"For the Love of a Quote"
A/N: This is a bit of an epilogue to my story 'The Incredible Team.' I just got several reviews correcting my quote attribution… anyway, this is for kicks & giggles. Enjoy!
ooo
The Soldier was reclining in his bunker. A jolly military band was playing on the radio, and he was winding down a book of great military quotes. He chuckled as he turned a page. "Oh, Genghis Khan, your humor never fails."
Then he noticed: two pages were stuck together. Huh. He rubbed the paper until the pages unstuck. "Well, what have we here?"
In the oil-lamplight, a single phrase leapt out at him: "If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight!" And the name at the top of the page was…
Sun Tzu?
"Who the bloody hell is Sun Tzu?" he asked. "I thought it was… I thought…"
He checked. The quote was properly cited, from an original document translated painstakingly by celibate clerks. The Soldier had been wrong.
"I see…" he muttered to the darkness.
For a long time, he stared into nothing, contemplating the strangeness of the world, the chaotic place where reigned misunderstanding and confusion, and two simple syllables could be completely mistaken.
Quietly, he tore the page out of the book, set it against the flame in his oil lamp, and watched as the paper ignited. When it was just a tiny pile of ashes, he looked down at it, and said,
"Quotes. Huh! What are they good for?"
