"It was one F. One F!" Clement buried his head in his arms as he sat on the family couch.

"Well, one thing's clear," said Dad, "we're not paying a cent for your appeal. If you want to weasel out of your duty to this country you'll be on your own."

"The government is taking men off the streets for this stupid war!" fumed Claire, "because fighting communism ten thousand miles away is so much more important than solving poverty and racism at home!"

"I won't have that kind of treasonous talk in my house!" responded Dad, "you can have any opinion you like about things here, but don't forget who's making it possible for you to have that opinion."

"Go tell the people of My Lai how many freedoms they enjoy," Claire shot back.

"Calm down, everyone," Mom said, softly but authoritatively. "What's happened has happened. You can feel any way about it as you want, but we have to obey the law. Homer, how about telling Clement what your experience with the Selective Service was like?"

Homer stood up from his seat. "My hearing was in May 1967. That was the year after I got my degree and a few months after somebody introduced me to the ARPANET. The hearing was in the courthouse downtown. And there were two hundred twenty-four of us, just eighteen-year-olds, trying to throw each other onto the fire so we wouldn't have to go ourselves.

"I asked for and got a letter from some DOD functionary or other telling me I was doing 'work of national importance' for the Department of Defense and thus should not be conscripted. But I decided to mess with the draft board a bit anyhow.

"C's get called pretty early so I knew I had my chance. The Draft Board members were right there, checking me out. So I tried to look strong but I don't think I managed.

"'Why shouldn't you be inducted?' the chairman of the board began.

"'What's "inducted"?'

"'Sending you off to do your duty for your country.'

"'Why, can't the country do its own duty?' You should have heard everybody laughing.

"'You're looking for laughs. Keep doing that and we'll hold you in contempt.'

"'You send a fella off to die and I'm supposed to be the one hating you.'

"'Sir, we require due respect in an official proceeding.'

"'So you can't proceed without respect?'

"Well, he thought for a while and then he said, 'no, we cannot.'

"Then a spectator decided to do my job for me and shouted 'then you're a square!' The chairman looked up. He saw it was a girl and so he looked down after realizing he couldn't take revenge on her later.

"Well then I decided to end the shenanigans and show my letter. They saw an opportunity to cause me trouble just like I'd caused them embarrassment.

"'Who's it from?'

"'Charles F. Davis, Advanced Research Projects Agency,' I read off the envelope.

"'And what do you do with him?'

"'It's so secret I can't tell you. In fact it's so secret I'm not even allowed to say this secret exists. Consider yourselves favored.'

"'That's a favor from Mr. Davis, not from you.'

"'But I am the one who made you know of the existence of his favor.'

"'Let us have a look at that letter.'

"I passed over the letter and they read over it to themselves, and then they said:

"'You work with computers?'

"'Yes, sir. My job is to establish an interoperable packet-switching network that'll connect all computers in this country to each other.'

"'Now stop with that gobbledygook! Spend some time learning what words like "inducted" mean instead!'

"'Well I can't help it sir, that's my job. If you can't understand it I'm sure Charlie can't either.'

"'How will this...network packet thing help us beat Charlie?'

"'It's not about Charlie. It's about the Russians. If the Russians ever nuke us we'll still have a way to talk with each other before we die from the resultant fallout. That's what this is about.'

"'That's what we got second strikes for.'

"'Second strikes will need to be coordinated.'

"'So you're working in emergency communications?'

"'Well, certainly the messages that are communicated will be about emergencies.'

"'Well, be sure to say so earlier next time.'

"'I did but you were too focused on making me understand the meaning of "inducted".'

"'Be sure to treat the military authority with more respect next time.'

"And that was how I got the gold prize: an indefinite deferment for as long as I'm doing work of national importance, which my current research is."