Entry #8: Mustard Gas and Roses: A Computer Virus

 "Billy answered. There was a drunk on the other end. Billy could almost smell his breath—mustard gas and roses. It was a wrong number. Billy hung up."
Mustard gas and roses; two items that I can't help but feel to be quite opposite in terms of deeper meanings. Mustard gas symbolizes the war and its trauma, and roses are often used as a symbol for love. The idea that Billy Pilgrim would combine the two together is somewhat of a testament to how damaged by war he really is. The fact that aliens incessantly copy and paste him into different times in his life probably doesn't help much either.
Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time. Billy Pilgrim is a computer file. Tralfamadorians are getting a kick out of copying and pasting him in different times. Yet this does not mitigate the situation that Pilgrim finds himself in. He is forever a bug trapped in amber, and stuck between the lives of a war-damaged optometrist who mixes the smells of romance and chemical weapons over a drunken phone call, and of an alien abducted guinea pig forced bounce around his timeline only to be reassured by the knowledge that everything is his life has already been decided and be comforted by cheap knock-off furniture from Sears aboard an alien spaceship. The war damaged version of Pilgrim sounds alright now, except for the haunting smell of mustard gas and roses that seems to be the virus of Billy Pilgrim, the computer file. There's only one man who could have that breathe and be drunk calling people that late at night, and I think he's on the line from chapter one.