: $launch to 0) [[Go to left key]] [[Go to right key]] [[Go to launch button]] [[Use sidearm to kill yourself]] [[Die like a coward]]

(if: $left is 0)[The left key catches the harsh flourescent lights as it sits in its UNARMED position] (if: $left is 0)[[Turn left key]] (if: $left is 1)[The left key has been turned to ARMED. It does not catch the light.] [[Go to right key]] [[Go to launch button]] [[Go to launch button]] [[Use sidearm to kill yourself]] [[Die like a coward]]

(if: $right is 0)[The right key rests at UNARMED. You wonder how much pressure it will take to turn it vertical.] (if: $right is 0)[[Turn right key]] (if: $right is 1)[The right key is already ARMED, the green light informs you. The end is near.] [[Go to left key]] [[Go to launch button]] [[Use sidearm to kill yourself]] [[Die like a coward]]

(if: $launch is 0)[You pull your sidearm out and charge it. Today you had the choice to kill a million people, or one. You choose one. History will not judge you, because history will outlast you by only 90 seconds or so.] (if: $launch is 1)[You straighten your uniform, flex you jaw muscles, and weigh the heavy pistol in your hand. The steel is cold. The gun's action makes a sleek double-click as you charge it. You place the muzzle to your temple and glare at the red lines filling the map on the screen. 'Fuck you, Ivan, and God bless America.' The round takes half your head off.]

Your people depended upon you to protect them. You had freedom's righteous sword in your scabbard and you let it sit there because you are a coward with less moral responsibility than a dog. [] The blips of the Soviet missiles on the screen separate as the MIRVs deploy, each warhead independently seeking its own private end. Yours comes straight south from Candian airspace, and, as you sense its wicked malevolence, you feel your own hot urine stain your thigh. As the alarms scream, you wonder if the shame of it will outlive even this.

[You turn the key from horizontal to vertical. ARMED flashes up on the panel above the key. Your hand is cold.] [(set: $left to 1)] [[Go to right key]] [[Go to launch button]] [[Use sidearm to kill yourself]] [[Die like a coward]]

[You pause for a second of calm, and then rotate the key to vertical. The panel flashes ARMED. This is what you trained for, waited for, feared and yet desired.] [(set: $right to 1)] [[Go to left key]] [[Go to launch button]] [[Use sidearm to kill yourself]] [[Die like a coward]]

(if: $left is 1 and $right is 1)[Above the LAUNCH button is a yellow light. It is now flashing. The monitor above shows the silo doors have opened.] (if: $left is 1 and $right is 1)[[Push the launch button.]] (else:)[The launch button is inert, the system locked out.] [[Go to left key]] [[Go to right key]] [[Use sidearm to kill yourself]] [[Die like a coward]]

[You press the button. It is such a small thing for such a big thing. Even deep underground, you hear (or is it feel?) the grinding roar of the missile engines as they overcome gravity and hurl themselves at the enemy. You have done your duty.] (set: $launch to 1) [[Use sidearm to kill yourself]] [[Wait for the end]]

body { background-image: url("tsar.jfif"); background-color: #cccccc; } [As the seconds tick down, and the alarms escalate through their warning states, you remember your father, preaching, in that stifling hot rural church, the Texan desert air like an oven. He is reading from the book of Ezekiel.] [] [The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" I said, "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know."] [] [But soon you will know, too.]