A Learning Experience 2: Hard Lessons Read online

  “Joy,” Yolanda muttered back. It didn't bother her, not really. Her mother and father had shouted at her for most of her life. “I can take it.”

  The man waited for the final recruits to take their place, then closed the hatch and stamped around until he was facing them. “Welcome to Sparta,” he said. “I am Senior Drill Sergeant Bass. You will address me as Sergeant. In the course of the next week, you will meet other Drill Sergeants and Drill Instructors. You will address them as Sergeant too.”

  He paused. “For my crimes, I have been assigned as Senior Drill Sergeant for Recruit Company #42,” he continued. “That’s you, by the way. You will be asked hundreds of times over the coming months which company you belong to, so I suggest you remember that you’re #42. Getting it wrong will earn you a demerit, which you will have to work off; if you earn ten demerits, you will have a very embarrassing interview with the Commandant. Your career may not survive drawing his attention.

  “My job is supervising you for this, the first stage of your training. Everyone goes through the same basic training, then we split you up into smaller groups in accordance with your desires and capabilities. You will be given a fair shot at trying to become anything, as long as we believe you have the ability to learn and succeed. But the outcome will largely depend on just how much effort you put into it. I am not here to coddle you into completing an exam or writing an essay, although you will have to do both over the coming months. What you get out of this largely depends on what you put into it.”

  Yolanda felt herself shrinking backwards as his gaze passed over her. She couldn't help finding Bass intimidating, even though he didn't seem to be trying to intimidate them. But then, he was a strong man who clearly wouldn't let anything stand in his way. He wasn't the type of person she knew to trust.

  Give him a fair chance, she told herself. He isn’t one of the bastards from school.

  “You are all ignorant,” Bass thundered. “You are utterly unaware of the dangers of this environment, let alone training to become spacers or soldiers or whatever. So you will learn from me. Those of you who don’t learn will die, killed by your own ignorance or your own stupidity. And we will simply carry on.”

  His gaze swept the line of recruits again. “There are rules and regulations,” he warned. “If you break a minor rule, you will earn demerits; if you break a major rule, you will face the Commandant! Do you understand me? Good.

  “If you don’t understand something you are told, ask me,” he added. “Until then, stick to the rules. There is a good reason behind each and every one of them.”

  Bass clapped his hands together. “Offences against military order, listed as follows; insubordination, use of drugs, tobacco and alcohol, possession and/or consumption of food outside designated eating periods, possession of any contraband, failure to perform duties as assigned to you by lawful authority, being absent without leave and, last, but not least, fraternisation. To repeat; any of those offences will get you a punishment that may range from heavy exercise to being summarily discharged from the army. You will have those offences read to you every day, along with the definition of each offence. You will have no excuse for committing any of them!”

  He paused long enough to take another hard look at his recruits. “Many of you will have brought drugs, or alcohol, or even food onto this base,” he said, coldly. “When you are taken to be assigned your uniform and regulation-issue underclothes, get rid of them. This is your one warning. You may think that the police on Earth wouldn’t charge you with a crime if you are in possession of illegal drugs, but this is the Solar Union. If I catch any of you possessing or using drugs on this base, that person will wish that he had never been born!”

  Yolanda swallowed. Did Martin have anything illicit in his bag?

  Bass was still thundering at his cowed audience. “Insubordination; wilfully disobeying, insulting, or striking a senior officer. Absent without leave; leaving the base or your unit without permission, or failing to report back to your unit at the end of a leave period without permission. Fraternisation; sexual relationships with any of your fellow recruits, or senior officers, or anyone within your military unit. The remainder should require no explaining. If they do, quit now and save us the paperwork of kicking you out.”

  “Female recruits, walk through that hatch,” Bass finished, pointing towards a hatch set in the far wall. His finger moved to another hatch. “Male recruits, walk through that hatch.”

  “See you soon,” Martin muttered.”

  “I hope so,” Yolanda said. Her head was spinning after Bass’s recital of military crimes. She wasn't sure she knew what half of them actually meant. “See you.”

  She walked through the hatch and nearly bumped into the back of a line. A grim-faced woman was standing behind a desk, handing out small piles of clothing and pointing the girls towards benches, where they could change into their uniforms. Yolanda hesitated – she had never liked changing in front of anyone else, male or female – then realised she had no choice. Privacy was going to be a thing of the past. Cursing under her breath, she stripped down to bare skin and then donned the uniform. It was very simplistic. The only decoration was a large red numeral – 42.34 – just above her left breast.

  “If you want to keep your clothes or anything else you might have brought with you, place them in boxes here,” a female sergeant ordered. Yolanda took a look at her and had to fight to keep herself from staring in disbelief. The woman looked like a bad parody of a transvestite, so close to masculine it was hard to be sure she was a woman. “They will be stored for you until you leave the service or graduate, whichever comes first.”

