Marko Kloos - Terms of Enlistment

When I was younger, I often dreamed of falling from a great height. The part of the dream that was most terrifying was the moment of weightless feeling just after I stepped out over the abyss—the second when I realized I was going to fall, and my stomach tried to float up inside of me. The dream always felt so real that I took it for the real thing every time, and I was always terrified when I plunged toward the ground, certain that I was experiencing the last moments of my life.

I would always wake up before hitting the ground, but in a way, my mind lived through my final moments hundreds of times. I remember feeling regret every single time—for things I had done, or failed to do, and for all the things I would leave unaccomplished. Sometimes I would think of my mother, and the sorrow that would be added to her already joyless life by surviving her only child.

This time, the dream is different. When I step over the precipice, I am in my battle armor, holding my rifle, and I am fully aware that I am merely dreaming. Still, the feeling of weightlessness is real, and so is the fear that grips my mind as my body falls into the darkness below.

This time, I don’t wake up before hitting the ground. This time, I crash onto the ground after a fall that seems impossibly long. I don’t blink out of existence, which is what should happen after a fall from such a height, a body shattered in a microsecond, just enough time for the brain to register a final shock before getting turned into paste. Instead, I am aware of the impact, the shock it sends through my body, and the way it seems to jar every molecule in me out of alignment. Nobody can survive a fall like that, but here I am, flat on my back, still breathing. Nothing seems to be broken—there is no pain at all, actually—and when I try to sit up, my body obeys instantly. My armor is unscratched, and my rifle still safely cradled in the harness on my chest.

Then there’s a bright light in my face, and I flinch. I feel hands on my shoulders, holding my upper body steady, and my brain finally decides to let go of the dream and rejoin the real world.

The bright light is the end of an optical wand, and it’s a scant inch away from my eyes. I’m flat on my back, and as I try to emulate the action in my dream and sit up, I make it about half an inch before a pair of hands gently, but firmly pushes me back into the horizontal position.

“Hold up there, soldier. You can’t do that yet, ‘less you want to undo all the patchwork.”

The voice sounds jovial, but professional, someone who’s used to giving advice and equally used to having it followed. The person standing over me is a woman in a TA Class B shirt, but I can’t make out her rank device, or her collar flashes. I try to speak, but my throat is parched, and all I can manage is a hoarse mumble that sounds nothing like human communication. The woman seems to be able to translate my utterance nonetheless, because she shuts off her wand, reaches past me, and brings a plastic cup into my field of vision.

“Water, cold, three ounces,” she declares, describing the item in mock military supply jargon. “Don’t drink too much at once. The patchwork in your abdomen is still tender.”

She brings the cup to my lips. I take a careful sip, then a bigger one. The water doesn’t even feel liquid as it runs down my throat, just a cool sensation coating my tongue and washing past my uvula.

“Better?” she asks. I nod in response.

“Good. Hold off on the speaking for a minute, okay? I have a good idea what you want to ask, so I’ll give you the rundown. If you still want to talk after I’m done, you can have at it. Deal?”

I nod.

“You’re in Regional Medical Center Great Lakes. You’ve been wounded in combat, and our doctors have stitched you back together. You’ll have to ask the medical officer in charge on details about your injuries, but as far as I know, you had a collapsed lung, and you now have about three feet of small intestine less than you had when you were brought in. You’ll be with us for a little while before we can release you back to your unit.”

She pauses for a moment and then gives me a curt smile.

“Now, do you have any questions?”

“Where’s the rest of my squad?” I ask.

“Not a clue. They brought you in from a different facility via medic flight. We had a bunch of other arrivals that night, but I don’t know who or where they are. You’re going to have to ask the medical officer in charge. I’m just the nurse.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Three days,” she says. “Two and a half, actually. They brought you in early Saturday morning, and now it’s Monday afternoon.”

“Shit,” I say. “Missed Monday morning Orders. The company sergeant is going to kick my ass.”

The nurse laughs softly. She reaches past me again, and turns on a light behind her. In the soft glow of the LED bulb she switched on, I can see her name tag and her rank device. She’s wearing corporal’s chevrons, and the tag above her right shirt pocket identifies her as MILLER C. We’re all just a rank, a last name, and an initial. I’d ask her first name, but she outranks me by three pay grades, and I don’t want to offend the person in charge of my medications for the next few days.

“You have a bit of stuff in your desk drawer,” she says. “Mostly the effects you had on you. See if there’s anything that doesn’t belong, and I’ll get rid of it for you.”

“My PDP make it?”

“Yeah,” Corporal Miller says. “You can’t kill those things, you know.”

She gets up from the chair on which she had been sitting, and straightens out her uniform shirt.

“I’ll leave you alone for a bit. There’s a call button right over your head if you need anything. I’ll be back with dinner in a little while.”

She gives me another curt smile, and leaves the room.

The room is entirely devoid of furniture except for the bed I’m in, a little white night stand beside it, and the display that’s hanging on the wall in a corner of the room. It’s as sterile an environment as I’ve ever seen outside of a PRC tenement.

I roll over onto my side and look at the night stand next to my bed. It has two drawers, and I reach over and pull open the first one. Inside is my dog tag on its ball chain, my PDP, the set of playing cards we all carry in rubberized trauma pack pouches, and the half-empty pack of breath mints I forgot I had stuffed into the right leg pocket of my armor before heading out to the drop ship. I reach up and touch the side of my face, where a fresh line of scar tissue leads from the corner of my left eyebrow to the back of my ear.

My PDP turns on at the first press of the button. I had it in my pocket throughout the last mission, and it seems impossible that the electronic gear has survived all the running, falling, and getting shot at, but there’s not a scratch on the thing. Even the battery is still at a full charge.

I check the MilNet link, the wireless network that connects all the military’s communication systems, and that every military PDP can access from anywhere on Earth and Luna. There are smaller MilNet nodes on Navy ships and Marine outposts as well, but they only synchronize with the rest of the network every few days. On the two inhabited bodies in our own solar system, however, the network is always in sync, and always just a tap on a PDP screen away.

The network is present, but for some reason, my PDP can’t connect to it. I can bring up everything that’s not reliant on the MilNet—my calendar, the technical manuals, the ballistic conversion tables, and the book reader—but every time I try to access something that requires network access, I get an error message, even though the PDP shows full network signal strength. MilNet works over satellites, and it’s always available, even on the top of the Himalayas or the middle of what’s left of the South American rainforest, but my PDP can’t connect to it, which means that the hardware has been locked out.