There is much to be said for inventiveness and imagination. Given our head, half the population of Grantville at the moment of the Ring of Fire would have contained exactly the right mix of characters and equipment to make our story a real whiz bang yarn. Hence the need for Virginia’s Grid. Unfortunately there too many of us and too many of these halves. Chaos is an ugly word.
It’s worse than that. In addition to the half who are rocket scientists and the other half who are SEALS, Eric has provided us a list of the following additional halves:
- The half who are engineers, which are in turn divided into half electrical engineers, half locomotive engineers, half chemical engineers, half mechanical engineers, and too many thirds and quarters to count.
- The half who are collectors of all forms of weapons, including the third who collect Abrams tanks and Predators.
- The half who have a library larger than the Library of Congress.
- The half who have a library smaller than the Library of Congress, but significantly larger than the Great Library of Alexandria.
- The half who are above the age of 18 and below the age of 21.
- The half who are above the age of 21 and below the age of 23.
- The half who are above the age of 23 but below the age of 25.
- The half who are college graduates.
- The half who are one month away from graduating from college.
- The half who are one year away from graduating from college.
- The half who have advanced degrees in (see above, not forgetting the thirds and quarters).
There is, I believe — at last count — exactly one person in everybody’s fantasy Grantville who is elderly and illiterate. Of course, he’s also the son of Alvin York and shoots even better than his daddy.