by Aer-ki Jyr
“Because it’s wrong.”
“And you were tricked into doing it by this retched place.”
“I still made the choice.”
“What’s changed then?”
“I…know more now.”
“You aren’t continuing the barbarism. You are pulling yourself together and becoming an individual. It can be a sloppy process, and given the condition of this planet you’re even feeling guilty is a credit to your persistence.”
“How can I stop feeling guilty if I don’t have a clean slate? Shouldn’t I always feel guilty?”
“Clean slate again,” Javvin said, glancing at Rammak. “I don’t think we can explain this in words. She has to learn through experience. Their minds are beyond my reach now, so it should be safe to resume training.”
“Very well,” the Calavari said, reaching a hand out to Esna so he could carry her back down again. “Come.”
“I don’t feel like training, Rammak. I need to get my head straightened out.”
“Training is often the best way to do that.”
Esna sighed, then walked over to him and let the Calavari pick her up in one of his giant arms.
“Maybe if you drop me I’ll feel better.”
“That would not be advantageous, but if it is pain you seek there will be plenty to come. Though you will inflict it yourself…if you are strong enough.”
“I thought you said punishment wasn’t the answer.”
“This isn’t punishment, it’s training. Training has a positive purpose.”
“And the pain?”
“A side effect of you pressing your limits,” he said, taking a knee and getting his handholds before sliding his boots over the edge. “No more questions for now. Follow instructions, and if you can complete the challenge you will understand.”
“Challenge?”
“A part of training essential to Star Force,” Javvin said, hopping off the edge and falling past them. He landed in a crouch at the bottom and waited for Rammak to come down and set Esna back on her feet, then he exchanged a glance with the Calavari. “Obstacle course?”
“Good choice. We have adequate room. Wait here,” he told Esna, then he and Javvin started walking around the canyon talking to each other on a private comm channel while she dug her boot toe into the sandy dirt as she tried to make sense of what they were saying and the unrelenting guilt that had her heart in a vice.
19
Rammak and Javvin spent several minutes setting up a course for Esna to run, then they took her over it via her HUD with her walking through the various waypoints once so she knew what to expect. When she got back to the start line, which was little more than a long scratch in the sandy dirt near the wall that led to the cave entrance, Rammak activated a countdown clock on her HUD.
“Complete the course in under 3:45.”
“How fast do I need to go?”
“Fast. This will not be easy.”
“Ok,” she said, stepping up to the line that was both start and finish with a glowing virtual marker above it at head height. “Start me off.”
Rammak triggered a series of countdown tones and on the fourth the sound changed slightly, starting the clock with Esna rushing off. She ran down a more or less straight section of the canyon, then took a sharp turn that had her feet skidding a bit as she redirected to cross the width over to the far wall, then she turned and ran along it, hopping over a low boulder and climbing up two more with some large strides. Additional twists and turns had her crisscrossing the approximate same area without mimicking her previous steps. In the end the course had her running back towards the cave and crossing the finish line with the clock in her helmet stopping at 3:22.
“Good,” Rammak said as Esna sucked air. “Now you know what is expected of you. Completing a segment under time earns you 60 seconds rest. Not making it under time gives you 30. To complete the challenge you must have 20 successful completions without pause.”
“Twenty!” Esna said in disbelief.
“You have one completed. Now you need 19 more. Watch the countdown in your helmet and be ready to go. If you don’t start on time you will lose the completions you already have and have to start over again.”
“I can’t do 20 of those.”
“One doesn’t know their limits,” Javvin said from his position leaning against the rock wall behind them, “until they probe them. Don’t think ahead, just focus on what you need to do right now. There aren’t 19 ahead of you, just the next one. Do what is necessary to get it even if it leaves you without energy to do the rest.”
“I can’t do 20,” she repeated, walking back to the line as her precious seconds of rest ticked off. As the last few came up the four tones repeated, with the last one ending on 0 and sending her off again. Her legs were tired, but at least she could compare landmarks to the clock from last time and she handled the first turn better, not sliding so much this time, but her breathing hadn’t fully recovered and she was feeling a little burn already.
Esna finished up this run in 3:39, coming in under time but now even more tired than before and getting only another 60 seconds rest.
“No way…I can…do this,” she said between breaths.
“You’ve done 2, now try for a third,” Javvin suggested.
“Is this really training…or are you just…messing with me?”
“Challenges are the fundamental element of Star Force training, and this one in particular is something you need to complete in order for you to progress. Wall off any concerns of not making it and just live in the moment.”
“If I run out of energy it won’t matter.”
“See how far you get before that happens.”
“I should have kept my mouth shut,” Esna muttered as she saw only a handful of seconds left. Those 60 had disappeared far faster than they should, but she wasn’t going to quit this. She’d give it whatever effort she had, but there was no way she was going to make 20 of these.
