Tin Soldier

Author’s Note: The following short story has been bouncing around in my head for a few years, to the point that most of the plot was conceived long before I started physically writing it. As an experiment, I decided to force myself to type it out in one hour and four minutes, and spend an additional twenty minutes editing it for clarity. It’s done now, as much as something with 90 minutes of writing and editing can be. Enjoy.

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I constantly worried about getting fired from the officers’ corps, and put back into the dirt. Never was that worry more present, or more founded, than the day before my big presentation at all-hands, when I backed a service vehicle into a billion-dollar plane.

Despite getting away from most manual labor duties, I still maintained a forklift certification on a base that had very few people trained in moving pallets. I was the only man with the certification that morning, I got the call, and showed up to move a bunch of freight. I think it was food, but it didn’t matter, so I didn’t check. I was more focused on getting the job done quickly, because I needed to prepare to speak the next day to all the higher-ups on the base at once, and I was behind on putting together my slide deck.

I don’t really know how it happened, as I have a really acute spatial awareness and I’m generally very careful, which is really all a forklift certification teaches you to be. But somehow, when maneuvering toward a pallet I had barely missed, I swung back dramatically so I could nail my second approach, and I slammed directly into the front wheel of the G-19 Rapid Response Reconnaissance Drone that was parked closer than I had recalled.

There’s a cow catcher on the back of our forklifts, which keeps anyone hit by the thing from going underneath. This is the kind of precaution you need if your forklift might be used in the heat of a battle. What this means is that the ass end of the forklift has a rigid metal plate that juts out, which made direct contact with the outside of the wheel that makes up the front of the drone’s landing gear. It was a loud impact, and as soon as it happened I turned off the forklift – something they certify you in doing – and ran back to see what I’d hit, turned around quickly, and realized that this was probably going to be the day I lost my job.

I don’t like to think of myself as incompetent, but there are certain people in the officers’ corps who are asked repeatedly to engage in “special training.” Many joke this is a euphemism for helping the slower, less competent recruits get up to speed on what the rest of us know already. And I’ve been a part of those special trainings, and I frankly am usually last on the tests among my group. So under the circumstances, breaking a piece of military hardware that’s worth billions more than I am felt like a surefire ticket back to the trenches in whatever the next war would be.

I was scheduled at all-hands to give a presentation titled “Geographic Advantage in National Conflicts (GANC): Aerial View Pattern Recognition and Utility.” The basic idea is that, should we send our expensive equipment over enemy territory, and the pilots could see the features on the ground like mountains, hills, rivers and so forth, those images might not mean a lot to the untrained eye. I have special training in geology and geography, and I have a sense for how certain rock formations, or the placement of a diverted river, for instance, might indicate the location of nearby conflict zones, places to monitor for hidden installations, and the like. I needed to present at least five really solid examples, and it would be much better if I had ten or fifteen, but I had done zero preparation. And so the minute my forklift hit the drone, something inside my brain turned off and told me to immediately head back to my room and plan the presentation without mentioning to anyone that I’d just grounded one of the most expensive pieces of military hardware in the history of mankind.

It was probably a bad idea to head back to my room and tell nobody I’d just made a critical mistake. One special training session, early on, made it clear that just because I was in the corps, and just because I was in special training, did not give me an excuse to act alone, or pretend I’m not a part of a team. It was like my forklift training applied now to my mistake and operations protocol – turn it off immediately before you cause more damage. The logic my special trainee brain was feeding me seemed to indicate that I had some kind of plausible deniability about who was at fault for the accident, and that if I gave a really amazing presentation then I’d be demonstrating my own worth to whatever unit I was assigned.

The first obvious example of GANC was new hills or new mountains. People don’t ever think about this, but it’s actually really hard to move earth. Mother Nature moves earth at, literally, a glacial pace. So when you see piles of dirt – or especially when you see piles of dirt that have been fancied up to look like hills, you know that someone has been digging nearby – no military in history has moved dirt any further than they needed to, simply tried to hide it once they’d moved it that far. In national conflicts, it is all-too-common for the governments of warring states to immediately build new temporary bases of operations, or install new weapons, or hide new defensive capabilities, near their borders. So my presentation should begin there, I kept telling myself, to avoid the fear of being fired, and having to work a machine gun at one of those newly-dug outposts on the border of whatever nation I was fighting for.

I’d pitched this idea for a presentation to my commanding officer in response to his request that all of us in special training learn public speaking skills, and practice them by teaching something useful to the rest of the corps. I studied geography and geology because I had hoped to be an archaeologist or an anthropologist. I only completed three years of formal education before the President compelled the service of all men of my age.

The slide I put together for “New Hills or Mountains” looked great. I kept telling myself that I needed to complete a solid template for the first slide, and then duplicate it for each concurrent slide. So it made sense that the first slide was going to take the longest in order to perfect the aesthetic, and that the content of each slide that followed would be less difficult once they all looked great. It felt efficient, that I was spending hours on the color and imagery for the first slide of the presentation, rather than outlining the content for slides two through ten. I considered taking some of the stimulants that are provided for our convenience on evening details, but decided against it. My presentation was early in the morning and I wanted to be fresh-faced, not appear to be lacking in sleep, or jittery from a double dose. The hours went on, and I was starting to feel tired, and some of the adrenaline from the accident had started to wear off. I was getting droopy and slowing down just as the first slide felt complete. I finished the second quickly, confirming my approach was appropriate and working. The third slide started out fine, and I had a few options for photographs which I remembered weighing heavily. But I had skipped both lunch and dinner by this point, out of some fear that I might see anyone who’d witnessed what had happened earlier that day, and because I needed the extra hours for preparation. Slide four was going to be on man-made water features, I think. I can’t remember. I passed out in my desk chair, and I woke up to morning announcements.

