Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I don't know if the idea of a countdown contradicts the idea of wanting to die -- even someone who has resigned themselves to such a death may not want to suffer through some very long seconds of waiting for the shoe to drop.
As for taking a desk job -- it's important to recognize how important (and symbollic) his desk job was. It continues Prophecy's most basic theme -- that the grizzled and haunted veterans are passing their lessons on to inexperienced new officers who lack the emotional baggage 30 years of war brought all of the previous heroes. Blair's work on the Midway (and his plans to teach at the Academy) mirrors this -- he's using what he paid blood for to prevent the next generation from facing the same cost. He probably recognized that being left alone with the past is a sure way to madness... he saw it at an extreme in Tolwyn and he saw it in himself after the war (when he became an alcoholic).
As for taking a desk job -- it's important to recognize how important (and symbollic) his desk job was. It continues Prophecy's most basic theme -- that the grizzled and haunted veterans are passing their lessons on to inexperienced new officers who lack the emotional baggage 30 years of war brought all of the previous heroes. Blair's work on the Midway (and his plans to teach at the Academy) mirrors this -- he's using what he paid blood for to prevent the next generation from facing the same cost. He probably recognized that being left alone with the past is a sure way to madness... he saw it at an extreme in Tolwyn and he saw it in himself after the war (when he became an alcoholic).