With her legs protesting more this time she upped her effort and dragged herself through in 3:42, watching the landmarks closely to know just how fast she had to go in order to get in under time. After that she made the 4th run in 3:41, the 5th in 3:44, and the 6th in 3:42...but that was all she had in her, for when the 7th came around she tried to squeeze out as much energy as she could, but missed in 3:48.
“Thirty seconds rest, then you go again,” Rammak said casually.
“I…can’t…make…it,” she said, barely able to breathe.
“Live in the moment,” Javvin said, “and think deviously.”
Esna stood back up from her forward leaning crouch as the seconds disappeared so fast it felt like she’d just stopped. Knowing that she couldn’t do another, she toed the line and took off when the tones sounded, but her legs were so dead she didn’t stand a chance. She finished it out, but came across in 4:12…meaning another no-count.
“Thirty seconds rest,” Rammak repeated, saying nothing more.
Esna didn’t have the air to complain, but there was no point in this. How could she complete even one more if she didn’t have the strength? And with even less rest after a failure it was practically insuring that she’d run even slower on the next one.
Think deviously, Javvin had said. What did that mean?
Esna’s brain wasn’t in the thinking mode right now, but the one thought in her mind was that this next was one was going to be even slower than before and there was nothing she could…
Then an epiphany hit her just before she had to step up to the line. Rammak had said she had to complete 20 without pausing and only the ones under time counted…but he didn’t say there was a minimum speed on the misses.
When the tones sounded Esna took off again, but this time at an easy jog. Her legs complained, but since she wasn’t trying to beat the clock on this one…just the opposite actually, stretching this out longer to give her more time…her legs lost a bit of their heaviness and even her breathing recovered partially by the time she
finished, coming across the line in 8:35.
“Thirty seconds rest,” Rammak said, without a word of complaint about her lack of effort.
Even stopping from the jogging was a relief, but the rest was far too brief. When Esna started the next one she went slow again, trying to store up as much energy as she could, then after finishing and grabbing another 30 seconds of pure rest she tried to get the following one under time, coming in at 3:42 and dropping to her knees afterward.
“7 completions,” Rammak noted, standing there and watching while she was in agony…but Esna knew she now had a way to keep going. She might have to run a lot of segments at a jog to recover enough energy, but so long as she didn’t miss a start or quit during a segment she wasn’t going to lose the 7 she already had. She needed 13 more, which seemed impossible, but she took Javvin at his word and just focused on getting number 8 after another jogging circuit.
She missed it by 3 seconds, then took three jogging segments after to make sure that didn’t happen again. Esna came through in 3:44, watching her landmarks closely so she didn’t use any more energy than she actually needed, and completed number 8.
After that it was a grinding effort, with her running 3 or 4 failures just to get enough energy for a single completion, and each time she did her legs started to hurt worse. With the moving rest she had enough energy to take off again, but it felt like her wobbly legs were being ground apart at a microscopic level…though somehow she was able to keep going so long as she let herself go slow in between her hard efforts.
“19 completions,” Rammak said as she came across the line again, this time knowing better than to drop to the ground for a handful of seconds, because she’d just have to climb up again and waste more energy doing that. Huffing and puffing and aching all over, Esna walked back to the line and waited there, knowing she just had to get one more in. Her entire body cried out that it wasn’t possible and that she should just collapse right here and now in to a ball and not move for 3 days, but there was no way she was going to quit now and waste the 19 she had. All it would take was delaying one second on the start and it’d all be wasted, so there was no way she was going down to her knees this time and risk not being able to get back up again.
When the tones sounded she took off running as slow as she possibly could. Walking wouldn’t count…she knew that even without having to ask Rammak about it. This was running training and walking wasn’t running, but she was pretty sure she could have walked faster than she was jogging now, taking such short and slow steps it was probably pathetic to watch but it was all she could manage. Getting over the rocks was even worse, but she managed to do it without pausing and gradually her legs started to return enough strength to them that when she finished and took off on the next one it didn’t feel like she was dragging her feet.
Not knowing how she was holding on, she didn’t want to take chances and miss her next hard attempt. That had happened 5 times already, but she’d clawed her way back each time and got them eventually, though at this point she couldn’t even count how many times she’d run this course. Everything was a painful blur, but the end was so close that it was what she focused her mind on as she jogged another circuit, then took another 30 seconds rest as she tried to size up her energy reserves.
She had nothing left, but she’d been feeling that way for the past 4 and somehow she’d been able to drag herself through it. Esna decided another 3 ‘rest’ runs would do it, but when she got there she decided to take one more just to be sure…then she waited out what would hopefully be the last 30 seconds trying to summon up as much adrenaline as she could so she didn’t lose time on the acceleration like she’d done before. Every second was precious and she couldn’t waste them at the start by being sluggish.
