Nevada Test Site. July 2007. They won't work without it.

if it needs more Yurei: Conclusion of Balance of Payment on Bangladeshi aspect.

The best advice I've ever been given.

Eli and I are sitting in the starboard windbreak slash smoking area of the USS O'Brien, I am ranting about the port BRU-14A on 112. The CADs (cartridge actuated devices,) are not firing when they are supposed to fire.

This is cause for some irritation on my part.

Eli on the other hand is trying to figure out why the parking brakes won't release.

"I mean goddamnit man, I changed the fucking rack, the fucking ASDC, the ACIP, that fucking ARA, and the aft relay panel. And just where in the holy fucking hell is the port signal inhibit box?" Taking a break from the tirade, I pause and have a long drag on a cigarette. One more epithet is added for effect, one last attempt at catharsis before we stamp out the butts in coffee cans glued to the wall and head back to the freezing hanger on the spine of the ship. "Dicklickers."

I do not know polar cold, nor is it something that I desire to experience.

What I do know is that I am slowly getting trenchfoot from alternating between sweating and freezing inside the heavy leather boots we must wear.

That and the fact that the ship just can't get the laundry clean. Or dry, for that matter. Hence trenchfoot. Removing your boots in the evening is rapidly becoming an adventure in severe pain, odd smell, and colors that are more suited for a salad bar than body parts.

"You're being awful quiet." Glaring at Eli, I use tone to accuse him of not pretending to pity my plight. "Some fucking sympathy would be nice here, like 'gee Yurei, that sucky bomb rack gripe sure sounds way the fuck worse than a jammed parking brake.'"

"Fuck it," he says with an almost imperceptible shrug. "Really."

"Sage advice, brother." In earnest, after flopping onto the large metal lifejacket container on which Eli is sitting.

"Burn another before we go back upstairs?" Eli asks rhetorically.

"Fuck it. Not like that big bag of crap airplane is going anywhere." We light two more cigarettes and smoke in silence, wind howling just outside the skin of the ship. Snow is collecting near the corners by the unsealed door, it is painted blood red by the ship's night lighting.

It is in this moment that I realize Eli is truly the smartest man to ever walk the face of the Earth.

Fuck it, indeed.

delayed reaction missives - e - m a i l : b a k a . y u r e i a t g m a i l . c o m