Chapter Thirteen - Carl Phillip Gottfried von Clauswitz

"Carl Phillip Gottfried von Clauswitz was a coward lil bitch, and no I ain''t elaborating.

No notes."

--Professor of Military History John B Mcbrea, 2051

***

"Alright, sit down," Professor Rogers said.

I didn''t need to be told twice. Over the last few minutes, while we were doing jumping jacks at one end of the room, the teacher''s assistants were moving the mats off the floor where the seats were. Now the desks had unfolded and were back in their neat little rows.

I flopped down onto mine and let out a long breath. My heart was still pumping fast, and I could feel the wet slickness of sweat sticking to my back. The shitty gym shirt I had didn''t breathe well.

"Class will end in an hour. We''re going to alternate, going forwards, between long class-sessions where we focus on theory and discussions, and physical education at the end, and longer physical education sessions followed by theory," the professor said. "Historically, this has worked relatively well. Even if you feel physically exhausted, that shouldn''t stop your minds from working, and the physical training post-lesson sometimes gives you time to think and meditate on what you just learned."

I nodded. Yeah, I could get that. Not super fond of the idea of spending so much learning time as a sweaty mess, but I got it.

"Good, now that we''re all on the same page, let''s continue our discussion from last time. We talked about Sun Tzu, a strategist and military theorist of ancient China. Today we''re going to cover someone a little younger. Carl Phillip Gottfried von Clauswitz. Everyone who studies military history usually refers to him as Clausewitz alone."

The professor turned to one of his TAs and gestured to them. They returned a moment later with a small fold-out seat that he sat on backwards.

"Clausewitz was a Prussian general and theorist whose work can honestly be said to have shaped modern warfare. He fought in the Napoleonic wars, a time much like the present where new technologies were changing the fundamental ways that wars were fought. He was a successful general, but more importantly, he wrote about his observations in a book whose name roughly translates to ''On War'' or ''About War.''"

Rogers blinked and the screen changed again, this time showing a political sort in front of a crowd, behind him was a group of suits and assistants.

"In January 2035 this man, Maxime Mythe, was one of the leading politicians of a French political party with a middle-right leaning. His party was gaining popularity in several polls and he was in line to become an influential politician. His slate was clean. No cheating on his spouse, no diddling kids, no bribes. He was an asshole, because he was a politician, but a clean one."

The image zoomed in on one of the randos behind the Maxime guy.

"This is his press secretary. A young man whose slate wasn''t nearly as clean. At the time, Maxime was fighting against bio-modifications in his country, wanting to make them illegal and increase enforcement against the use of cyberization. Solace Biotech, a now defunct company, decided to fight against Maxime, but their head of cybersecurity very specifically targeted his press secretary. He was blackmailed into revealing several sensitive documents, including several which were falsified. It didn''t matter that they were fake, the public outrage was enough that by the time investigations were complete, the laws that Maxime wanted to put into place were never going to see the light of day, and his political career was shot."

I rubbed at my face. I hadn''t heard of this thing, but... yeah, that sounded plausible. I''d seen plenty of political shit go down on my personal media feed that looked a lot like this.

So how much of what I''d seen throughout my life was someone fucking with someone else like this?

Lucy would love this shit.

Rogers went on for a while, going back to some ancient history with Clausewitz and then comparing some of that guy''s stuff to Sun Tzu and how they differed in some ways and overlapped in others.

Soon enough, though, the class was over. Five minutes before it was meant to, even.

"Alright, I''ll see you all in two days," Rogers said. "You''re off early because you need to shower. The stink of you lot is driving me insane. We''re starting the next class five minutes early to make up for it."

I peeled myself off the seat, then sighed as a smiling Olivia frumped her way over. "Did you enjoy the class?" she asked. "CIAL''s lessons are specially designed to help students take in as much information as possible in as short a time! Even our physical education is designed to maximize learning efforts!"

"Yeah, it was fine," I said. "I''mma head out. I think there''s a shower in my mech. No offence, but I''m not big on public showers where a bunch of dudes have their dicks out. So, uh, you have fun with that."

I needed to get clean, and maybe zone out for a while.

***