It looks like the “don’t fall asleep” part of my survival plan and the plan to blend into the group are both about to run into trouble.
The kids started talking.
Somehow it just happened, plain and simple.
One day, out of nowhere, everyone in our little group is talking.
The teeth have all finally come in too; you can press a finger to the gums now and feel all twenty.
The first word anyone said in our stall, predictably enough, was “grenade.” At that exact moment, on the screens above the pens, another one of the training cartoons was playing, this one about clearing out droids.
An instructor in bright yellow armor, clearly a Mandalorian, asked from the screen: “So how do we hit an enemy who’s hiding behind cover, when we can’t reach him?
Maybe throw something at him?
A rock, or…?” And then my neighbor squeaked through the wall between us: “Grenade!” Would you believe it.
Everyone looked up from the screens and stared for a second at the kid who’d shouted it.
And then, somehow, without any discussion, they all started backing him up.
From that point on the video lessons turned interactive.
Tactics for storming fortified positions, urban combat, how large units operate in different climates, how to lay out defensive lines around temporary and permanent bases, movement discipline on patrol, we got all of it thrown at us with no real order to it, though I’ll give them credit, by this point I already knew the specs and rough composition of at least five hundred different rifles, small blasters, carbines, and other tools for killing sentient beings at range.
And the instructor on the screen always waited for an answer now.
The other kids would shout out.
I stayed quiet.
What was the point?
My answer was never actually needed.
And looking closer, I noticed I wasn’t the only one holding back.
But for appearances, I’d squeak something along with the rest every so often.
The second strange thing, once the others started showing they could talk, was that nobody bothered getting to know anyone.
On one hand, maybe there’s no real need to.
There are forty eight of us packed into one round room, and no matter who you look at, the faces are all the same, only the numbers are different.
On the other hand, it’s more than a little unsettling.
A couple of days after that, they “suddenly” showed us a film about, of all things, dishes and how to use them.
The next one was a walkthrough for using the toilet and shower.
And the day after that, the backs of our pens dropped down, and the wristbands came off.
I’d have been glad about it, except waking up with nothing on and finding a set of plain clothes waiting for me on a tray that dropped from the ceiling, simple trousers with an elastic waist, a turtleneck, and slippers, was new, if not exactly unexpected.
Everything about it was tidy.
And green.
I couldn’t tell you how long any of this has gone on.
A long time.
I’ve lost all track of it.
Days?
Sure, if you want to call them that.
Cycles is closer.
Whatever was stopping us from looking away from the screens seems to be gone now, and instead we just get a wake up call and lights out on a schedule.
Except the lights never actually go off, it stays lit the whole time, which gets old fast.
The alarm screams like a siren on a submarine; if you don’t want to get up, tough luck, you’re getting up anyway.
Not that anyone complains.
Nobody’s in a rush to leave their bunk either, past what’s needed.
Our room has a door that’s almost invisible against the wall, marked “Toilet,” with stalls for two dozen, a bidet, a dozen sinks, and shower stalls.
The clones still don’t talk to each other much, which would look strange for kids this age anywhere else, but I’ve stopped trying to make sense of it.
I just accept it now.
I genuinely have no idea how much time has passed.
I did try staying awake through one all clear signal.
Three and a half hours, then the wake up call.
Over a cycle it works out to something like six hours of training, an hour of meals from the feeding table, an hour for washing up and laundry.
Everything here runs on numbers; they count off from ninety seven up to one hundred and forty four, then lights out.
I tried staying awake again, even though I was wrecked.
Made it about four hours before I went under.
Woke up to the siren going off.
That cycle’s training ran closer to eight and a half hours.
There’s a pattern to it too.
The more complicated the material we’re shown, the more sleep we get afterward, and the other way around.
Whoever designed this really thought it through.
On the other hand, you have to admire a system built that tightly around efficiency.
Every part of it, even the “cartoons,” is tuned for speed and results.
Time moves in uneven stretches, and I can feel the fatigue building up, mental fatigue, even though I don’t see it in any of the others around me.
There’s practically nothing to do besides study, eat, and sleep.
I could spend the time wondering why there are forty eight of us and not fifty, though I’ve noticed the people running this place seem to favor multiples of twelve for everything.
I thought about doing push ups or squats, but it felt pointless when I could just fall asleep mid rep, and at the rate our bodies are growing, the effort wouldn’t add up to much anyway.
Not to mention we might be watched.
Staying paranoid seems like the safest bet for staying alive long term.
Not that there’s much time to dwell on it either way.
There’s a lot of information coming at us, and not all of it sticks, or rather, it sticks just a little less cleanly than before.
I’ve noticed that when I try to recall the exact wording of some lesson, it takes real effort now.
