Atlas

by Isaac Hooke

  "Anyway, the government tried to pass a bill to force all draft age citizens into the army. Failed. But a bill to enlist immigrants of draft age? A roaring success. You'd think they'd just let the AIs run the military, but they don't trust the machines to fire the weapons. Not completely. Would you? But it's funny. Machines basically run society already. Why not let them kill people, too?"

  I rubbed my chin. "Got a question for you, Ace."

  He grinned. "Shoot."

  "Why are you joining the military? You're a citizen. You got it made. Like you said, free room and board, robots to do your chores, don't have to work..."

  "That's the thing. I want to work. I looked long and hard at finding a thinker's job. You know, one where I would look far more attractive, pay-wise, than a machine costing a billion digicoins. I ended up choosing theoretical physicist. Took the free courses on my aReal. The four year program, you know?"

  "Hey Tahoe," I called to the astrophysicist seated in front of me. "This guy's a theoretical physicist. You should be friends."

  Tahoe didn't look back. Didn't want to be friends I guess.

  "Anyway," Ace continued. "When the courses were done, I tried applying for some jobs. Turns out there's no real demand for theoretical physicists after all, not anymore. According to the UC, all the theories we need have already been thought of. There's nothing to discover anymore."

  "I don't believe that for a second," I said. "You're telling me that humanity knows every possible thing about the universe? We've only explored one ten-thousandth of our own galaxy, one billionth of the known universe. We haven't even fully explored our own oceans, let alone our own minds. And you're telling me there's nothing more to discover. Have we encountered any extraterrestrial beings? Nope. What about God? Nope."

  "Hey, you weren't listening, I said—"

  "So don't tell me there are no more theories. That there's nothing more to discover. Because you're dead wrong."

  "Hey, you're preaching to the choir dude." Ace said, a little indignantly. "I did say, according to the UC. But I have to give them credit. Apparently the government has a specialized AI working on the theoretical stuff 24/7. I read a whole article on it at WikiQwiki. A thousand times a second it tests hypothesis and tries things that humans haven't thought of. At least, that's what they think it does all day, though so far all its done is confirm that Slipstreams are theoretically impossible. And yet, that's how we travel between the stars. Five billion digicoins for a machine that tells us Slipstreams are impossible." He shook his head. "By the way, where you're from, do the robos do all the menial work, too?"

  "Naw," I said. "Human labor is far too cheap where I'm from. For the cost of buying and maintaining a robot, a business owner can hire a hundred desperate workers. If any of those workers ever gets injured, there's no expensive maintenance costs to repair him or her. You just get rid of the worker and hire another."

  "Wow. Glad I wasn't born there."

  "It isn't so bad. You learn to make do. The human spirit is resilient, my friend. Not to mention the human body. When you're used to having nothing, nothing becomes your everything, and you never really want for anything. But it's a double-edged sword, because there's the danger of becoming complacent, becoming too happy with that nothing, because you've never known anything better. Complacency is the death of dreams, and freedom. It really is."

  We sat in comfortable silence for a time, using the aReal devices connected to the seats to browse the Net, or to peruse the personal collection of books, movies and music that we had stored offline in our embedded Ids. I was just glad all that data was transferred from my old embedded Id to the new one, because I'd hate to have to seek out and download my stash again.

  I thought of something.

  "Shaw, everyone has a 3D printer in the UC, right?"

  "Sure." She glanced at me from behind her aReal glasses. "Most people do."

  "How do they keep people from printing up guns? The Undernet is packed with downloadable blueprints."

  "Oh, that's all trackable. If you print up a gun, because of the call-home feature in the printers, you'll get a knock on the door from the local police robot. You'll get a warning the first time, and have it confiscated. Do it again, and you get a mandatory jail term."

  "There's an underground market for Net-free printers that come preloaded with gun designs, you know," Ace interjected. "Drop by SilkRoad 5 on the Hidden Wiki and you'll find lots of local vendors." He frowned. "What's the matter, Rade? You don't look too happy."

  "Nothing. I guess even Utopia's have their seedy underbellies."

  "Oh you better believe it."

