BREAKING: US Military Draft Extends to Women

TW: Coercion, exploitation

Today is April 31. Let that sink in. For those who never paid attention, for the past four hundred-plus years April has comprised 30 days. However, the government’s recent installation of an extra day in order to fulfill its promise to amend the Military Selective Service Act prior to May 1 to replenish a severely depleted military has resulted in a change to the Gregorian calendar humans have been using to track and plan the passage of days, weeks, and months since 1582. One wonders—

“That’s enough,” the secretary said. “I don’t wonder. Do you wonder, Bob?”

“No, sir.” The general clicked off his screen and held his tablet at his side.

“Have the time?”

The general cleared his throat and looked at his watch. “Fifteen forty-one hours and seven seconds, eight seconds, nine…”

The secretary checked his own watch and nodded. He turned his back to look out the window. The storms had flattened the last of the drifting dust months before. A brief spot of morning sun fell on a scatter of buildings popping out of the disappointing landscape. “On one hand,” he said, “it’s good that it wasn’t total devastation. But I could do with a dead internet.”

“I doubt the current population has much access these days, sir.”

The secretary faced the general. “Speaking of. How’re the numbers?”

“Of total pop—?”

“Potential conscripts.”

“Four-ninety-four at last count.”

“Seems like a lot.”

“Every healthy female eighteen to thirty-six with no children.”

“Right. Well, we don’t want to take on more than we need. The more of them there are, the less food and beds we have for our boys. Keep the ones twenty and younger, but check the others for any of that…” He clucked his tongue a few times in thought. “Whatever it is, that test tube shit.—IVF. Anyone having problems like that, scratch ‘em from the rolls.”

“Sir.”

The secretary pushed back his shoulders. “Issue, Bob?”

“It’s possible you’re overestimating the public’s willingness to accept this.”

“I’ve seen no protests. Have you seen protests?”

“I think they’ve been mostly silent because they didn’t think it would come to pass.”

“We said it would.”

“Yes, sir, but it was one line of a speech four months ago, and—”

“What else do they need?”

“What I mean to say is that now that it’s official, you might see a reaction. Years of the government’s own messaging that women have no place in the military is hard to overcome.”

“And?” He shrugged.

“I just think you’ll want to minimize pushback, sir. If it comes across as some arbitrary law—or, worse, if they suspect the truth—you might see them running. We should consider the extra cost and the manpower required to chase them down. And what’s next, prison?”

The secretary was about to say something, then hesitated. His eyebrows snapped up. “Co-ed prison.”

The general laughed.

“Like that, do you, Bob?”

“If you want an immediate revolution.”

“Nope.”

“Just trying to help, sir.”

The secretary looked out the window again. Gray rain had started to fall and streaked the glass. “How’s this. We’ve seen the light.” He turned and faced the general. “We’ll say we’ve been ‘appealed to’ ”—he gritted his teeth and mimed hitting himself on the head with a hammer—“over and over and over again to acknowledge how brave our women are. How intelligent and capable they are. Well, guess what? We finally agree. We were wrong. We’re going to give women their big chance to prove how stwong and bwave they are.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his pinstriped slacks. “How’s that for messaging?”

“Hard to argue with, sir.”

“That’s right, Bob. Go get on it.”

“Yes, sir.” The general saluted. He clicked his heels, ever so subtly, and spun and left the office.

*

Two months later, the secretary, general, command sergeant major, and a few other high-ranking army officials meeting in a national guard aircraft hangar took their seats at a line of brown cafeteria tables. The new conscripts—one hundred thirty-one of whom had been allocated to the army—would be arriving soon. The secretary, wanting to eye them all personally, would be meeting with the air force, navy, and marines over the following days.

He asked the general, sitting beside him, how the to-the-minute numbers looked for all branches combined. “Anyone run off?”

“No, sir. Not that we’ve been made aware of.”

“Pregnancies, though, right? It’s been nine weeks.”

“Just the three who turned out to be several months in already.”

The secretary sat back in his chair. After a moment, he said, “It’s not real enough.”

“Sir?”

“You said no one believed it’d happen. And why should they? We’ve never wanted women before, so why would we now?” He chewed his lip. “They thought we wouldn’t follow through.” He looked at his watch. “But you know what? Right about now they’re getting out of processing.” He winked. “How’s that for follow-through?”

