Tenzarium Interview No:001

The first question people always want to ask  is how I lost my leg.  No, not how.... when.  In which war?  That is what breaks my heart, that in my life time, in not even 70 years, have we seen so much war, so many brutal, global conflicts, that the question mark that hangs over every injury like mine, is not how, but more when and which.  For the record, it was the first war; the Oil War, or OPC War or Ten Year War, whatever the current trendy buzzword for that conflict is.  During the war, I knew it as the Oil War, so whatever it is called now, please excuse this old man, but to me, it will always be the Oil War.

They say the Crisis began in the thirties, but I'm afraid that's an entirely “first world” perspective.  In my province alone, where oil and economic power had never exactly been prevalent, the Crisis began as early as the twenties.  At 17 years old, in 2118, I was an apprentice engineer, working and learning my craft at the only mechanics in my small town.  At that time, the “first world”, what would become the C3 member states, were still enjoying plentiful oil supplies and even the hint of a looming economic depression seemed fanciful.  No one really knew how close they were... not in the first world.  In my province though?  Well, by 23, the mechanics I had so loved working for had gone out of business and I was tending fields with an ox pulled plough.  We were deep into the OPC depression by the time the first “Oil Peak Crisis” buzzwords were hitting the headlines across Europe.

I digress, though; this isn't a history lesson about the Oil War, rather about my own little experience with it.  I'm afraid there is no grand tale to tell about how I actually came to lose my leg.  I wasn't a front line fighter... I didn't even see a day's combat in the whole war, thanks in part to my wounds.  I wasn't even actually awake when I suffered the injury.  I was asleep in my bed when it happened, effectively dead to the world after a day tending fields.  I remember waking up more in shock than in pain... the pain came later, but the shock, the surprise, that was all immediate.  A New Persia jet fighter plane had come down right on top of my house.  Can you believe it?  In a war for control of oil, they were still short sighted and foolish enough to use fuel guzzling jet fighters?  I remember as a boy, my history teacher told me that at the advent of the tank, the generals of the day had actually believed that such a contraption could not replace their mounted cavalry.  They were set in their ways, and I suppose those generals heading into the Oil War were just as set in their own ways two centuries later.  Jet fighters, tanks, they were the tools of their craft, they depended on them.  They did eventually learn, of course... and, in fact, I am a victim of their education.  You see, by that stage in the war, oil was being rationed.  A fighter jet would be given no more fuel than it was calculated necessary for their mission.  That plan was madness.  There were more deaths through fuel shortages than there was from enemy fire!  Their fuel rationing was so strict, that I have heard that even a strong wind blowing against the aircraft would cause enough additional fuel usage for the jet to come up short handed for its run.  I don't know why the Persian fighter jet ran out of fuel in my case, but it did, and down it came, right on top of me and my farm house.  I got away lucky from that one, all things considered.  A leg lost is much more preferable than a life lost.  I hold no malice for the pilot; he was doing the best job he could in an idiotic war.  He must have ejected before the crash, because they never found a body.  Not that I found any of this out for a few days, you understand.  I had my own concerns to deal with, of course.

There is always going to be a stereotype against those nations not privileged to have joined the Carbon Control Coalition - the “third world” countries, as they were called in my youth, before the C3 became the de facto standard of global economic and political branding.  In some ways, those stereotypes are quite true, but let me tell you from my experience, that the small, local hospital they took me to was as good as any you'll find in a C3 capitol!  They were working in insanely poor conditions.  The national power grid had been down for months, and they were still doing their best to run using old generators, using out dated technology and, forgive the hyperbole, working miracles with their old, broken down equipment all the same.  Without their near super human efforts, I would have surely died of my injuries.  Heh, though, at the time, I was not so thankful for their efforts as I am now.  I had lost everything.  My home, my leg, my livelihood.  How could I tend a farm on one leg?  How could I live without a home?  How could I hope to survive?  I spent days battling depression in that hospital ward, sat there sullen and sulky, hating the world and lashing out at everyone around me.  It was on the beginning of my second week in the hospital, I think, that things began to turn around for me.   A European fighter had come down on a local family house during the night, this one shot down, I believe.  I had been lucky that the New Persian fighter had come down with no fuel, because the result of the European fighter's crash, still fuel laden, was horrific.  All but one member of the family died.  The parents in the impact, and a sister burned to death in the inferno that followed.  The sole survivor of the tragedy was a thirteen year old boy, badly injured and fighting for his life.  He was still fighting for his life when they brought him to my ward.  I sat and watched as the doctors fought to save him, watched as he cried and called for his mother.  I also sat and watched as they wheeled in a portable generator to try and get some life out the antiquated equipment that was meant to save the boy's life.  The generator wasn't for working though, and by this stage, I think the boy knew his hours on this Earth were numbered.  The thing is, though, I could see why the generator wasn't working.  It was a simple fault!  Any mechanic could have fixed it in minutes... and call it luck or fate, but there in the bed next to this dying boy and this broken generator, was an engineer, a mechanic, a tinkerer.  I convinced the doctors to let me try my hand at the generator... and though I fixed it, it isn't that that stays with me.  It's the boy that stays with me.  He went silent as I tinkered with the malfunctioning generator.  The doctors told me that he was so quiet because he was fighting at that stage for consciousness, but I looked into his eyes and that is not true.  He was watching what I was doing intently, interestedly.  Not completely watching me, you understand, but watching the generator, watching it come to life, watching how it worked and how it was fixed.  I remember watching my own father work on our old car with that same quiet interest.  It did my heart, not so old then as it is now, so much good to see that look in his eyes.  The boy did lose consciousness eventually, but not until the generator hummed to life.  The doctors were able to save the boy, and that, that was the turning point in the whole ordeal for me.  I hadn't saved his life, but if I had helped even a tiny bit, then I had served some purpose in this world... and if I could serve a purpose once, I could serve it again.