  "Honestly, it's not really a problem," Shaw said. "Most people don't even want guns, and those who do just join the military."

  The train ride wasn't very long. We reached Recruit Training Command at New Great Lakes in a little under two hours.

  The instant I disembarked from the train I realized I was in for a challenge.

  A blast of frigid, arctic air swept over me, and my body basically jackhammered. It felt like I'd stepped into one of those cold rooms where they hung slaughtered cattle in the abattoir.

  "Thanks Rade," Alejandro said.

  Maybe joining the military wasn't such a good idea after all...

  I crossed some old tracks that were set up beside the supersonic tube, and made my way, shivering, toward the fenced-off base with the other recruits.

  "Looks like a prison," Alejandro muttered.

  As we walked through the base it started to snow lightly. I saw a group of about eighty recruits jogging in perfect formation, completely in sync. One of them called out a cadence. They weren't dressed any warmer than us, but they seemed oblivious to the cold.

  A military police robot herded me and the others to the "recruit in-processing" building. I went inside eagerly, glad to get out of the chill air.

  The police robot divided us up into Recruit Divisions. I'd expected we'd be divided by alphabetical order or something, but the robot merely separated us based on where we stood. My friends and I were all standing close to each other so we ended up in the same Recruit Division. Shaw had been right after all. All we had to do was arrive at the same time and we ended up together.

  The seventy of us were led to a room and the men received a 'high and tight' buzz cut from a series of robots. Alejandro's mustache and beard were shaved off, as was Tahoe's soul patch. The women had their hair cut down to the bottom of their collars. A lot of the girls who had longer hair were crying when it was done. Shaw bore it rather well I thought, although I knew she didn't like it by the way she bit her lip when she glanced at a mirror.

  When all seventy of us were barbered, the MP Robot had us line up in seven rows of ten people each.

  When the Recruit Division Commander showed up a few minutes later I was almost surprised to see that he was an actual human being dressed in khakis and matching sailor hat.

  "I'm Chief Gunner's Mate Atsu Bowden," the dark-skinned man said. "You may call me RDC Bowden, or sir." He waited. "As in, yes sir."

  "Yes sir!" I and the enlistees replied in unison.

  "I can't hear you," Bowden said.

  "Yes sir!"

  "Didn't anyone teach you knuckleheads how to stand at attention?" He looked among us as if expecting an answer. More than a few of us tried to straighten up. I know I did. "Well stand at attention!"

  He moved among us, shoving his palm into some of our bellies, making others lean forward or backward, forcing the hands of a few recruits to their sides.

  "Imagine you're a string puppet," he told one recruit who had particularly bad posture. "And you have a string trailing upward from the top of your head. And the puppeteer gives that string a good hard jerk. Now show me what that would look like, recruit!"

  Bowden eventually made his way back to the front.

  "Now you're looking more like a division. Remember how you're standing right now because I'm never going to repeat that bull again. If you can't stand at attentio
n, one of the simplest, easiest tasks in the Navy, not to mention the entire history of humankind, you don't deserve to be here. Got that? I can't hear you..."

  "Yes sir!"

  "Good. When I answer a question, you answer real loud, because I'm a bit hard of hearing. Got it?"

  "Yes sir!"

  I heard snickering from somewhere behind me.

  Bowden got a big smile on his face. "Someone thinks this is funny? You probably expect me to act like all the drill sergeants you've seen on the Net, don't you? Maybe make an example of the knucklehead, make him do some pushups, or maybe take it out on the rest of you, so you all gang up on him later when he's by himself in the showers or lying in bed by his lonesome.

  "But I'm not going to do that. That's not the Navy's style. You can laugh all you want, recruits. In fact, it'd tickle me silly if you did that. Laughing at the stench of your collective bodies because you never have time to take proper showers. Laughing at the gruel they call food around here. Laughing through all the Physical Training you're subjected to. Laughing at the pitiful amount of sleep you get every night. Laughing when you're on the second klick of your daily five-K run. Yes. Laugh. Please do."

  Bowden waited. No more snickering came from behind me, I noted.