The new recruits began to file into the hangar. With little organization they took their places, standing in ill-fitting fatigues at some manner of half- and quarter-ease in front of the panel of men.

“Why didn’t someone instruct them to tie back their goddamn hair,” the command sergeant major muttered.

Loose and long as much of their hair was, the women looked like they’d traded their own clothes for their husbands’ uniforms for some kind of lunchtime surprise.

“No, it’s good,” the secretary quietly assured the command sergeant major, two seats down. “We’ll straighten it out later.” He slid his chair back and stood to introduce himself, identifying every ribbon he’d chosen to wear for the occasion, many of them the standard achievements of anyone who’d managed to continue breathing while serving, then asked if each woman had received her new watch during in-processing. Nods and faint sounds in the affirmative. He raised his wrist in front of his face and looked at his watch.

“Please synchronize your watches. The time now,” he said, “is zero fifteen hundred and twenty-two seconds, twenty-three, twenty-four…”

The women looked at each other and then outside at the dull white sky.

“I see you’re confused. Ladies, let me explain. Reality is what we, humans, decide reality is. Money has value why? Because we say it does. Religion is religion because we made it. Hell, we created Wednesday.—Diamonds. You like diamonds? Ladies love diamonds. You know why? Because you’re told to. They’re rare, right? Special? Explain how there’re millions of ‘em available in stores around the world. Every try to sell one back?—You, I saw that. How much did you get?”

A woman in the middle of the scattered formation said, “Um, maybe thirty, thirty-five dollars.”

“Sir!” boomed a voice from the end of the tables.

“Sir,” the woman finished.

“That’s right. Rare? Ha. Valuable? Sure, if you’re a diamond merchant. Why? We say so. That is the reality we—humans, Americans—have constructed. And today, in this present reality that has been constructed, the time we have decided on is,” he looked at his watch, “zero twenty-one and thirty-eight seconds. Also today, ladies, in this present reality, you are America’s new hope. You, starting today, are our great nation’s future. Why, you’re so treasured by this country we’re not even sticking you in open bay barracks. How’s that for some privacy? Paired up, of course.”

Mumbles of “Yes, sir.”

“Great.” The secretary quickly concluded with praise for the armed forces and the country and God, then instructed that the boys be brought in to show the ladies—“excuse me,” he corrected himself, smiling, “the privates”—to their barracks.

*

Two weeks later, the secretary and the general sat in the observation center in front of a large flatscreen monitor mounted to the wall. To the left of it, the door to the operator’s private quarters had been left open a few inches.

“How far back you want me to go?” the system operator said from his surveillance station near the window.

“All the way,” the secretary said. “Shut your door first, will you, Walt? This isn’t your living room.”

“Sorry, sir.”

For the next several hours, the secretary and the general viewed sped-up footage of the women in their barracks. Each room was monitored by a camera hidden inside a dummy back-up smoke alarm in the corner closest to the front door, making every inch of space vulnerable. They saw each of the women watch TV, sleep, walk wrapped in a towel in and out of the room wearing shower shoes and carrying a toiletry bag, clean, lace their boots, blouse their pants, talk, laugh, write, read…

“Where are they?” the secretary said.

“Where are who, sir?” the operator said.

“The men.”

“I think they’re in their barracks, sir.”

The secretary looked at the general, who said nothing.

They moved on to footage of the men’s barracks. Very much the same.

At the end of the screening, the secretary slammed his hand down on the arm of his chair.

“You could administer regular pregnancy tests instead,” the general said, having leaned over to speak directly into the secretary’s ear. "Save some time."

“And how do you think we’d affect their desire to have sex if we forced them to submit to pregnancy tests?”

“Unfavorably, sir.”

The secretary stared and stared at the monitor. He asked the general what they were doing wrong, why it wasn’t working.

“Perhaps if you simply tell them our population is in crisis,” the general murmured.

In a barely inaudible whisper to the general, the secretary said, “You think they’re going to fall on their backs and get pregnant now? Back in twenty-five half an entire generation of ‘em stopped having babies because of inflation, Bob.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alcohol,” the secretary said. “Have it put it in the dayrooms. One per. No, every other. Somewhere visible, but not obvious. We want everyone thinking someone else snuck it in.”

“Men’s or women’s?”

