Atlas

by Isaac Hooke

  Sometime during the second week I developed pneumonia, but one of the Weavers fixed me up. Not before I was given a chance to quit, of course.

  Speaking of quitting, guys washed out left and right, and not just because of the beatings. You have to understand, there were pass-fail qualifications constantly along the way. The instructors thought up all these devious little trials for us. Drown avoidance, where they tied you up and tossed you into the tank and expected you not to panic while you swam and retrieved objects with your teeth. Lifesaving, where you rescued a "drowning" instructor who in actuality tried to drown you. Timed O-Course runs. Timed surface swim runs. Timed pipeline crawls. Timed soft sand sprints. Timed ATLAS portage. And on and on. You were given two chances to past each test, and if you failed both times you were rolled back on the spot—you moved to barracks 618 and waited for the next class up. A lot of people just quit when they were rolled back. Some stayed. Thing is, you could only be rolled back once. If you failed to make the cut a second time you'd never be back.

  Other than the trials, there were four more legendary, three-hour PT beatings like we had the very first day, so that by the time Trial Week rolled around, we were down to forty-five students.

  Trial Week. What can I say. The students had been talking about it every day since we started Orientation. The training that would separate the men from the boys. Ninety-eight percent of the students who made it past Trial Week would go on to become MOTHs. But making it through, that was the trick, wasn't it?

  Friday night we mustered in the classroom. Chief Adams stood at the front with a bunch of the other instructors, including Reed, Brown, Piker, and Peterson. Basically everyone who had beaten us these past few weeks.

  The Chief took the podium. "Excited about Trial Week, children?"

  "Wooyah Chief!"

  The Chief was just beaming, his yellow eyes glittering in the light. Never a good sign. "I'm glad to hear it. Because next week we're separating the chaff from the wheat. Despite the bone-crushing fatigue, the unending stress and hardship, you'll be expected to demonstrate the core values of the UC Navy: Honor, courage and commitment. We're also expecting a few Team qualities to show through as well, namely self-sacrifice, leadership, and resilience. We expect a winner's attitude from you at all times, no matter how adverse the conditions become. Because you know what? Only the very best of you will prevail. The very best."

  He paused, letting his words sink in. "You're all going to have to do a whole lot of soul searching next week. Who are you, deep inside? What do you really want? What are you doing here? How badly do you really want this? That last question is the most important. Every second of every moment you'll be asking yourself that question: How badly do I really want this? Is it worth the sleep deprivation, the pain, the cold? It's all up to you. You've conquered all the timed trials, and every qualification we've thrown at you so far. At this point we're not the ones who decides who passes and who fails. It's all up to you now. Do you want to be ordinary men, and live ordinary lives, or do you want to become more than men? Do you want to become MOTHs?"

  "Wooyah Chief!" we roared.

  In the barracks, I took Alejandro to see Tahoe and his swim buddy, Haywire, and the four of us made a pact.

  "We aren't going to quit," I said. "Not now, not after everything we've been through. We're going to make it through to the end."

  I held out my fist, and Tahoe and Alejandro piled their fists on top of mine.

  "To the end," Tahoe said.

  "To the end," Alejandro said.

  Haywire clasped our hands. "To the end," he said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The forty-five remaining members of Class 1108 spent the weekend psyching up for Trial Week. We cleaned our rooms and ironed our clothes (minimally of course—enough to pass a real inspection, not enough to feel bad if the instructors tore the place apart). We did PT. We watched movies. We talked about girls, and what we were going to do when we became MOTHs.

  Sunday afternoon Instructor Piker ordered us to the classroom and instructed us to bring our gear and a change of clothes for when we quit. I piled everything into my spacebag, hefted it over my shoulder, and when I got to the classroom I saw the usual instructors present plus another ten I didn't recognize, for a total of thirty—almost one instructor for every student. Interesting.

