contract. This is why I am here, after all--to get out of the PRC and have a shot at a real bank account. I don’t care what they do with the money if I die. Until I have that certificate of service in my hand, that money is an abstraction anyway, just a bunch of numbers in a database.
When everyone is finished, Sergeant Gau has one of our number collect the forms and deposit them on the lectern at the front of the room.
“Congratulations,” Sergeant Gau says. “As of this moment, you are officially members of the Armed Forces of the North American Commonwealth. Be advised that this status is probationary until you graduate from Basic Training.”
There’s no ceremony, no oath of service, no pomp or ritual. You sign a form, and you’re a soldier. It’s a bit of a letdown, but at least they’re consistent in that respect.
Chapter 3
We spend most of the first day standing around and waiting for stuff to happen. There’s another medical inspection, a pair of doctors looking at an entire platoon, so it takes almost three hours for all of us to be examined. We get a quick scan and a blood check, to make sure we didn’t engage in any last-minute chemical excesses. Then we get a series of shots, six different injectors that are administered in quick succession. I suppose I should be curious about the kind of stuff they’re injecting into my system, but I find that I don’t care. It’s not like they’d let me refuse the shots, anyway.
After the medical examination, Sergeant Gau leads us over to another building, where we stand in formation and watch other platoons filing into the door one by one. The other platoons are wearing uniforms, baggy fatigues in a mottled green-blue pattern that looks it would stick out just about anywhere.
“Mealtime,” Sergeant Gau announces, and these words produce the first smiles I’ve seen on my fellow recruits since we got here early in the morning.
“We will enter the chow hall single file. You will grab a tray from the stack by the start of the chow line. You may help yourself to anything you see without asking permission. When you have finished loading up your tray, you will find a table and seat yourself. Once you are seated, you will eat your meal. You may converse with your fellow recruits while you are seated. When I call your platoon number, you will finish your meal, stop your conversations, return the trays to the collection racks by the door, and line up in front of the chow hall again.”
Most of us haven’t had anything to eat since we left for the in-processing stations back home. I’m hungry, and I can tell by the sudden eagerness in the ranks of the platoon that I’m not alone.
“A word to the wise,” Sergeant Gau says before leading us into the chow hall. “Don’t make it a habit to overeat. You’ll end up puking your guts out once the physical conditioning starts. I advise you to keep that appetite in check.”
The dining hall is already abuzz with muted conversation between the recruits who have claimed tables before Platoon 1066, but we keep our silence as we stand in line to fill our trays. Still, we can look around and make incredulous and excited faces at each other, and we do. There are big metal trays of food behind the glass partition between the chow hall and the kitchen, and I’ve never seen or smelled anything this good in my whole life.
The stuff on the trays in front of us is real. I can see mashed potatoes, sliced meat with gravy, noodles, and rice. I have to exert considerable self-control to not grab my tray and skip ahead to the end of the line, where I can see donuts, slices of pie, and some sort of fruit cobbler. It’s probably just the sudden olfactory overload, but I am sure I can smell the chocolate frosting on the donuts all the way at the front of the line.
We all load up our trays with too much food. I take a salad, a bowl of soup that has vegetables and chunks of chicken floating in it, a heaping serving of mashed potatoes, and two pieces of meat. At the end of the chow line, I have to shift the food on my tray around to make space for a pair of donuts and a slice of apple pie. When I look