Fives hardly blinks, he's so caught up in the General's story, trying to imagine the places and people and things he describes, picturing mountains and metal and men instead of the mundane surroundings of the little cafe they're sitting in. It makes him wish he could have been there: the magnificent vistas, the harsh conditions, the camaraderie of men doing any truly dangerous work, be they soldiers or laborers. He wonders what it would be like to build something with his brothers, something solidly tangible and important, rather than kill and destroy, or scatter their separate ways trying to earn a living in this alien world they've been thrown into unprepared.

"You don't mean nineteen sixty-four, do you?" he asks at the end, brows furrowed slightly as he looks back up at the General. He has little sense of history and knows almost no details of it, not even of this country he ostensibly served and now lives in, let alone anyplace else. "And what was the Taiping rebellion?" Even if he had the time to devote to trying to learn all the things he and his brothers missed in their brutal and single-minded upbringing he wouldn't know where to start, but the tidbits the General drops, casually, just a part of his life, are irresistible glimpses into a fascinating, wider world.