  "I can help you, or destroy you. You can listen to me, or laugh at me. It doesn't matter to me. Respect my authority, do what I say, and you shall pass. Defy me, laugh at me, and you shall fail. With a single one-bit transmission I can have any one of you sent packing. This is my ninth and final push, which means I won't have to lead knuckleheads like you through Basic ever again. So let's just say I've seen a lot of crap, and the crap-I-put-up-with threshold is at the lowest point it's ever been. So try me, I dare you."

  When no one tried him, he ordered all the females into the adjacent room and then he had us males strip down. A humanoid robot moved between our ranks and distributed uniforms, using cut-on-demand technology to tailor the clothing to our bodies.

  I and everyone else got blue cotton pants, a white t-shirt and underwear, a sweat shirt, and a hat with the words "recruit" on it. Other than the shirt and underwear, each item was a bright blue.

  "What happens to our old clothes?" one recruit asked. It was Ace.

  RDC Bowden swooped down on him. "You! Did anyone tell you that you could speak?"

  Ace looked down. "No sir!"

  "Stop staring at the floor and put your freakin' head up."

  Ace looked up again.

  "Don't look me in the eye you ingrate! You haven't earned that honor."

  Ace snapped his head to the side. He seemed on the verge of panic. "Where should I look, sir?"

  "Straight ahead, knucklehead."

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Why is it that UC citizens are always the dumbest of the lot! Thank God for immigrants! Now, in answer to your freakin' question: Your old clothes and any other personal belongings will be sent to the mailing address indicated in your embedded Id. If you don't have a mailing address within this country, all your stuff will be incinerated."

  Oh well. Good thing I wasn't attached to my old clothes.

  After we'd changed, Bowden had us 'reintegrate' with the female recruits, then he led us all outside. I cringed once more at the blast of frigid air. It was snowing even harder now, and the wind had picked up.

  Bowden organized us into a tight square in the courtyard, then he marched us around the base, and we tried our best to stay in line and keep our formation in the cold. A few people slipped in the snow. Bowden swore at us the whole while.

  "You worthless pile of snot-eating, toilet-licking knuckleheads! You donkey-humping ingrates! Keep rank! Keep rank!"

  Bowden led us to our temporary barracks in a nearby building, a room full of bunk beds, with a large partition dividing the room into separate quarters for the males and females. There were lockers at the base of each bunk, with a duffle bag inside.

  "You pathetic excuses for recruits will find your spacebags inside the lockers," Bowden said. "Don't you dare let me hear you call those bags anything else. Not a duffle bag. Not a rucksack. Not a barracks bag. And never a backpack. Spacebag. Also, you will refer to your sleeping area as racks. They are not beds. They are not bunks. What are they?"

  Some people shouted "racks sir," others "spacebags sir," and a couple "racks and spacebags sir!"

  Bowden frowned. "Make up your mind you freakin' knuckleheads! Ah, forget it. Turn about and march to the quarterdeck for Physical Training! Actually, belay that. Just drop where you are! Let's see what kind of PT you can do! Burpee pushups. A hundred. Now!"

  I and some of the recruits were looking around, not sure what Burpee pushups were. I saw someone beside me do a pushup, then launch his feet forward into a squat position, jump up and clap, then squat, touch the ground with both hands, kick his feet back, do a pushup and repeat.

  "That means everyone!" Bowden shouted, his face becoming an even darker shade, an angry vein pulsing on his forehead.

  Burpee pushups were surprisingly hard. I found myself becoming exhausted after only five of them.

  And I had actually thought I was in shape, just because I was a Dissuader back home.

  I may have made a slight underestimate of my fitness level...

  "Jump higher when coming out of the squat you insipid weaklings!"

  We all jumped as high as we could. But it wasn't the jumping that got most of us, but the pushups. Around the tenth burpee, my arms started to fail, and by the twelfth I dropped in mid-pushup, panting loudly. Others around me did no better.

  "You're all pathetic. I don't how I ever got stuck with such sorry, mangy asses. Donkeys perform better than you. I'm never going to get you into shape. Never. All right! Enough already. Stop! I can't take it anymore."

