Thank You For Drinking Vodka In The Library

[what follows is a dream I had the night after I finished reading Gravity's Rainbow, reconstructed to the best of my ability]

It was daylight, but there would be no trouble getting in undetected.

There were other concerns. There was a war going on, after all, and only the government seemed to notice, though there were even questions about this. Everyone else, the ones on the ground, only noticed the chaos, the screaming, the explosions, the hills that were blossoming downwards into craters as rubble was projected through the air almost horizontally, landing and resting while it had the chance before it was blown into the air again.

It was about rockets, ostensibly, though there was a feeling that the rockets had only started the conflict but the resolution would require a much deeper and more definitive conclusion. Because there was little doubt that the rockets would be fired and even less doubt that they would bring no real harm, as incomplete as they were, but neither side stopped and, what was stranger, neither promised victory. Only indefinite conflict, ending when the other side was obliterated, which would be never, perpetuating as long as there would be values worth fighting for, which was always. In this way, everyone really had a lot in common.

Faced with a war that would only end if the winner failed horribly somehow, the public had done the only reasonable thing, which was to ignore the fight and live as they had before. And so they walked past battlefields, biked through minefields, drove around and through gaping holes in strategic roads that had been bombed from above, each obstacle only making them more determined than before to move as if without obstacles. Many died, of course, but they were buried with little celebration or grief. If the obituaries were to be believed, hundreds of victims young and old alike were dying of heart attacks and cancers and strokes every day, after which they were plugged into the ground in blank, unadorned cemetaries which themselves were sometimes attacked because sometimes there just weren't enough things to attack and people had to resort to cemetaries because a day without attacking would be a day without progress and progress was always important.

Not that this is the way it had been since the beginning. Of course, these things worked in stages. First there was the confusion, then the patriotism, then the grief, then the outrage, then the confusion again, then everyone was just overwhelmed and gave up and this is where we were today.

So the spies were doubly assured. They would be missed by the troops and ignored by the civilians. They wore street clothes, but not so they could blend in, but only because that's what people wear, as the ritual of anything any part of espionage resembling anything covert had disappeared years ago. So they wore their jeans and sweatshirts and backpacks. They didn't know what was in the backpacks. They only knew the backpacks were to be deposited on the second floor of a completely unstrategic library just a few miles from a real strategic target, where the rockets would be fired. But strategy hadn't worked, or rather it had worked a little too well, as it hastened the end of the war which no one really wanted to see because then there would be after the war and then no one really knew what would happen.

So the three of them walked quickly towards the library and arrived, as predicted, without trouble. The library was in a school where students and teachers shouted at one another over the sound of explosions in the parking lot and all around them, but outside at least for know.

SPY 2: How do we get in?

SPY 1: There's a door over there.

SPY 3: We might have to break in.

SPY 1: There's a door over there. It's open.

SPY 2: There's a classroom right underneath the library. We'll break in through the window and make our way upstairs.

So they did, the first spy following the other two. After all, something had to keep espionage interesting. No one in the classroom looked up from their lesson as the spies dashed through.

They ran upstairs and found themselves in a library. They looked for an ideal place to drop their backpacks and chose a catwalk with shelves of books that had been untouched for years on either side. The first spy wondered what was in his backpack, but he was more concerned with escape and catching up with the other two spies who were already looking for a way out.

They had gotten lost in the labyrinthine shelves. The three of them came upon a staircase different from the one they had used to get upstairs. Next to it was a sign. It read:

"Thank You For Drinking Vodka In The Library"

Underneath the sentence was an arrow pointing down the stairs. One of the spies took a step down the stairs, but then quickly returned to the second floor as joined the other two, trying to decode the sign.

SPY 2: What does it mean?

SPY 3: I guess they just mean to thank us for drinking vodka in the library.

SPY 2: But why would they put this sign up?

SPY 1: I don't like the looks of this.

SPY 3: It's just a stupid sign. The sign can't hurt us.

SPY 2: But why is it here? How do they know we drank vodka in the library?

SPY 3: We didn't drink vodka in the library.

SPY 2: Exactly!

SPY 1: There's an elevator over there.

SPY 3: Forget it. It's just a stupid sign. We'll take the stairs.

SPY 2: What about the sign?

SPY 3: It's just a stupid sign. We need to escape. We don't have time to worry about stupid signs.

SPY 1: There's an elevator over there. We can use that to escape.

SPY 3: Forget it. We'll just take the stairs.

SPY 1: There's no sign by the elevator.

SPY 3: We're taking the stairs. We don't have time to discuss this, we have to escape now.

SPY 1: We still can escape now and we can still take the elevator.

SPY 3: Stairs it is.

The two spies went down the stairs, but the first was still suspicious. He walked over to the cylindrical glass elevator and went down. He should have seen the other spies at the foot of the staircase, but instead he saw no less than twenty enemy soldiers involved in mayhem where the spies should have been. He saw one of their heads, already bleeding from the mouth, gasp for air before being pulled below the surface of bodies and limbs. "You're being arrested for drinking vodka in the library!" he heard one of the soldiers shout before he sped out of the building unsuspected.

On the street, he found some people and tried to blend in, something he hadn't tried to do in a while. He took a turn just past the library and found himself in a clean, bright tile promenade with shops and potted plants and benches on either side. He started tailing a mother and daughter and overheard their conversation, though he couldn't tell who was speaking.

1: Benjamin Franklin is coming back in style.

2: What do you mean?

1: Benjamin Franklin. People are dressing like him, talking like him, buying his books, living by his precepts.

2: Well that's stupid.

1: Why?

2: Well wasn't he a debaucher?

1: Yeah.

2: And isn't he old?

1: Yeah.

2: And isn't he an idiot?

The spy looked over his shoulder. Over a hill, a rocket sits. A red tint climbs its steel body and climbs to the tip. A crane jerks awake and rises from the ground. It plucks the rocket out of its launch pad, exposing the ring of small red frames which shrink in the cool morning air. The rocket is dropped onto its side and a new one takes its place, ready to be launched. The spy lets out a feeble cry. Not because he fears the rocket but life without the rocket, because when the rocket is gone, nothing will end. There will only be the need for something awful, something worse, to take its place and keep the conflict going.