Blood and Genetics

Blade's Edge

Keith rolled over in bed as his computer pinged with a message. He must have forgotten to power it off last night.

Hey, do you want to go out?

Shiro, it's 6:00 in the morning.

And?

It's a weekend. You know, the two days of the week when I'm not required to get up at six?

You'll still have one day to sleep in, then. Come on, it'll be fun. After a couple of seconds, there was another message. I'll buy you fast food.

Keith grinned slightly. He would have gone anyway, but it was funny to know that Shiro thought he could bribe him to do anything with fast food.

Where are you?

Five minutes later, he was down with the jeeps, in his jacket and shorts. Shiro wrinkled his nose.

"Is that what you're wearing?"

"Yeah."

"We have got to get you a pair of jeans or something. You can't keep wearing a jacket with shorts. What are you going to do when it gets cold?"

Keith shrugged. "I'll wear my uniform all of the time."

Shiro made a "tsk" noise as they got into the car. "Alright, first stop, the mall, to get you a pair of jeans."

"I don't need any jeans."

"Yes, you do. No arguments. I'm getting some jeans for you, and then we'll go out for breakfast."

Keith made a noise of discontent at the idea of his breakfast being put off for a pair of jeans, but settled into the seat, watching the desert fly by outside of the window.

Shiro glanced at him and then back at the road. "Weird, huh? To think that we can survive out here? After World War Three, there wasn't much around in the world, you know? A lot of the green spots had been destroyed. But also, cities had been leveled, and plants started to grow in their ruins. But out here... nothing changed."

"There's not much out here to change," Keith replied simply.

"I guess that's why the Garrison built out here in the first place." Shiro shrugged. "My Jiji was just a kid in Japan when the war started. It ended a little before he would have been old enough for the draft. He was helping out beforehand, though, with the codes. He had great handwriting, and he was a fast runner, so they used him a lot. You know, when they weren't sure who was listening and blocking messages. Sometimes a garrison wouldn't be able to communicate with another garrison because of blocks on their communications. So he'd run messages between them, going through occupied territory. No one ever stopped a little kid running, you know? Even if they'd stop a car, no one noticed him."

"Did he ever get caught?"

"Once. He told the enemy that he and his friends were playing war, and that the message was their secret code. No one on the other side knew the difference between the war code and a language that a little Japanese kid had made up, so they let him go. He kept running messages until the war was over. He moved to the States after that, and worked with the Garrison to erase the code from the public in case they ever needed to use it for war again."

"I never knew..."

"That kids worked for the military in the war? Most people don't. It was unofficial, to keep the kids out of danger, so no one really heard about it. What about your grandfather? I'd think he'd be younger than mine was, but..."

Keith shrugged. "I don't know. He died before I was born. Lung cancer. My grandmother died of old age when I was really small, and I couldn't tell you anything about my mother's parents."