Mark Spitz remembered his first ride in a military transport, the armored behemoth that retrieved him from the great out there. When he clambered out of the hatch and blinked at the perimeter lights and sentry nests, order in its accumulated manifestations, he knew he had been cast in a new production. This was no jerry-rigged fortification of depleted wanderers, bolted together by blood and self-delusion, this was government. This was reconstruction. The end in abeyance.