  Yolanda looked down at her bag. “Everything?”

  “If you want to keep it,” the sergeant told her, curtly. “Anything you don’t want to keep can be dropped in the bins and it will be recycled. I suggest you dump anything illicit you don’t want us to see.”

  “Thank you,” Yolanda said.

  “That’s thank you, sergeant,” the woman corrected. “You can earn a demerit for forgetting to use the proper terms.”

  “Oh,” Yolanda said.

  “Hey,” another girl said. “How do you work off a demerit?”

  “Heavy exercise,” the sergeant said, with an evil grin. “It teaches you respect and helps build up the muscles. You’ll get used to it soon enough.”

  She checked them all, one by one, then smiled. “This is the last babying you’ll get,” she warned, as she led them towards the hatch. “In future, if you are told to do something and you don’t do it, you will be allowed to suffer the effects of your screw-up.”

  Yolanda smiled as they walked through the door. Martin was standing with the other men, wearing the same grey uniform. His numerals were different; 42.41.

  “These are your barracks,” Sergeant Bass thundered, as he opened yet another hatch. Inside, there were three large hatches and a computer terminal, parked against one wall. “Male recruits to the left, female recruits to the right. Do not try to enter the wrong barracks unless you have a very good excuse. The centre compartment” – he jabbed a finger at the third hatch – “is your common room. Beyond it, there’s an exercise chamber. You may use it during your copious spare time.”

  He smirked. Somehow, Yolanda was sure they would have very little spare time.

  “Go get a rest,” he said. “You will be woken in” – he made a show of checking his watch – “seven hours. And then the real fun starts.”

  Chapter Four

  Speaking in the Senate today, Senator Karen Pettigrew demanded that the United States Government impose new tariffs on anyone wishing to abandon the United States for the Solar Union. The interests of social justice, Pettigrew claimed, were best served by forbidding the transfer of material possessions – and cash – from the United States.

  -Solar News Network, Year 51

  “I didn't know it was possible to hurt so much,” Dennis Crawford muttered.

  “Me neither,” Martin said,
as they stumbled out of the shower. Whatever concerns he’d had about sharing showers with other men had vanished, faced with the implacable truth that their trainers expected them to adapt – and act like adults. “That was not a pleasant experience.”

  He’d watched war movies, downloading them from the datanet after they’d been banned in the United States, but none of them had ever managed to make him feel what new recruits went through. There were the endless exercises, the endless lectures from the sergeants, the complete lack of sleep, the monotonous food ... and the demerit system, which had to have been invented by a mad genius who’d also been a complete sadist. One week of basic training and he'd already earned four demerits. Working them off had been a pain.

  “I don’t think it’s meant to be,” Crawford said. “They say it only gets worse after we pass the first set of tests.”

  “I know,” Martin said. He’d thought he could handle it, but if he was having problems with Basic Training, maybe he shouldn't be thinking about trying to become a cybersoldier. Or any sort of soldier. All the movies he’d watched had told lies. “What do you think is going to happen tonight?”

  “Fucked if I know,” Crawford said. “But we’d better get a move on.”

  Martin nodded, then stepped through the forcefield. Water droplets flew off his skin, leaving him completely dry. He reached for his uniform and pulled it on, glancing down at the bare sleeves. The sergeants had told the company that, when they passed the first set of tests, they would have something to put on their uniforms. But there would always be another set of hurdles to clear ...

  As soon as they were dressed, they walked down into the mess and picked up plates of food, which they carried to the nearest table. Most of the other recruits seemed to be elsewhere – either writing letters or catching up on sleep, as they had no demerits to work off. Martin looked around in hopes of seeing Yolanda, but saw no sign of her. She seemed to be coping as well as could be expected, although she looked thinner every day. He hoped she wouldn't quit, even though others had already thrown in the towel and abandoned Sparta. There was something about her he found attractive.

  And keep it in your pants, he warned himself, sternly. Sergeant Bass hadn't been joking when he’d warned them of the dangers of fraternisation. One pair of recruits, caught having sex in one of the bathrooms, had been ordered to spend the rest of the week naked, just to ensure they got the message. You don’t need more demerits.

  He pushed the thought aside as he tucked into the food. There was no way to know what it actually was – it looked like a mixture of porridge and hard biscuits – but it tasted good and there was no shortage of it. The sergeants had told them to eat as much as they could, every day, even though some of the girls had whined about making themselves fat. But it didn't seem a possibility, not when they were forced to exercise every day. And then there were the tests that measured his education, rather than physical prowess ...

  “You’re thinking,” Dennis said. “I can tell.”

  Martin sighed. He’d never really grasped just how ignorant he was until he’d arrived on Sparta. Being unable to handle himself in space was one thing – he knew he was ignorant of even basic safety precautions – but his reading and writing were definitely sub-par. The Sergeant had even told him that he would have to spend time learning to read properly, if he wanted to progress rapidly. Martin had hated the thought, even though Yolanda had offered to help him with it. He didn't want to delay his training just to learn how to read.

