The Peacekeepers

ORIGINS: Year 12
THEY'VE appointed me the archivist. My task is to write the official history of the International Peacekeeping Force. I'm doing that, but what happened this morning convinced me that I should also put down this unofficial narrative, these personal recollections, these tales and anecdotes that are the story behind the Peacekeepers.
A true chronicle of something as important as the Peacekeepers doesn't start at one single point. It can't. It's impossible to say, "The history begins here and not there."
Especially when the account involves so many people, so many events as do the origins of the Peacekeepers. Literally millions of strands of individual lives are woven together under the hand of fate to form an intricate, delicate tapestry. (I like that! "Woven together under the hand of fate." I'll have to work that into the official history somehow.) Anyway, it's literally impossible to select a definite, specific time and place for the origin of the IPF. Easier to pinpoint the fall of the first drop of rain in a summer storm, or the exact moment when a youth becomes a man.
There were many origins for the Peacekeepers, and how I'm going to select a starting point for the official history is a problem that I'll be tussling with for some time to come. But I know where to start this unofficial chronicle: with this morning's events.
Copyright © 1988 by Ben Bova