  There were five Weavers present, their spiderlike, telescoping fingers sinister reminders that this was going to be a difficult day. Though I wasn't sure why the instructors wanted the medical robots in the classroom environment. Eventually I decided they'd done it just to scare us.

  Chief Adams gave the class permission to sit. "Lockdown, children," he said, scratching at his thick beard. "No one goes in or out of the classroom as of now. We're going to get all chummy and watch some movies together. You know, eat some pizza, have some laughs. A good ol' fashioned slumber party. Without the slumber."

  The instructors sat down at their desks, which were cordoned off at the front of the room, and put up their legs.

  Everyone donned aReals, and we all watched classic movies, instructors and students alike. There was From The Sino-Koreans, with Love. Superman Vs Vampires. Star Wars XXVII. We were only half-paying attention to the movies though. Too much on our minds.

  I ate a whole large pizza that afternoon, and I wasn't the only one. The instructors had ordered boxes and boxes of the stuff. The Amazon drones were busy dropping them off all afternoon. I had a sneaking suspicion we wouldn't be eating for a long while after this.

  As the day wore on, and nothing happened, the tension in the air became almost palpable. I dimmed the movie soundtrack with my aReal, and browsed my personal music archive instead. I tried listening to some soothing tunes. Didn't help. I was too high-strung.

  Then finally, when we least expected it, Chief Adams stood up from his desk.

  Still facing away from us, he started laughing. Maniacally. "It's time to pay the piper children! It's time to pay the piper!"

  The Chief knelt, then hoisted something up. When he turned around, I saw he was holding an M134 Gatling machine gun in both hands.

  He sprayed the classroom with it.

  I ducked, frantically kicking down my desk for cover. Others were doing the same around me. There were yelps as people got fingers caught under falling desks. Empty pizza boxes fanned across the floor.

  I looked to the exit, searching for an escape route. Two other instructors guarded it. They also carried M134s.

  They also opened fire.

  I forced myself even lower, and slid my spacebag into one of the gaps between me and the other desks, hoping for at least some protection from the bullets. But who was I kidding? The rounds from an M134 could tear right through desks, spacebags and students alike.

  We were all dead.

  But there were no screams above the gunfire. No one begging for morphine, or calling for mother. I hesitantly glanced up. Other than a few sore fingers, none of the students seemed injured. They were damn scared, though.

  "Blanks!" someone called above the mayhem. "They're firing blanks!"

  The lights abruptly went off. An air raid siren sounded. The bright flashes of the machine guns lit the room like a strobe light, making everything seem to happen in slow motion. The air hung with the smell of cordite.

  "Incoming attack! Hit the deck!"

  I heard the distant whistle of a dropping bomb. The sound grew in pitch until I heard a tremendous bang.

  The room shook and I felt my heart and lungs vibrate from the shockwave.

  More bombs fell. The classroom was being shelled.

  One shell struck not far from me. Body parts flew into the air. A fine red mist sprayed my upper body.

  Alejandro had been beside me. I couldn't see him. I crawled through the carnage, slid his desk aside, and found him.

  I felt like I was going to die.

  Alejandro was on his back, staring up into space with wide, unblinking eyes. His belly was opened right up like some cadave
r straight out of med-school, his viscera glistening with cement dust.

  I just stared at him.

  I couldn't move.

  Couldn't look away.

  Shells continued to explode all around me.

  All I could think was that Alejandro was the closest thing to a brother I ever had.

  And now he was gone.

  Because of me.

  He wouldn't have come here, to the UC, if it hadn't been for me.

  He wouldn't have taken spec-ops training, if it hadn't been for me.

  What had I done?

  I felt like I was going mad.

  A part of my mind was still functioning, through the sadness, the guilt. And that part told me that the law of averages wouldn't allow me to survive much longer. I couldn't live, not when the men around me were dying left and right. I was going to get hit by a shell any second, whether I moved or not. I felt utterly helpless and desolate in that moment.

