A Goode Life

Chapter 9

"Junior Cadets! On your feet. Hustle!" cried the drill sergeant.

They were on their feet and running the course one after another. Having been doing the same course for about a month now, they now had a mechanistic run through of the course. Each person knew the movements of the rest of the cadets and judged almost perfectly the amount of space they needed to give the person in front of them; they moved through the course without any abrupt stops.

Grant was at first uncomfortable with all the physical movement required. He wasn't interested in physical activity as he was with gadgetry. He was in good company as the rest of them had the same interests. That made the first week brutal. Half of the class bowed out of the exercise less than halfway through the course. But by the third week, with much prodding, they could run the course three times at a reasonable pace. Grant was somewhere in the median of the group in physical fitness; he wasn't a laggard nor a frontrunner. He was sufficiently fit to continue with the program. This he discovered, as in the next week of class, the lower twenty percent of the class was cut and put in a lower branch of the program.

Grant was sad. He just couldn't shake it. This, in addition to missing his brother, made him lonely. He was close to many of the students that were cut. They were the brainier among the group. Because their class sought to make balanced personnel, the unfit were cut. The program required techies that were both fit for civilian and active duty. He consoled himself the only way he knew how, by simulating them in his computer. He interacted with them via VR at home.

Father and Mother didn't take note of it at first. But like Brad, he's come to take over the maintenance of all the house gadgetries. He was by far the most competent in it as it was what he was learning in school, the maintenance and operation of civilian and classified technologies. Father and Mother didn't mind because he was already the one using most of them—also that it wasn't illegal for him to be doing maintenance work. But they worried that he didn't have enough balance in his life.

They believed he wasn't making any friends as he didn't really talk about school. But he just didn't talk about school because there was a lot of classified information. For parent teacher conferences they would meet with one of his teachers, the civilian one as if he was in regular elementary education.

"Grant has excelled over a lot of his peers," the teacher said.

"We're glad," Mother said.

"He is particularly keen on gadget use," the teacher said.

"He's on gadgets all the time at home is why. But he's socializing fine in school though, right?" Mother asked.

The teacher assured her that he did. In fact, he was popular in class. He was a leader in his class, always helping others that had gadget problems. It was almost like he was a secondary gadget instructor.

The parent teacher conference ended promptly for them as Father and Mother did not have many questions aside from Grant's socialization. Grant couldn't keep his thoughts away from his decommissioned peers. He forced himself to think positively about it. 'They must fit into their new class more snugly,' he thought. 'They wouldn't have to put themselves through military physical training anymore at least.'

The days passed without any more change in class distribution. He was still around the average when it came to fitness, though it didn't really matter much anymore at this point.

They were being given real life case studies to examine and learn from. It was explained to them that being in this class put them in line to become either special officers or high-ranking military personnel. They would get to choose their path in what was supposed to be their transition into junior high. Instead, they would be in school to train for a precise role of their choosing. They were free to back out anytime they liked and enter the less strenuous stream of tech personnel.