Ruiz suddenly lunged forward, directly into my face, and bellowed. "You are the mastermind behind Willie Wheelie, recruit?"

"Yes, Master Sergeant!" There was a perverse pleasure in screaming at someone whose face was just millimeters away from your own.

Ruiz hovered in my face for a few seconds, scanning it with his eyes, daring me to flinch. He actually snarled. Then he stepped back and began to unbutton his shirt. I remained at attention but suddenly I was very, very scared. He whipped off his shirt, turned his right shoulder to me, and stepped forward again. "Recruit, tell me what you see on my shoulder!"

I glanced down, and thought, No fucking way. "It is a tattoo of Willie Wheelie, Master Sergeant!"

"Goddamn right," snapped Ruiz. "I'm going to tell you a story, recruit. Back on Earth, I was married to an evil, vicious woman. A veritable pit viper. Such was her hold on me that even though being married to her was a slow death by paper cuts, I still felt suicidal when she demanded a divorce. At my lowest moment, I stood at a bus stand, contemplating hurling myself in front of the next bus that came along. Then I looked over and saw an advertisement with Willie Wheelie in it. And do you know what it said?"

"'Sometimes You Just Gotta Hit the Road,' Master Sergeant!" That tagline had taken me all of fifteen seconds to write. What a world.

"Exactly," he said. "And as I stared at that ad, I had what some would call a Moment of Clarity—I knew that what I needed was to just hit the fucking road. I divorced the evil slug of a wife, sang a song of thanks, packed my belongings into a saddlebag and lit out. Ever since that blessed day, Willie Wheelie has been my avatar, the symbol of my desire for personal freedom and expression. He saved my life, recruit, and I am forever grateful."

"You're welcome, Master Sergeant!" I bellowed.

"Recruit, I am honored that I have had a chance to meet you; you are additionally the first recruit in the history of my tenure that I have not found immediate grounds to despise. I cannot tell you how much that disturbs and unnerves me. However, I bask in the almost certain knowledge that soon—possibly within the next few hours—you will undoubtedly do something to piss me off. To assure that you do, in fact, I assign to you the role of platoon leader. It is a thankless fucking job that has no upside, since you have to ride these sad-ass recruits twice as hard as I do, because for every one of the numerous fuckups that they perform, you will also share the blame. They will hate you, despise you, plot your downfall, and I will be there to give you an extra ration of shit when they succeed. What do you think about that, recruit? Speak freely!"

"It sounds like I'm pretty fucked, Master Sergeant!" I yelled.

"That you are, recruit," Ruiz said. "But you were fucked the moment you landed in my platoon. Now get running. Can't have the leader not run with his 'toon. Move!"

"I don't know whether to congratulate you or be scared for you," Alan said to me as we headed toward the mess hall for breakfast.

"You can do both," I said. "Although it probably makes more sense to be scared. I am. Ah, there they are." I pointed to a group of five recruits, three men, two women, who were milling about in front of the mess hall.

Earlier in the day, as I was heading toward the communication tower on my run, my BrainPal almost caused me to collide with a tree by flashing a text message directly into my field of view. I managed to swerve, merely clipping a shoulder, and told Asshole to switch to voice navigation before I got myself killed. Asshole complied and started the message over.

"Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz's appointment of John Perry as leader of the 63rd Training Platoon has been processed. Congratulations on your advancement. You now have access to personnel files and Brain-Pal information relating to recruits within the 63rd Training Platoon. Be aware that this information is for official use only; access for nonmilitary use is cause for immediate termination of platoon leader position and a courtmartial trial at the base commander's discretion."

"Swell," I said, leaping a small gully.

"You will need to present Master Sergeant Ruiz with your selections for squad leaders by the end of your platoon's breakfast period," Asshole continued. "Would you like to review your platoon files to aid in your selection process?"

I would. I did. Asshole spewed out details at high speed on each recruit as I ran. By the time I made it to the comm tower, I had narrowed the list to twenty candidates; by the time I was nearing the base, I'd parceled out the entire platoon among squad leaders and sent mail to each of the five new squad leaders to meet me at the mess hall. That BrainPal was certainly beginning to come in handy.

I also noted that I managed to make it back to base in fifty-five minutes, and I hadn't passed any other recruits on the way back. I consulted Asshole and discovered that the slowest of the recruits (one of the former Marines, ironically) had clocked in at fifty-eight minutes thirteen seconds. We wouldn't be running to the comm tower tomorrow, or at least not because we were slow. I didn't doubt Sergeant Ruiz's ability to find another excuse, however. I was just hoping not to be the one to give it to him.

The five recruits saw me and Alan coming and snapped, more or less, to attention. Three of them saluted immediately, followed somewhat sheepishly by the other two. I saluted back and smiled. "Don't fret it," I said to the two who lagged. "This is new to me, too. Come on, let's get in line and talk while we eat."

"Do you want me to light out?" Alan asked me while we were in line. "You've probably got a lot to cover with these guys."

"No," I said. "I'd like you there. I want your opinion on these guys. Also, I have news for you, you're my second in command in our own squad. And since I've got a whole platoon to babysit, that means you're really going to be in charge of it. Hope you don't mind."

"I can handle it," Alan said, smiling. "Thanks for putting me in your squad."

"Hey," I said. "What's the point of being in charge if you can't indulge in pointless favoritism. Besides, when I go down, you'll be there to cushion my fall."

"That's me," Alan said. "Your military career air bag."

The mess hall was packed but the seven of us managed to commandeer a table. "Introductions," I said. "Let's know each other's names. I'm John Perry, and for the moment at least I'm platoon leader. This is my squad's second in command, Alan Rosenthal."

"Angela Merchant," said the woman immediately across from me. "Of Trenton, New Jersey."

"Terry Duncan," said the fellow next to her. "Missoula, Montana."

"Mark Jackson. St. Louis."

"Sarah O'Connell. Boston."

"Martin Garabedian. Sunny Fresno, California."

"Well, aren't we geographically diverse," I said. That got a chuckle, which was good. "I'll be quick about this, since if I spend any amount of time on this it'll be clear that I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. Basically, you five got chosen because there's something in your history that suggests that you'd be able to handle being a squad leader. I chose Angela because she was a CEO. Terry ran a cattle ranch. Mark was a colonel in the army, and with all respect to Sergeant Ruiz, I actually do think that's an advantage."

"That's nice to hear," Mark said.

"Martin was on the Fresno city council. And Sarah here taught kindergarten for thirty years, which automatically makes her the most qualified of all of us." Another laugh. Man, I was on a roll.

"I'm going to be honest," I said. "I'm not planning to be a hard-ass on you. Sergeant Ruiz has got that job covered, and I'd just be a pale imitation. It's not my style. I don't know what your command style will be, but I want you to do what you need to do to keep on top of your recruits and to get them through the next three months. I don't really care about being platoon leader, but I think I care very much about making sure every recruit in this platoon has the skills and training they're going to need to survive out there. Ruiz's little home movie got my attention and I hope it got yours."