The Numbers Game

There were many reasons why Staff Sergeant Mike Logan hated his job, but mainly because it was all just one big lie, told again and again to people who either didn't know any better or had long ago given up caring. The Office of Strategic Statistics sounded impressive, but all it really meant was that five soldiers who couldn't cut it on the front-line spent their days in a dimly lit and badly ventilated basement office far below operational headquarters, moving numbers around computer screens.

It was all because of the war...

No one could really remember how it had started, or where or when, or even who they were really fighting. All anyone knew was that they had been at war with 'The Enemy' for as far back as anyone could remember. With the surface of the planet rendered uninhabitable by the weapons used, all the cities, towns and farms had been moved into vast underground caverns. The only reason to venture up to the surface was to fight the seemingly endless battles the raged across entire continents. Both sides seemed locked in a deadly stalemate, unable to archive a meaningful victory.

A situation like that was hard to sell to the civilian population, and that's where the Office of Strategic Statistics came in; it was their job to look at the reports coming in and 'adjust' them for release to the media. Mike was responsible for casualty reports, something he loved almost as much as his old job putting together reports on animal feed production.

He activated his screen, and a new report flashed up; another unsuccessful attempt had been made to recapture a city that was now little more than a pile of crushed bricks and half buried streets. In these cases his job was to make it seem like less of the crushing defeat it had been. He looked at the number of casualties the assault force had taken, then removed from that the number of soldiers who had been killed before they had even reached the battle field, when their transports had been shot out of the sky. Then he sorted through the list to find anyone who seemed to have been killed by friendly fire, and likewise removed their names from the list of official casualties. He moved down the list, removing those who had died of their wounds after being evacuated to a field hospital, or in the fierce fighting that accompanied the retreat. In the end, he had managed to trim almost a third off of the official list of casualties and moved them elsewhere, where people wouldn't think to look for them.

It had become clear, very early on in the war, that most people only seemed to care about those who had died actually fighting The Enemy. Family and friends would mourn the deaths of every solider that fell, but that was the responsibility of the Office of Bereaved Dependants, two doors further down the hall. Logan hated OBD with a passion; they always claimed that they had the harder job, but they had their own coffee machine, where as the OSS had to share theirs with the bean-counters in the Office of Financial Accountability next door. It was a somewhat petty reason to hate anyone, but twenty years in the same office doing the same job, day after day, could do that to a man.

Having finished adjusting the list of casualties, Logan's next job was to look at the list of estimated Enemy losses. This time he reversed the formula, adding every confirmed or suspected kill he could find. The Enemy had lost few troops in actual combat, but their support units had been hit hard by a sustained bombardment, so Logan added the estimated strength of those units to the list of killed Enemy combatants. It took most of the morning to trawl through all the relevant reports, but by noon he had managed to almost double Enemies losses, turning what had been a major triumph for them into what appeared to be at best a pyrrhic victory.

Finishing his adjustments, he saved the report and sent it on its way to the relevant Press Officer.

His work complete, he put the report out of his mind. A carer spent dealing with statistics had deadened him to the hash realities of the endless war, making him immune to the horrendous casualty rates he manipulated like a conductor controlling an orchestra. He looked at his watch and frowned; it was too early to go for lunch, but he didn't have time to start work on a new file. Stretching his arms above his head, he looked round for his coffee cup, and finding it half full of now stone cold sludge, he made his way to the coffee machine. Two of the clerks from the OFA were already there, talking about something they seemed to find interesting, but Logan only offered a grunt of recognition before he poured the contents of his mug down the sink and refilled it.

The thick, bitter liquid had only a passing resemblance to real coffee, but then there was no way that such a rare and expensive luxury was going to be waisted on the denizens stuck in the basement of a low priority government building. Grabbing his coffee, he made his way back to his desk; the clock on the wall showed that only a few minutes had passed, but he decided to head down to the mess hall anyway.

The war would still be there when he got back.

The End