Wow, and to think not too long ago people were complaining that the War Tavern was dead. Well, make that person.

Anyway, this is pretty nice. It's theme is quite good, and to a fair degree different from all the other recent stories. The only glaring mistake I can see is that there is little transition between the paragraph when the crew is granted their leave and the paragraph where Algernon is in the simulation, making it looks at first like he immeditaly jumps off the communication tower and starts getting shot at by people. Or did you want it to look that way?