  The whole class of seventy lay on the ground, facedown, panting.

  I think we had a break of maybe ten seconds before he spoke again. Ten seconds of exhausted panting.

  "Rest period is o-ver! Now I want to see pushups only! Like a champ, you knuckleheads. Hump the floor. Hump the floor!"

  I heard people gasp for air around me as we forced ourselves up. I collapsed after my sixth pushup. I wasn't the only one.

  "Pathetic. Utterly so. You're all doomed. We're going to ship you all back to your native countries. And as for you natural-borns, we're going to return you to your hillbilly states and your boring insipid lives. Right back to mommy and daddy. Ah! Hell with it! I'm through training you crap-sticks. I give up! I resign! You can go train yourselves!"

  Bowden stormed out of the barracks and we were left there, panting, speechless, wondering if we really were going to be sent packing.

  Bowden came back again five minutes later and, cursing the whole while, made us do PT all over again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The thing I remember most about the early days of Basic was the smell.

  Bowden hadn't been joking about the shower thing. In the first week or so, most of us had maybe two minutes, tops, in the showers. Barely enough time to lather and shampoo. Most people just did their hair and got out. Compounding this was the fact that there was just no time to clean our clothes. We ended up smelling like a bunch of homeless people. Don't even get me talking about how bad Alejandro's feet smelled.

  By the way, the showers were not co-ed. Guys and gals took separate showers in separate heads (bathrooms). This was hugely disappointing to a lot of us. I'm not sure why anyone expected co-ed showers when we weren't even allowed to dress or undress together. I blame it on all those military sci-fi vids the UC film industry churned out.

  After the first few days, RDC Bowden assigned fifteen of us to leadership positions. These "Recruit Petty Officers" held authority over the others, and any orders received from them had the full weight of the RDC behind them. Those positions came and went, depending on Bowden's whim. Bowden made me a Recruit Section Leader, which only meant that I had the pleasure of being punished for the faults of my section as well as my own. Thankfully I only lasted
in that position for three days.

  Anyway, eventually we got settled in. Processing week went by, we finally found time to properly shower and wash our clothes, we were given our own aReals, granted our division guidon, and assigned to a berth in one of the 'starships'—which were really just barrack buildings. My division was barracked in the USS John F. Kennedy, which had berths for eleven mixed gender recruit divisions. It also had classrooms, a library, a galley, a mess hall, and a quarterdeck. The latter was the most sacred part of the starship apparently, and was kept polished and trim. It had naval artifacts like the anchor and rope from the actual USS Kennedy—the sailing ship. We did a lot of indoor PT there.

  In the berthing compartment, we were assigned to our racks based on our last names. A large partition divided the compartment into two halves, one for males and the other, females. Watches drawn from our own numbers were assigned each night to insure no one crossed over to the female side and vice versa.

  RDC Bowden was happy to explain the terminology. "This is your berthing compartment. These walls are bulkheads. The ceiling is the overhead, or deckhead. The floor is the deck. The washroom is the head. You eat in the mess hall, from food prepared in the galley. This is the forward part of the compartment. Behind you is the aft part. You get me?"

  "We get you sir!"

  "Your starship is to be shipshape at all times. You will all be assigned cleaning stations, and are expected to clean! You get me?"

  "We get you sir!"

  Each morning I and the others awoke to the high-pitched whistle of 'General Quarters,' followed by a ten second klaxon. After the klaxon faded, Bowden sometimes ordered us to immediately drop into pushups beside our racks. Other times he had us dress and pile outside to shovel the walkways that led to the starship (the Brass could have had robots do it, but why bother when you had all this free labor lying around). When we finished the pushups or the shoveling, we showered, brushed our teeth and shaved within the seven minutes of personal grooming allocated us. Thirty-five guys trying to use ten showers and ten sinks at the same time wasn't an environment all that conducive to teamwork—there were constant arguments over things like shampoo and soap, let alone who was using what sink and when. Still, Tahoe, Alejandro, Ace and I managed to cordon off a sink and shower for ourselves each morning so that we always got ready in a timely fashion.