“He wasn’t superstitious, so in the battle for the fairgrounds his unit sent him in to flush snipers out of a house of mirrors. Did it with an antitank mine and shattered every pane of glass for a thousand yards in every direction. 3,381 years of bad luck in one go. Place got bombed to hell not long afterward, so there’s no chance of going back to grind the mirrors up to reverse the curse.”

“That seems a little harsh, don’t you think? It’s like when someone is sentenced to 500 years in prison–why not just say ‘for the rest of their life?'”

“Well, for one thing, the Major believes in reincarnation. Unless he comes back as a redwood or a Galapagos tortoise, there’s an awful lot of lifetimes between himself and the end of his bad luck run.”