  I just stayed where I was, motionless, waiting for the inevitable. The shells dropped. And dropped.

  Incredibly, they all missed me.

  The classroom didn't fare so well. It was quite literally bombed to hell. The machine gunners had long since stopped firing—they no longer existed. There was no overhead, and through a gaping hole in one bulkhead I saw the beach. It was lit up in the dark by scattered fires, and covered in fresh, sandy craters. Beyond the beach other buildings were destroyed. Plumes of smoke rose from New Coronado in the distance.

  How could this be happening? Why were we being attacked?

  Who were the attackers?

  The air raid siren didn't stop. The shelling didn't cease.

  I ducked my head, and covered my ears, just wishing the sound would stop. That the shelling would stop. I was too frightened to move.

  Time ticked past.

  Still I didn't get hit.

  Alejandro was dead, but I lived. And if I wanted to continue living, then I had to overcome this debilitating fear, and push his death from my thoughts. There was nothing I could do for him except grieve, and I could do that later, when I was safe.

  Otherwise his death was for nothing.

  My mind started going through a dozen different scenarios. I considered making a run for it. If I could somehow escape the shelling, cross the beach, and dive into the ocean... or maybe, if I could find out where the ATLAS 5 mechs were stored, I could make a stand. But even if I could find the mechs, I didn't know how to pilot them.

  And then I realized something else.

  Something that could change everything.

  I was still wearing my aReal.

  Could it be...

  I pulled the glasses off.

  Sure enough, the classroom remained intact around me. There was no blood. There were no body parts. The students were ducked behind their overturned desks, locked inside the hellish world generated by their aReals.

  Beside me Alejandro was alive, lying there, still wearing his aReal. He held his face in both hands and wept.

  Scattered about the room were ten other students who had torn off their aReals, including Tahoe. They were doing PT under the guidance of the instructors.

  Piker stepped forward and angrily pointed at me. "Drop and push 'em where you lie, Mr. Galaal!"

  And so I did.

  "Better strap yourself in for a long ride!" Piker said. "You buddy screwers are going to keep pushing them until every last one of your dumbass friends realizes the truth and yanks off his aReal! Given the Intelligence Quotient of the average member of Class 1108, that is going to be one very long time. We're going to be here all night."

  After about ten minutes of pushups, lying kicks, crunches, and lunges, roughly half the class had unplugged. I finally got sick of waiting and, with a quick glance at the instructors to make sure they weren't watching, I reached over and ripped off Alejandro's aReal.

  "I saw that Galaal!" Instructor Brown came rushing at me. "You think you're pretty smart don't you?"

  "Wooyah Instructor!"

  Alejandro had this confused look on his face. "Rade, you're alive..."

  Brown turned his attention on him. "Drop and push 'em dumbass!"

  Ignoring the instructor, Alejandro got up and gave me a hug, hopping up and down. "You're alive you're alive!"

  Brown stepped in. "I said—"

  "Si, drop and push 'em!" Alejandro dropped. "Dropping and pushing them, sir!" I don't think I've ever seen him so happy to do pushups.

  Around me, other unplugged students got the hint and started tearing off the aReals of those closest to them.

  "Stop, you disobedient curs!"

  But it was too late—in moments everyone had their aReals off.

  "You're all going to pay for that!" Instructor Piker roared into the megaphone he'd produced.

  One of the students who'd just had his aReal yanked off suddenly jumped to his feet. I recognized him. Markus, a good kid.

  He ran to Instructor Piker and fell to his knees, clasping the instructor's pants imploringly.

  "I quit," Markus said. "I quit I quit!"

  And so we had the first casualty of Trial Week. It was a little heartbreaking. I knew everyone personally by now. You can't go through three weeks of First Phase and three weeks of Orientation and not make friends with the survivors. But of all of us, Markus was the very definition of a survivor. An Olympic water polo player who'd come back from a terrible injury to win gold at the Games. He knew how to master his inner self. He knew how to beat the odds. I couldn't understand why he quit. I guess he just panicked. Seeing all his friends die, even in a simulation, was just too much for him.

