Eschaton: AMNAT's wiseacre, the pincer on Kittenplan, and the beating

pivotal · 8 Nov YDAU, I-Day afternoon

• When: 8 Nov YDAU, Interdependence Day, afternoon — the game's degeneration ends at the 1600h Sunstrand siren.
• What: McKenna plays the I-Day Eschaton as an AMNAT combatant, and the narration's mock-treatise on megatonnage tips its hat to him by name — conceding, re strontium-90's twenty-two generations of fallout, "and yes wiseacre McKenna of AMNAT the world will probably notice the difference." As real snow starts falling on the map, he and Gopnik abandon their posts for the weather itself, "running around well outside their assigned quadrants with their tongues outstretched." When the game goes to full nonstrategic combat he gets purposeful: he and INDPAK's Penn, with their long-standing personal grudges against Ann Kittenplan, peel off, gather ordnance, and execute a pincer movement on her — "She is hit twice from behind at close range." It costs him: Kittenplan drops her racquet and charges, "takes two contact-bursts in the breast-area before she gets to him and lays McKenna out with an impressive left cross," and in the chaos's later stage "has Kieran McKenna in a headlock and is punching him repeatedly on the top of the skull." The scene's closing tableau — Lord headfirst through the monitor, snow muffling everything — counts him among the casualties. His largest on-page action in the book, and the root of everything after it.