It was common knowledge that World War V started in a defective twenty-cent Molecular Circuit Matrix in a newly-installed firecontrol computer four miles below Cheyenne Mountain, Wyoming.

An investigation eventually led to the apartment of Jacob Smith, thirty-eight, of 3400 Temple, Salt Lake City. Smith had tested the MCM and allowed it to be installed in Western Bioelectric's Mark XX "Archangel" Brain Array. The Archangel had then replaced the aging Mark Nineteen in defense of the New Reformed Latter-Day Saints Territories, commonly known as the "Norman Lands."

The story was as apocryphal as that of Mrs. O'Leary's cow. But it was leaked to an eager young reporter for one of the global newsnets, where it eventually became the lead item in the nightly special: "World War V: Day Three." On Day Five Jake Smith was again in the news as a lynch mob dragged him from police headquarters and hung him from a lamp post in Temple Square, not thirty yards from the statue of another famous Smith, no relation.

By Day Sixteen the news anchors were trotting out historians who spent their time debating whether the current unpleasantness should be called World War III, IV, V, the Fourth Nuclear War, or the First Interplanetary War.

There were reasons to support the interplanetary designation, since in the early days some Lunar and Martian settlements had sided with one or another of the Terran factions, and even a few La Grange colonies began tiptoeing toward a foreign policy. But by the time Jake Smith was hung all the Outlanders had declared neutrality.

In the end, the decision was made in an office on Sixth Avenue, New York City, Eastern Capitalist Confederation, by a network logo design analyst. The overnight Arbitrons on the numeral V were strongly positive. The V looked sexy and might stand for Victory, so World War V it was.