  Another instructor led Markus away. The Olympic-medal winner didn't look back.

  "On the move recruits!" Instructor Piker yelled into his megaphone. "I've got some payback to give. Move move move move!"

  We hauled ass to the infamous plot of black asphalt at the center of the compound. High intensity spotlights randomly roved the dark, the kind you find in prisons. Artillery simulators blasted away in barrels all around the grinder, whistling and exploding and throwing up gray plumes. There was more gunfire, this time from a mix of rifles and pistols. Instructors fired machine guns up into the night sky. Spent shells poured down into the grinder, scalding those of us unfortunate enough to come into contact with them. Some instructors threw smoke grenades from the sides, others launched flares. I noticed that almost every vertical surface was padded with old life vests—probably a good thing, given that half of us were milling about in confusion.

  We knew it wasn't real, but I think we were all still shocked from what we'd seen in the aReals. I know I was.

  Finally the instructors got us under control, and we did PT while high-pressure hoses sprayed us down. We did combat drills, low crawling back and forth across the grinder. Then we sprinted out to the beach and did sea immersion.

  Fifteen minutes later we were told to crawl out.

  My hip flexors were so numb I almost couldn't get up. Somehow I and the others managed, and we began a series of lunges in the dark. Industrial fans were setup all along the beach, and between those fans and the instructors spraying us with their hoses, none of us could get warm. At least I couldn't.

  We switched to lying kicks with our heads below the high water line, so that the waves splashed over our faces. We were sputtering and half-drowning. Water and sand washed up my nose. I was so cold, my whole body was jackhammering. The people around me weren't doing any better. Alejandro sat on his fists, kicking away, his elbows flapping uncontrollably.

  "They're called flutter kicks, not chicken flaps, dumbass!" one of the instructor's yelled at him.

  I don't think Alejandro heard.

  Finally we switched to pushups. It wasn't much better, but at least we were out of the water.

  We continued the PT under those brutally freezing conditions for about thirty minutes, then we were ordered to crawl back into the ocean for more immersion.

  As I lay there, hanging on to Alejandro on my ri
ght and Tahoe on my left, I tried to imagine myself in a hot tub. It didn't work. I was so cold my neck muscles spasmed involuntarily, sending waves of pain flaring through my neck with each seize-up.

  Instructor Brown's voice drifted down from shore.

  "Why are you doing this to yourself? Why don't you just quit?" Like Reed (and most instructors actually), he had the unsettling ability to make it sound like he was talking to you and no one else. "Why torture yourself? You don't really want to be a MOTH. You know you don't. It's just not worth it. And you know what? There's no shame in quitting. Come on, we got a nice heater in the truck. And cronuts! Every flavor imaginable. Boston cream. Cherry cheesecake. Orange creamsicle. Vanilla. We also got steak and turkey cooking up too. Hot and juicy. With mashed potatoes and filling so good it'll melt in your mouth. All you gotta do is get up and say the magic words. Come on, we all know this is bull. Just pack her in, and come get your steak and cronuts. You owe it to yourself."

  I could smell the greasy good scent of the cronuts on the breeze. And the steak too. Well done, just the way I liked it. With barbecue sauce. I could even hear it sizzling on the grill.

  But I didn't get up and quit. To this day I'll never know if there were actually cronuts and steak up there, or if it was only the power of suggestion that had conjured those scents in my desperate, cold-weary mind.

  What I did know was that three guys got up and quit right there.

  After another fifteen minutes we were ordered out of the ocean and the Weavers moved between us, inspecting us for signs of hypothermia. While the robots did this, the rest of us waited on the beach with our arms out, letting those industrial fans seep away whatever heat our bodies managed to generate, as the instructors decreed.