"Heads Down, Thumbs Up" by Gavin J. Grant

Imagine a town on the edge of nations, where the border shifts often. “Heads Down, Thumbs Up,” this week’s SCI FICTION Original by Gavin J. Grant, gives us that town. But in Grant’s town, the whole world changes when the border shifts.

Grant’s protagonist is a young boy, living in a town close to the border during war. When the border changes, so does everything else. The children in his school instantly know the new language; the protagonist describes it coming over him “like the dirty water spreading across the painting table when I knocked over my paint cup.”

The adults change when the border changes too. They are sometimes harsher, more unpleasant. The protagonist’s father is happier in the other country; we are told “he’s sad because in this country he was cruel…”

In Grant’s world, we most visibly see the tolls of war on the women. They are the ones who suffer wounds. They have the glass eyes and false limbs. But we rarely see soldiers.

“Heads Down, Thumbs Up” applies a metaphysics of simplicity to the extreme. The border moves and the world inside that border shifts to conform. And, often, the children are the ones who see the world most clearly.  Having never really been around war, I don’t know if this has any bearing to reality, but in fiction this is a strong way to examine war.