Silence in the briefing room. None of the soldiers dares to make even the slightest noise. In comes the opressor... nooo, I mean, the captain. You know, the guy who is in charge of the whole friggin company.
He walks in front of his people, just the way an old fashioned school teacher would walk in front of his class. When does he take out his hazelwood-stick? After he has walked there, in front of his "class", he stops. Turns around. Everything is absolutely quiet.
He keeps standing there for a quarter of an eternity. I may very well be that only a few minutes have passed, but time does not matter when you have that guy standing in front of you. It feels like a topsyturvy firing squad, where the one in front of the wall is the killer.
He is standing there, saying nothing. Everybody knows, anyone who moves or dares to make the slightest noise... well, somethings are better not thought of. If World War Two would break out again, it is absolutely clear on which side he would be.
"At ease, ladies and gentlemen, at ease. Take a seat. My name - is of no concern to you. My call sign in combat is Zybork, which happens to be an abbreviation of my first name, my second name, and some other stuff in between that has to do with things none of you has any idea of, which is, of course, the military..." His charming could corrode diamonds. What does he have in mind for us? His aid - a sursprisingly pretty female soldier - puts a poster on the blackboard. "Do you", he asks, "know what that is?" Of course we know. "UnnamedPlayer, you volunteer." "Sir, this is a dretch."
"That's correct. But it is not an ordinary dretch. May I introduce you to Pzts'zrrk. Pzts'zrrk is a cute little alien from an inhabitat planet on the other side of the wormhole we discovered a few years ago near the orbit of Mars. Pzts'zrrk likes warming in the sun, enjoys climbing the hugest trees on his homeworld, and does not like to be called by nicknames. And after I told you all that, you surely can tell me why it is - pure nonsense. Can you?"
Oh oh! The last question is dangerous. What does he have in his ... mind?
"It is nonsense, because the ability of individual likes or dislikes is connected to the very existence of an individual conscience - which all those creatures lack. This is a big surprise to you, I think, because obviously you have never understood what all this is about. So let's change that:
The aliens are not individuals. They are like dispatched hands of a multi-armed body. They are clones, they reproduce in a vegetal way, and this whole alien population is just one big single mind.
But like the two hands of a human are not alike and have their characteristics, those aliens seem individual to the unaware mind. But they are not. And when we first encountered them, you - you! - were sent to meet them, because they clearly had hostile intentions. And at this moment, I just want to tell you, from the very bottom of my heart, how you performed:
YOU SUCKED! YOU FAILED, YOU BLEW IT, YOU BUNCH OF RETARDED FAILURES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES! ...I don't know what you did and how you did it, but can anyone tell me how it is possible that half a company manages to die during the first three minutes??? I'd rather have joined the aliens and shot you all down instead of getting away with the last survivors after being bitten and pounced by some of those bugs that nearly killed me."
Oh man, take out a gun and shoot us! Isn't this what you really want? Or do you have something in your sleeves? Something - worse?
With a calm voice, as if he had nevers yelled at us, he continues. He says all those things as if he would state that it is raining outside or that the soup was not too bad today: "The way you fought showed us one thing: You are not capable of fullfilling the mission we assigned you to. We could solve the problem by assigning somebody else. This would be a good idea indeed, because you are unable, dumb, lack of common sense, and are all in all tremulous.
But assigning somebody else would be unfair, at least to this somebody, so you will stay in. We managed to capture parts of the alien life, planted them in synthetic soil, and harvest them from time to time. Those life is to be planted in several facilities we prepared for the particular purpose, and there - you will meet them.
We've prepared everything you need. To make it more realistic, you actually will die if an alien kills you - for real. You will have a 100% realistic feeling of being put to death. This is very unpleasant, but maybe it is the only way to get your lazy asses up and running. The moment your bodies desintegrate, your signal will be used to teleport you back to the beginning, in that case, a teleporter node. Aliens will be able to destroy them too, if you lose the last one, your team will very likely lose the match. This is a drill, of course, a harsh one, and listen to me:
Drills will continue, until the day you consequently win literally every match. There will be no vacations, no rest more than necessary, until you get it done."
He again raises his voice, but his aid interupts him, just by looking him in the eye. "One last thing: There were several occurences of sexual harassment, racial discrimation, and other bullshit surely a sign that you are the ones that gladly die for us, because you are not worth living. However, to avoid this nonetheless, all female soldiers, all people with black or red our yellow skin, everybody, will be disguised by the teleporting system. It's a sad thing such things are even necessary, but we will prevent discrimination at any cost. After you exit a single drill, of course the disguise is discontinued, it just works inside the simulation. That is all, you are dismissed the moment I and my aid leave the room, and I am going to watch carefully and use the simulators too, just to improve my own reactions, and to watch you." He leaves the room, we are dismissed.
Asshole.
So they will stick us in that simulator, until we succeed. Why do I have this rotten feeling that this will be a very, very long time...? I feel sick when I think about all this. I sweat, my hands start to tremble, and a look to the others tells me that I am not alone with this. In that point the captain was right: We are, all in all - tremulous.
