Uncle Si plots his escape

Uncle Silas stands in this same place, beneath a computer monitor, in the same building, on the same compound, on the same military base in Afghanistan, staring at the same Uniform (a good looking guy, he admits), looking forward to a change. He hears the soldiers, recently returned from missions outside the wire or even from lunch, complain about the sun in the cloudless sky or the dust. Since he was put into a box and shipped to Afghanistan, Uncle Si hasn't seen the sun or the sky.

Sometimes, early in the morning after all the Uniforms are gone, Uncle Si will stand in front of the computer screen instead of below it, just to get a different view and feel the computer's glow on his face, pretending he's somewhere else. As soon as he hears the first Uniforms arriving for the day's work, he promptly takes his place underneath the monitor where he stands silent while the Uniform whose desk Si lives on reads and types and edits and responds and sends the days away.

Uncle Si doesn't feel sorry for himself; he's not that kind of toy. He simply spends his days thinking about (thinking being a kind of movement one can do without anyone noticing!) and planning his eventual escape into the Outside, which really means anywhere other than this dusty perch below a computer screen.

After six months of standing in this same place, beneath a computer monitor, in the same building, on the same compound, on the same military base in Afghanistan, Uncle Si decides that now is as good a time as ever to see what he can see.