It wasn't even a month before I was rolling around the hospital in my wheelchair, fixing this and that for them, adapting this and modifying that to keep it running.  I spent the remainder of the Oil War like that, you know?  The staff arranged quarters for me and a small wage, and I worked the remainder of the war as their tinkerer, keeping them operational at a level that even our richest cities would have envied.

I didn't just tend to the machines of the hospital in that time, though.  Daily, I would go visit my little saviour, still fighting for his life.  That lasted for weeks, always wondering if he'd still be alive when I went to pay my visit... and then one day, he wasn't only alive, he was vibrant.  He was on the road to recovery, and it looked like everything was going to be all right after all.  Two months after that visit, probably less, the boy was tagging along behind me watching me keep the machinery of the hospital in some form of functional condition.  It wasn't long after that before he was tinkering and fixing things on his own, always coming to me with a query on how this works or why this doesn't.  Everyone said we were like father and son, but I think we were more like student and teacher, and we both loved it that way.  He craved knowledge, and I adored teaching him.  We both spent the whole war like that, teacher, student, fixers and tinkerers.  

By the end of the war, we were both on the hospital pay roll, and even moonlighting fixing little bits and bats for the townsfolk, too.  The boy had grown into a young man by now, and I was growing from a young man to a... I want to say man, but even then I felt more like I'd grown into an old man, I'll admit.  He still treated me like his teacher, too, even though I think he had surpassed me long since.  Things were looking up, or at least, that's what I thought.  When the Carbon Control Coalition was established, I really believed things were changing for the best.  My apprentice wasn't so sure.  I had never held my injury against the Persian pilot... but ... but how could you not want to blame someone for the loss of your family?  And blame the soon-to-be C3 nations he did.  He believed they would hog the oil to themselves and leave us to rot in a continuing economic and technological downward spiral.  He wasn't completely wrong, either.  The first day they announced the plans for “Economic Zoning”, his only comment on the whole affair to me was “I told you, didn't I?”.

After that, things were actually good for a long time.  Our renown, he called it, whereas I say infamy, as the local technophiles had spread from the hospital to all over town.  In the post-war depression days, no one was teaching engineering, electronics or mechanics; it seemed like a dead craft.  Of course, that was a fallacy; you couldn't wean us off of technology over night, so whilst no one was willing to teach a new generation the tools of my craft, my apprentice and I were forever on call, inside and out of the hospital, always being asked to do little jobs to get this or that running again.  It was the year before Economic Zoning came into effect that he brought the mayor to me, and we all sat down while the two of them tried to convince me to run a small course, an academy he called it, teaching those who were willing to learn my “dying art”.  I was reluctant, but, they talked me into it.  Between that time and the beginning of the last war, we ran the academy together.  By the first shot of the last war, we had trained over a hundred engineers for our town... and he was still my brightest pupil.  His ability to think outside the box was phenomenal.  I would have never thought to augment the hospital's ambulances with battery powered engines and solar cells!  I wouldn't have even known where to start without his initiative and inventiveness.  I was so proud of him.  Am still so proud of him.

When the New Technology, as we called it then, came along, he embraced it with all his heart.  Here was a fuel that he didn't need to use sparingly and reverently, that he didn't need to justify the use of to local C3 inspectors, always looking for an excuse to downgrade our economic zone class.  He adored the New Technology, and was doing wonders with it before I'd even figured out half the potential.  It broke his heart when the C3 outlawed its use.  I can't even describe what it did to him when he heard that our leadership had decided to side with the C3 and embrace the ban, instead of siding with the Corporation and the Great Panacea they proffered.

We had many heated arguments about “defecting” to the other side, about leaving for a region that embraced the New Technology.  He wanted to, of course he did, but I was set in my ways and wanted to stay in my home.  As time went by, the arguments got more heated, and he started to view me as an old fool... as I view those generals who couldn't get beyond using jet fighters, I couldn't get beyond the “old ways” as he called them.  The last time I spoke to him, we fought, and fought hard.  We had both gotten riled up over a recent terrorist attack that was being pinned on the Corporation.  I was outraged, and he... didn't care.  He said it was what the C3 got for outlawing the future the Corporation represented.  In the end, he was so angry that he just walked out... and never came back.  He had finally decided to go over to the Corporation's side, to leave for their camp and a territory friendly to their cause.  I had hoped to follow, to try and find him.  There were only so many local areas that he could have gone too, and I was all set to go and find him, to try and talk some sense in to him... when the war started.  The borders closed, and all hell broke loose.  

That fight was the last time I saw him. Is likely the last time I'll ever see him.  I do not know if he is alive or dead.  For all I know, he could have flourished under the Corporation's tutelage.  For all I know, he could have been the architect of those New Tech raider buggies that tore through our town at the peak of the conflict, killing, destroying and spreading the infectious New Tech over our otherwise clean lands.  But... I... I can't bring myself to believe that that last scenario is possible.