Free Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
    The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.

    Billy saw the war movies backwards then forwards—and then it was time to go out into his backyard to meet the flying saucer. Out he went, his blue and ivory feet crushing the wet salad of the lawn. He stopped, took a swig of the dead champagne. It was like 7-Up. He would not raise his eyes to the sky, though he knew there was a flying saucer from Tralfamadore up there. He would see it soon enough, inside and out, and he would see, too, where it came from soon enough—soon enough.
    Overhead he heard the cry of what might have been a melodious owl, but it wasn’t a melodious owl. It was a flying saucer from Tralfamadore, navigating in both space and time, therefore seeming to Billy Pilgrim to have come from nowhere all at once. Somewhere a big dog barked.
    •  •  •
    The saucer was one hundred feet in diameter, with portholes around its rim. The light from the portholes was a pulsing purple. The only noise it made was the owl song. It came down to hover over Billy, and to enclose him in a cylinder of pulsing purple light. Now there was the sound of a seeming kiss as an airtight hatch in the bottom of the saucer was opened. Down snaked a ladder that was outlined in pretty lights like a Ferris wheel.
    Billy’s will was paralyzed by a zap gun aimed at him from one of the portholes. It became imperative that he take hold of the bottom rung of the sinuous ladder, which he did. The rung was electrified, so that Billy’s hands locked onto it hard. He was hauled into the airlock, and machinery closed the bottom door. Only then did the ladder, wound onto a reel in the airlock, let him go. Only then did Billy’s brain start working again.

    There were two peepholes inside the airlock—with yellow eyes pressed to them. There was a speaker on the wall. The Tralfamadorians had no voice boxes. They communicated telepathically. They were able to talk to Billy by means of a computerand a sort of electric organ which made every Earthling speech sound.
    “Welcome aboard, Mr. Pilgrim,” said the loudspeaker. “Any questions?”
    Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: “Why me?”
    “That is a very
Earthling
question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why
you?
Why
us
for that matter? Why
anything?
Because this moment simply
is
. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?”
    “Yes.” Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.
    “Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no
why
.”

    They introduced an anesthetic into Billy’s atmosphere now, put him to sleep. They carried him to a cabin where he was strapped to a yellow Barca-Lounger which they had stolen from a Sears Roebuck warehouse. The hold of the saucer was crammed with other stolen merchandise, which would be used to furnish Billy’s artificial habitat in a zoo on Tralfamadore.
    The terrific acceleration of the saucer as it leftEarth twisted Billy’s slumbering body, distorted his face, dislodged him in time, sent him back to the war.
    When he regained consciousness, he wasn’t on the flying saucer. He was in a boxcar crossing Germany again.
    Some people were rising from the floor of the car, and others were lying down. Billy planned to lie down, too. It would be lovely to sleep. It was black in the