There’s a moment when you know you’re done, when you haven’t just fucked up once, but a couple of times in rapid succession. It’s like when a professional golfer misses three easy putts in a row, or when a soldier crashes a forklift into an expensive military drone, skips two meals, and then fails to adequately prepare for a presentation to all the commanding officers on his base. The morning announcement buzzed in over an intercom, loud and abrasive, just as the sun was beginning to rise. First, a loud bleating noise, as though a basketball game had just ended. Then, the announcer’s voice cut in, brash and distorted by the old speaker system.

“RISE AND SHINE, OFFICERS. MORNING PRESENTATIONS BEGIN AT 0700 SHARP. PRESENTING TODAY…” a list of names, all of which I blocked out from hearing except for my own … “FOLLOWED IMMEDIATELY BY GROUND AND AIR TRAINING EXERCISES. PLEASE BE ADVISED, G-19 MARVIN IS DOWN FOR REPAIR, REPEAT, MARVIN IS GROUNDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.”

“Marvin” was a cute name for a flying spy machine, named after the little Martian guy in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. Someone had painted on his side, quite poorly, a depiction of him looking through a telescope at the ground below. The announcement that he was grounded was followed by a few groans from outside my door – Marvin was fun to pilot, fast, and provided a ton of useful information. For example, you could fly Marvin over a nation at war, and use the imagery he sent back to determine where someone had dug trenches, or quickly intervene in an escalating conflict. The base only had one G-19, and in Marvin’s absence we’d be reverting back to much less reliable, error-prone equipment.

Presenters at morning breakfast went in alphabetical order by last name, which made me second. Finally, a little luck – I could at least eat before I improvised my way through the latter two-thirds of my talk about rocks. I’d sent my unfinished presentation to the A/V guy just before leaving my office and heading directly to the mess hall. The projection screen was lit up when I walked in, and on the screen was my impeccable first slide.

I reminded the A/V guy that we were supposed to go alphabetically, and he just shrugged. “What does it matter?,” he said, “You’re up.” Arguing seemed futile, luck nonexistent. I took a few deep breaths, looked at a mostly-empty stack of index cards I’d made notes on the night before. With less than a minute before I was supposed to start, again the buzz of the intercom cut through the murmurs of hungry officers as they were slopping down eggs and potatoes. “OFFICER FOUR ALPHA NINER ECHO GAMMA EIGHT NINER REPORT TO COMMAND CENTER.” This was not the announcer’s voice. This was the colonel. That was the moment I knew my career as an officer was over.

Protocol stated that officers’ names were used in all informal situations – like the presentation I was giving over breakfast. A code designation comes with explicit orders, always. Had I been late to the presentation, people might have chuckled, but being late when your code designation came, you didn’t do – no excuse for delay, you did exactly as you were told. The slight relief of not having to embarrass myself in front of my unit was immediately replaced with the grief that I would likely not get a chance to say goodbye to them before being shipped off base, back to fight and die alongside the dregs. “That’s my code,” I said to the A/V guy. He nodded, and unloaded my presentation from the projector. As I walked out, I looked back at the room, and at the first slide of a presentation called, “In-Flight Scenario Assignments for Special Trainees,” and left.

The walk to central command gave me just enough time to question if I’d overcomplicated my presentation. I supposed I kept focusing on it because I was in denial that I’d grounded Marvin, causing a ton of headaches for others at a time nobody needed that extra work. I entered the door to central, and standing immediately behind it was the colonel, accompanied by two military police. They stood behind the colonel, who looked up from a manila folder as I entered. “Four Alpha Niner Echo Gamma Eight Niner,” he said.

“Yes sir,” I replied. I stood at attention and though I looked straight ahead I could see in his hands a photograph inside the folder. A picture of myself. “Probably my HR file,” some part of my brain figured. “Gotta have that with you if you’re going to fire someone.”

“Follow me,” he said, and led me down a hallway, followed by the MPs, who said nothing. We approached a door with no number or label. The colonel swiped his identification card on the reader next to it, and it clicked open. He held the door from inside, and said to his entourage, “You two stay out here. Nobody in or out.”

When the door closed, I broke protocol. I recall thinking that a Hail Mary apology might somehow save my ass.

“Sir, I’m sorry sir. I should have reported the accident, and I did not. I recognize my mistake and it won’t happen again.”

“Son, I do not have the foggiest fucking clue what you’re talking about. Shut up. These are your orders.” He produced an aerial view map of the border immediately to the south of our encampment. “About three minutes ago, two warheads were launched from 200 miles south of this border. You’re the second special trainee we’re activating for this mission. We need you to get up there and put that,” and he gestured at a circled missile silo within the national bounds, “missile on a different course. Four Alpha Niner Echo Gamma Eight Niner. You have permission to use force and special training. Bring that missile down, now.”

I was about to interrupt him, for some reason, when he said my activation phrase and direct order. My eyes rolled back for a moment, then closed. I turned to my left, where my flight suit was hanging, ready for wear. I stripped from my daily uniform with impossible speed, leaving the clothes neatly folded on a chair next to the closet. A moment later, I was dressed, windsuit tightly fitting my chest, and the bay doors to the launch room opened. I looked upward, secured my goggles to my face, and activated the heads-up display. I turned until the compass said south. The radar said 102 miles, the wind speed was due East at 30 miles an hour. The computer voice in the earpiece said, “Six minutes at maximum flight speed.” I lept into the air, and veered toward the blip on the radar. Wind pushed my hair back. I was not prepared to present, nor to defend my mistake, but I’d spent many months preparing for this, to defend whatever nation I was in.

I didn’t lose my job, it turns out. After Marvin, the most modern pieces of equipment on our base were the special trainees.