SNOW
"Why do you want to retire to Seehof?" Lindsey asked her father. "It's the middle of nowhere."
"I want to see snow again," her father answered wistfully.
"What?" said Lindsey. "When have you ever seen snow? It doesn't snow in Nürnberg."
"It used to snow during the war," said her father.
"Yeah, because the Confederates were bombing us with asteroids and the dust clouds blocked out the sun," said Lindsey. "Why do you want something to remind you of a war that almost wiped out all life on this planet?"
"I don't miss the war," said her father. "I just miss the snow. And the Germans."
"What Germans?" said Lindsey.
"The Germans who came to bring us food," said her father. "During the war, we always had food shortages. For weeks at a time, we had nothing to eat but synthetic tofu, and not enough of that. We couldn't grow crops outside because of the Confederate Winter, and the lamps in our greenhouses kept going out because the bulbs broke or the wires shook loose. Even when nothing was broken, the power would go out because we had always relied on solar power and all of a sudden there was no sunlight. We couldn't build new power plants because we were all trapped underground in meteor shelters. When we weren't getting bombed, the dust storms usually made it impossible to go outside. And when we were getting bombed, even when we broke up the asteroids before they hit the atmosphere, the recoil from our own guns was enough to shake the entire city. It was pointless to try to build anything in those conditions, and nobody could think straight anyway because none of us had had any sleep. The noise from the guns kept us all awake. I've told you all this before, but you can't really understand what it was like to actually be there.
"And our guns were nothing compared to the ones the Confederates were using to fire the asteroids. It takes a tremendous amount to force to move asteroids, and that means there is a tremendous amount of recoil. Sometimes the recoil was strong enough to blast debris and radiation all the way out of the solar system, into Free German space. The Germans didn't care about what was happening to us, but when their ships got caught in the recoil from the Confederate guns, they would demand reparations and the Confederates had to stop the bombing until they made peace."
"So what?” said Lindsey. “It's not like the dumb krauts ever got off their asses to help us.”
“I just told you, they brought us food,” her father said angrily. Lindsey had never heard him get upset like that when she made snide comments about foreigners. “Nobody ever talks about the food ships because the Confederates don't want anyone to remember how much suffering they caused and how careless they were with their bombing," her father explained. "If they talk about the food ships, then they'd have to think about why we needed the Germans to bring us food in the first place. And the Germans won't talk about it because they're still embarrassed about Hitler, and they don't want to be associated with us; but things were so bad here, we didn't care why they were bringing us food, just as long as they brought it.”
Lindsey scoffed. She didn't share her father's fondness for Germans, and she wasn't going to let his rambling about "food ships" deter her from her xenophobic attitude. “Free Germans are shit!” she said. “They've got no self-respect for their history! And then they get this cocky attitude like they're better than us...”
Her father shook his head. “You didn't see them," he said. "Living in a backwater like this, we sometimes forget what it's like to meet really modern and civilized people. We're the ones who have no self-respect, letting our planet go all to hell. It's pathetic! If the Germans had ever come into the war on our side, they wouldn't have just beaten the Confederates. They could have wiped them out of the sky in a week.
“The Germans threatened to come into the war on our side if the Confederates didn't pay for the ships they damaged, and they sent the food ships to prove they were serious. Their ships were as long as cities, and they tore apart the clouds so that the sun would shine for hours after they passed. That was the only time we ever saw the sun. Our own spacefleet had already been destroyed, and our ships were all grounded except when the Germans broke the blockade. When their ships passed overhead, it was like an eclipse. Everything went dark in their shadow, and you couldn't hear anything except the roar of their engines. Their escorts flew in with colors flying, like they were on parade. I think they did it on purpose to lift our spirits and to prove to the Confederates that they weren't afraid. When they were past, the sun was so bright and it came so suddenly that we all had to cover our eyes; and when we looked up again their holographic streamers would be stretched across the sky like long chains of black, red, and gold lighting from one horizon to the other. It was like they controlled the sky itself. To this day, it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life. It was terrifying, to know that other people wielded that kind of power, but it was still beautiful.
"They never landed close to the city because there wasn't enough flat ground for their ships. They would land in the desert and then send soldiers in trucks to deliver the food, or sometimes the bigger transports had to stay in orbit while smaller ships brought the food to the ground; but either way they knew how to make an entrance.”
"So why don't you retire to Germany?" Lindsey said. She felt like rolling her eyes as she said it, but she didn't because she knew it would only offend her father.
"I can't afford to retire to Germany," her father explained.
"I still don't get why you want to retire to Seehof," said Lindsey.
"I told you," said her father. "I want to see snow again."
"When there was a break in the bombing and the dust storms died down enough for us to go outside, I used to love to play in the snow. Sometimes we would go sledding on scraps of metal or plastic or folded up shipping boxes. Or we would build snow forts and have snowball fights. That was the most fun I ever had when I was a kid. It was pretty much the
only fun I ever had during the war.
"And the days when we got to play in the snow were usually the same days when the Germans came to drop off their food. It was easier for them to come when the weather was calm, when there were no dust storms. There was a German soldier who used to bring us hot chocolate at the hill where we went sledding. Her name was Lenora Schneider, and she had two big beautiful white dogs -- familiars, like those psychic pigeons and telepathic drones everyone's blowing their money on these days. We didn't have telepathic relays back then, but the Germans did. The dogs moved with her, like they were part of her own body, much more graceful than those stupid drones. She could see with their eyes and smell what they smelled, and when you looked in the dogs' eyes, you could see that there was human intelligence behind them. You could just tell by the way they looked at you that they understood everything they saw. She could recognize us by our smells, without even looking at us, no matter how bundled up we were. She didn't look like anyone I'd ever met before, and I had never heard of a woman being a soldier or anyone controlling dogs. Our military was all men and machines, so she always seemed more like a cartoon character or an imaginary friend than a real soldier. She was short and gentle with wavy blue hair and a pretty delicate face, not intimidating at all, but she had the most pompous Prussian accent! She liked us, and she said she always asked her commanding officer to send her to Nürnberg whenever they brought in a food shipment so that she could see us. She would just laugh at us if we threw snowballs at her. She sometimes threw them back, but it was always fun. She never got mad or anything.
"And when we went home, there was real food -- rice and beans and noodles and sauerkraut and tea and lemonade and more hot chocolate.
"After the war it took a while for the dust to settle and the weather to get hot again, and I thought of her every time it snowed. Sometimes I half expected to see her again. I went sledding a few times, but it wasn't the same after the war. It wasn't as special anymore when we hadn't been cooped up in the meteor shelters. And Lenora wasn't there to tease us for talking like Bavarian peasants. I thought about her for a long time, long after the snow stopped for good, even when things got better and I could buy my own hot chocolate any time I wanted. I still miss her sometimes, even now. I tried to find out what happened to her after the war, but the Confederate censors always disconnected my calls. Eventually, I moved on, but lately, I've been thinking a lot about the war and the days when we played in the snow and Lenora brought us hot chocolate. That's why I want to see snow again.
"This hot weather just reminds me of the things I screwed up after the war, all the times I fought with your mother, and all the things I never managed to do. Even if it seems stupid, I'd rather be reminded of something I enjoyed."