The Coming of the Quantum Cats

Staff Sergeant Nyla Sambok wasn't a staff sergeant any more, because nobody was. The American Army had been disbanded, along with the Soviet, by the League of Nations' peacekeeping forces. She still wore her uniform, however, dirty and wrinkled though it was. She didn't have anything else. As she waited in the Indianapolis terminal for the train home, the ex-captain on the bench next to her was listening to a little radio. It was repeating the terms of the one and only message her world had received to explain what had happened. We have removed all of your temporally displaced persons and your researchers in paratime physics, as well as inducing radioactivity to make your research centers unusable. No further research in this area is permitted. Nyla Sambok didn't need to hear it again. She only wished it had come earlier. The submarine-launched cruise missiles the Americans had not known the Soviets owned had been only marginally effective. Still, they had taken out Miami, Washington, Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle. The bomber-launched smart bombs the Russians had not known the Americans owned had done the same for Leningrad, Kiev, Tiflis, Odessa, and Bucharest. It was the prevailing opinion that the worst was over, since the exchanges appeared to be under the limit for a nuclear winter to follow. It would be months, though, before anyone knew.