Maybe there’s a limit to it.
Or maybe something else is capping it on purpose.
Funny thing, none of us really need the bathroom often, and when the urge does hit, it’s roughly the same timing for everyone, close to bedtime, no more than once every four cycles or so.
I try to go early.
Though we’re not all the same on that front.
Still, even young as we are, the clones behave a little differently from each other, in small, easy to miss ways.
Having an adult mind helps me notice it.
One stretches out like he’s sore, another lingers in the shower longer than he needs to, someone else has clearly stopped paying attention to some of the videos and just sits quietly, thinking about something.
One kid flat out hates the food we’re given, even though the flavor never actually changes.
It’s some combination of paste and sugar, and a drink that tastes like sawdust and looks the color of snot.
They lower the food down on tables that drop from the ceiling.
Tables, loosely speaking.
More like a trough built into the tabletop, filled with a single scoop of the stuff, meant to be eaten in one go, plus a lightweight plastic spoon.
I want something with actual texture.
Real food.
It’s torture eating like this.
It’s not that it’s bad exactly, and it’s not even that repetitive, since the saltiness and consistency shift a little every time.
But I’d give a lot for a proper meal.
Pasta.
Canned fish.
I’d honestly commit violence for one ripe tomato.
Forget the tomato.
I never thought I’d miss instant noodles this badly.
I know exactly how easy it’d be to talk me into mass murder at this point.
Show me a candy bar, promise me more, put a squad of droids between me and it, and I’ll go through them with my teeth.
Not that it’s all bad; that’s the thing: if I close my eyes, the paste tastes almost like oatmeal with chicken in it.
Almost.
From a long way off.
Our growth has genuinely slowed down.
I’m guessing that means we’ll be split into different groups soon, or something’s about to change.
Right now we look like sturdy five year olds.
Given how much theory they’ve crammed into us already, I have a feeling the practical part of our training is coming, and honestly, about time.
On the next wake up, unless I’ve completely lost the thread, someone that might as well have been Santa Claus walked into the center of the room with gifts.
I’m starting to genuinely respect whoever runs this place.
And that’s when I finally understood we’re nowhere near as big as I’d assumed, more like knee-high to a grown man, if that.
Why did I land on that?
Because Santa Claus turned out to be an instructor in bright yellow armor.
In the flesh.
A real one.
On his right hip hung a DC-17, the same pistol I recognized from the training cartoons, and I’d already seen its exact dimensions listed on screen.
Before now I’d had nothing around me to judge scale by.
And here was an actual blaster, thirty six centimeters from the tip of the barrel to the base of the grip.
The sergeant himself looked massive too, somewhere over two meters tall, at least counting the armor.
I was just surprised a real instructor had shown up.
The other kids, and I can’t really think of them any other way, looked at him like he’d descended from somewhere holy.
Like a god had walked in and noticed them.
The Mandalorian, apparently waiting for us all to snap out of it, spoke through his helmet’s vocoder, dry and clipped: “Su cuy’gar, ade.
Call me Master Sergeant.
Five minutes to wash up, then we start.” Then, seeing us just standing there, he barked, “Move!” Of course.
First lesson learned.
Twelve sinks, forty eight of us, five minutes isn’t nearly enough.
I’m hoping their whole obsession with efficiency doesn’t get me killed early, and while everyone else lines up by number, I dart into the shower room, hit the tap, rinse my mouth and face fast, and catch the stunned looks from the ones still waiting in line.
“We’re not all going to fit in the time we’ve got,” I say toward the others.
“This is faster.” And without drying off, I head back into the room and take a seat across from my bunk.
“You did that fast.
Who are you?” Damn it.
How do I play this?
I want to come across as sharp and obedient, not a fanatic.
Honestly, I hadn’t planned on doing this so soon, hadn’t planned on any of this at all, but it just slipped out.
A slip, but not a fatal one.
Let’s see where it leads.
Call it reconnaissance in force.
Now or never.
“CT-134, Master Sergeant, sir.” “Is that right?” The Mandalorian sounded surprised.
“Not oh-one-thirty-four.
Just one-thirty-four?
I’ll remember that.” That didn’t sound great.
I’d just made myself stand out.
What if I doze off one day and wake up on a table getting taken apart for parts?
Realized that a beat too late.
Still, we’d managed to surprise the Master Sergeant, or so I hope.
Everyone made it in under four minutes.
He tilted his head to one side like a bird studying something, then waved a hand, come on.
And the lot of us shuffled out in something like a column of two, through a door beside the toilet that led out into a wide corridor.
I nearly wet myself with excitement, honestly.
At least there was some variety to look forward to.
I had no idea how wrong I was.