  “It’s a bad habit,” he said, although he knew that wasn't true. Some of the tests the Sergeants had set him could only be solved through careful thought, rather than brute force. “And we'd better get moving.”

  He dropped the empty plate into the fresher, then walked down towards the lecture hall, where they’d been told to go at 1900, Sparta Time. Yolanda was waiting outside, looking nervous; she brightened up when she saw him. Martin smiled at her, then followed her into the giant compartment. It was easily large enough to handle two or three hundred recruits, rather than one single company. But Martin had long since stopped wondering why the facility seemed to be much larger than it needed to be. No doubt, like everything else, there was a reason for it.

  “Please, be seated,” an elderly voice said. “I am Professor Fritz Scudder.”

  Martin took a seat and studied the elderly man. He was the first citizen of the Solar Union he’d met who actually looked old, with dark skin and white hair. Appearances could be deceiving, he knew, but he would have happily placed the Professor at being well over eighty years old. His granddad – and he had been a real man - hadn't looked much younger when he’d shuffled off the mortal coil. There were days when Martin still missed him, bitterly. It was easy to imagine his life would have been better if he’d had a strong male figure to look up to, while he’d been a kid.

  “There is one compulsory class in the Solar Union, taught in every school,” Scudder said. He spoke in a calm, completely composed manner, as if he’d seen too much to be scared of anything less than the end of the universe. “That class is History and Moral Philosophy. If you happened to be born in the Solar Union, you would have taken the class between fourteen and sixteen years of age. But, as none of you were born in the Solar Union, it is necessary for us to offer you the chance to take the course now.

  “Unlike most of my students, you have the opportunity to decline. You’re adults; we cannot force you to take the class. It isn't part of your training, so failing to take the class won’t be counted against you. However, you may find that taking the class will help you to understand the Solar Union and become one of our citizens. If any of you want to leave now, please do so. Or you can stay to the end and then decide not to come back. Either one is fine, as long as you let me know.”

  He stopped and waited.

  Martin looked at Yolanda. “I think we should stay,” she said. “It might be interesting.”

  “It might,” Martin agreed. He would have stayed for a truly boring talk if she’d wanted to stay with him. “Let us see what happens.”

  “Thank you,” Scudder said, after five minutes. “I hope I can make this course interesting enough to keep you coming back.”

  He smiled at them, then settled back in his chair.

  “Schooling in the Solar Union, as most of you may dimly realise, is fundamentally different from schooling on Earth,” he said. “Schooling on Earth requires you, the students, to absorb and recite by rote vast amounts of data. You are not taught to actually think, let alone how to obtain data for yourself and analyse it. Furthermore, you are ... conditioned to accept social attitudes that are examples of doublethink, simply contradictory, or simply make no sense at all. Your graduations depend more on how well you adhere to the orthodox line of thinking rather than your grades, per se.

  “Schooling in the Solar Union teaches you the basics – how to read, write and access information – and then concentrates on developing your ability to think critically. You might know that two plus two equals four, instead of five, but if you don’t understand the background you may not be able to reason out that two plus three does equal five. You are not expected to regurgitate vast quantities of information, because such information is always at your fingertips. You are expected to use that information to actually think.”

  Martin considered it. He’d never done very well on his exams on Earth ... and yet he’d passed anyway. It hadn't taken him or his fellows long to realise that it didn't matter how much work they did; they still passed the exams. And they’d played up in the classrooms, because it didn't matter either. They'd known, on some level, that they were doomed.

  “Many of you will be angry when you work out how badly you’ve been screwed by the system,” Scudder said. “But anger will not help. Now, you have the opportunity to make up for what you’ve missed.”

  He paused, again. “But the problems you experienced in your schooling on Earth, I’m afraid, are signs of a more fundamental problem affecting the gov
ernments on Earth.

  “The earliest governments made no bones about their true nature; they were rule by the strong. None of the Romans ever bothered to justify their conquests to themselves. But, as human society developed, coming up with excuses for taking and holding power – and for some of the most awful crimes – started to tax human ingenuity. Everything from religion to Social Darwinism was used as a justification for war, conquest and, most importantly of all, government.”

  Yolanda held up a hand. “Social Darwinism?”

  “In essence, the concept that the strong had rights over the weak,” Scudder explained. “A strong nation, being strong, would have the right to conquer a weak nation, because the weaklings couldn't defend themselves. This was often tied into racism; one race considered itself superior to the other races, so the way it treated them was justified by their own superiority.”

  He smiled. “As you can imagine, the concept started to fall out of favour when the ‘strong’ started to become ‘weak,’ he added. “Most of them were horrified at the thought of being treated as they had treated others.”