A few seconds prior to the tones she forced herself to jump up and down three times, barely getting an inch off the ground on the first one, but her legs came back to life a touch on the others…and then the tones sounded and she was off, putting as much effort into the first segment as she could and racing to hit the turn at time mark 0:21.
She hit it exactly, feeling like she couldn’t keep going but forcing her legs to move and not fall behind on the next bit. One stretch after another she held her marks, but not by much. She’d lagged off a little on past tries and ended up missing by a second or two because she couldn’t sprint in at the end, so Esna knew she had to stay on it or gain an extra second, but it was all she could do just to keep up until she hit a longer stretch in the middle and forced her legs up into a higher gear. Fortunately for this challenge she was able to use her armor at full power, and she could have sworn that it helped her out right now, for her legs somehow hit a higher gear than she’d been getting before and gained her an extra half second at the next turn.
Fighting to maintain that slim lead was all she could manage over the rest of the course, and she had to dig down for every last bit of strength she had focusing every step because she knew if her mind wandered even a bit she’d start losing huge chunks of time. When she came to the final straightaway she launched into a tiny sprint, pegging out her legs on their remaining energy and fearing she was going to fall over before she got there, but her wobbling steps carried her across the line in 3:44, just sliding in under time, and Esna let herself fall to the ground in a tumble that she rolled over into a kneeling position on all fours as she tried to suck in more air than Humanly possible.
“20 completions,” Rammak said, standing stoically by as she suffered. “Challenge completed.”
She hurt so bad she didn’t want to move, but the feeling of crossing the line under time and hearing those words were such a joy that her pain didn’t matter. Esna had just done the impossible, and as her mind drifted back to what she’d just been through she realized she didn’t even want to know. It was literally impossible, yet she’d come through it somehow…and she felt changed by it. Her body was shaking with fatigue and she was even getting chills inside her armor, but Esna had done it. She’d pushed herself far farther than ever before and she felt…
She didn’t know how to describe it, but she was different now.
“Now that your mind and body are a bit clearer,” Javvin said as he walked over to her where she was crumpled on the ground, not even bothering to support herself with her arms and just lying in victorious agony. “How’s the guilt now?”
“Gone,” she gasped, for the truth was she couldn’t feel anything other than the ache of her body and the tingling of accomplishment that accompanied it.
“Sometimes you need a physical purge to clear your mind,” Rammak added. “Remember that in the future when your mind becomes clouded.”
“What did you learn?” Javvin asked.
It took Esna several seconds before her mind got around to thinking…then several more before she could speak.
“You two…are bastards.”
“Besides that,” Javvin pressed.
“I can…barely think…right now.”
“Then let me explain what you just learned. The challenge was to complete 20 circuits under time, not to complete 20 in a row. You didn’t have a clean slate, you failed multiple times, and while you probably wish you could have done them all in a row that wasn’t the point. The point was to complete 20 and pass the challenge, which you did. You struggled through it, but you were 100% victorious in the end. In Star Force we don’t count the failures, only the successes. You can try over and over and over again until you get it right, and when you do that’s all that matters. You can feel it now, can’t you? The feel of victory? The feel of screwing up over and over again but finally making it?”
“Yes.”
“Life is no different. You failed in the past when you did all manner of things that were wrong or stupid, and while those things have consequences, just like the failures here cost you more energy and made this challenge harder, at the end it doesn’t matter. You came through victorious, and it is not a tainted victory. You had to complete 20, and you completed 20.
The same is true about being a good person. It doesn’t matter what transpired in the past to get you here, what matters is that you have been victorious over the barbarism of this planet. Are you free of it now? If you are then you are no longer tainted. While we want to go through training and life with a clean slate, we don’t. Especially in training.”
“Understatement of the millennia,” Rammak added.
“You are not a record of past failures, Esna. You are the result of your victories. If you are victorious over the barbarism then you are free of it, so there is no reason to doubt yourself. And if those that you hurt are gone and you’re unable to help them now, then there is nothing left to do. They are gone, a failure just like your runs here that you tried to get under time and missed. They hurt, they’re not a good thing, and they’re not something that needs to be forgotten. They simply don’t matter now because you succeeded when you got your head straightened out, so if there is no error remaining in your judgement and no way to undo what you’ve done, then there is no reason for your mind to give you a warning message. So no more guilt unless you force yourself to feel it, essentially triggering a false alarm…and you can’t respond to a false alarm because there is nothing to act upon. You’ll be chasing it forever. The effort of this workout has turned it off and balanced your mind. Don’t force it back on again.”
“That…actually makes…sense,” Esna said, still breathing hard. “But right now…I don’t care. My head hurts…too much to think.”
“Then remember my words for later, and congratulations. That was not a challenge that most people could have passed. You’ve transitioned into a different level through a rite of passage for warriors. A true test of strength is not in suffering pain inflicted by another, but by pushing yourself to such efforts that you inflict it upon yourself in a beneficial way.”
