Zoe's Tale (Old Man's War, #4)

by John Scalzi

Well, I tried to use it once: When I was younger I tried to argue with Jane that I should be able to stay up late one night because I had special status under treaty law. I thought that was pretty clever. Her response was to haul out the entire thousand-page treaty—I didn’t even know we had a physical copy—and invite me to find the part of the treaty that said I always got to have my way. I stomped over to Hickory and Dickory and demanded they tell Mom to let me do what I wanted; Hickory told me they would have to file a request to their government for guidance, and it would take several days, by which time I would already have to be in bed. It was my first exposure to the tyranny of bureaucracy.

And thus began the Great Magellan Music War: All of us networked our PDAs together and furiously started making playlists of our favorite music to show how our music was indisputably the best music ever.

(and here I perform a hat tip to my particular inspirations, Orson Scott Card with Ender’s Shadow and Tom Stoppard for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead),