Amidst the thud and crash of the howitzers Mrs. Figgy set up a blackboard and lectured him on how to deploy aiming stakes, train the guns, use the written values in the range tables, and all the rest of the necessary technical expertise. The howitzers of this make-believe army were decades more advanced than that of the Fleet, replying on long range plunging fire instead of direct fire.

Rene watched the gun crews at work for a while to learn the rhythm of things before joining in as an ammo bearer, bringing up the shells stacked on tarpaulins at the ammo dump in the rear. Soon Mrs. Figgy had him promoted him to gunner, and by the time the first Amit attack was beaten back Rene was chief of section and directing fire missions with seamless efficiency.

During lulls in the fighting he sat on empty ammo crates and smoked ‘fags’ with the lads. Fags were chopped and dried leaves rolled up in paper that one lit on the end with a match, producing choking vapours that you then inhaled for the dubious benefit of coughing up your lungs. But it was relaxing somehow, and once he got started Rene found he could not stop. Besides, smoking made for good conversation.

“So do the Amits ever stop coming?” he asked, “Or does this illusion go on indefinitely?”

“Things can’t go on like this,” Tommy spoke confidently, “Not after the frogs whipped the huns at Verdun. This whole affair will be over by Christmas, mark my words.”

“Not this shite again. Besides, you’ve got it backwards,” another said. With the exception of Mrs. Figgy, apparently everyone had that same first name, “Between Churchill’s blundering at the Dardanelles and that slaughterhouse they call Somme, I shouldn’t wonder if the Kaiser heaves us back over the channel in time for plum pudding.”

“The Boches will be back,” said a third Tommy, a fag quivering on the corner of his trembling lips, “They always come back. Over and over and over again.”

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Their rations came wrapped in tin boxes that opened with a tiny key that rolled up the lid. Lunch was tinned meat, watery rum and biscuits, but after hours of hard labour Rene had never known such earthly bliss. As they ate Rene learned that the tommies fought for an entity known as the BEF, a civilization many decades more advanced in terms of technology. Rene knew they were historical and not fictional because of the many unmistakeable similarities between the BEF and the Fleet, from the way they spoke to the strict class divisions between officers and enlisted men—Mrs. Figgy for instance never once interacted with the tommies other than to scream orders at them.

Nobody seemed to know what the cause of the war was, only that the press back home had started calling it the Great War, though Rene struggled to see what was so great about it.

One of the tommies sang a sad, whimsical song:

“We’re here because,

We’re here because,

We’re here because we’re here.

We’re here because,

We’re here because,

We’re here because we’re here.”

Rene felt a lump in his throat as a bout of homesickness came over him. Mrs. Figgy saw him wiping his eyes and said:

“They are only an illusion, Rene. An amalgamation of historical video games, heightened by real combat footage against cosmophages.”

“I know,” Rene cleared his throat, “The Amits in here run funny, move too much like human beings do.”

“And why do you think that is?” Mrs. Figgy

Like all proper soldiers they gossiped, trading rumours of terrifying new innovations made by the ‘boches’ (their word for Amits). They spoke of bouncing land mines that leapt up in the air and detonated at chest height, cutting down whole swathes of men, of bombs that released a creeping green mist that could clear out whole trench systems if the wind blew just right.

All of this sounded very far-fetched to Rene. Amits never made anything more complicated than rudimentary tools. Though he had heard of how, during the years-long battle of Assail, some warrior broods had developed harder exoskeletons resistant to bayonets, he ascribed this change more to some freak act of nature than to any intelligence on their part.

He remembered the acid sculptures and star charts he’d discovered back in Mound Euler and began to think twice. If the Amits were smart enough to make art and mythologize, then who knew what they were truly capable of?

Then the second wave of attacks hit their lines, and Rene learned it firsthand.