“Both.”

“Sir.” The general stood and left, closing the door behind him.

“Do we have cameras outside?”

“No, sir,” the operator said.

“Add some. For all we know, they’re out there fucking in the dirt.”

*

On the secretary’s next scheduled visit, he and the general watched sped-up footage of the women’s barracks that showed frequently refilled plastic cups and laughter in the dayrooms, dancing in the hallways, and one room in particular, 3C, in which they seemed to like to gather for a time before leaving for hallway socializing or a return trip to a dayroom. One of the two women assigned to 3C, the woman they all seemed to be coming to see, was a brunette with a bounce and one of the better stereo systems in the building.

“A popular chick in every clique, hey?” the secretary said. “Show me outside.”

“We don’t have cameras outside, sir,” the general said.

“Walt,” the secretary said.

The general twisted in his chair to watch the system operator at his station by the window. The image on the monitor flicked to a view of the grounds between the men’s and women’s barracks, a drab swath of dead earth the width of a street. The general turned toward the monitor. He looked up at the sped-up activity on the screen, which at the moment was only the occasional wind-forced movement of a stiff bush caught in the glow of a floodlight over the building’s entrance.

And then the door opened.

“Slow it down.” The secretary leaned forward.

The general shifted in his chair.

A woman with long, dark hair emerged in pajama pants and a t-shirt. Behind her, more women streamed out. They swarmed past her in a giddy huddle that migrated toward the men’s building.

“Ha!” The secretary clapped painfully loud.

The dark-haired woman turned back to the building but didn’t go in.

“What’s she doing?” the secretary said.

A tall figure appeared from the dark side of the building, remaining half in the shadows. The woman gestured, a greeting.

“Who’s that?” the secretary said. He looked at the general, then at the system operator.

“Never seen him before,” the operator said. “Can’t really see him now.”

“How can you tell it’s a man?” the general said.

“By the body, sir,” the operator said.

“I’m sure it’s—” the general started, stopping when the figure moved fully into the light. “—me,” he finished. “I was there.”

“What the hell for?” the secretary said.

“I—To ensure the plan was a success,” he said. Had there not been activity between the buildings, the general explained, he would have gone in as a motivator, of sorts, and talked up the boys’ positive qualities. Encouraged the ladies to seize the day. That kind of thing.

The secretary said he was pleased the general hadn’t been necessary. He wondered, though, how he’d justified his presence to the woman standing outside.

“Justified?” the general said. He laughed. “To a woman?”

The secretary laughed, too.

“Can we see the footage from the men’s?” the general said to the operator between hysterical gasps.

“Yes, yes, the men’s,” the secretary cried. “I don’t want to miss the action.”

However, there was no action. The mingling was innocent. The men and women sat side by side on couches, played cards, jumped and clapped over drinking games, and ultimately separated near sunrise.

“Goddamnit,” the secretary roared. “Infantry. Every single one of those bitches. Train ‘em for a war that could have ‘em sent home as ash in a coffee can, if that’s what it’ll take.”

“Train them?” the operator said. “With weapons and everything?”

“Bullshit training,” he said, no longer showing concern for what might be beyond the operator’s security clearance. “Point, shoot big dirt mound. They need to know for certain they’re going to war. Same goes for all the other branches if we see there what we’re seeing here.”

“But there isn’t a war, sir,” the general said.

“There is if we say there is.”

*

Two weeks later, the secretary barged into the army barracks surveillance room with the general following behind him. When the operator apologetically rushed out of his attached domicile, the secretary demanded to see footage from the previous two weeks, reasoning that since the threat of imminent warfare hadn’t led to any reports of girls going AWOL, they must have chosen another, safer, way out.

“I did see a couple guys running off,” the operator said, situating himself. “Few nights ago.”

“They’ve been apprehended and dealt with,” the general said.

The footage began at the two-weeks-ago mark. Not only did it not show women sneaking off into the dark, but there was, again, no sexual activity inside the buildings or out.

“The range,” the secretary said. “Guns get girls hot.”

Video from cameras freshly posted at the range revealed that the women showed little interest in guns. They shied away from their weapons, and when instructed to handle them they did so awkwardly. There was also no suggestive touching when the male instructors modeled, in very close physical proximity, how to aim and shoot their rifles. Though the women began to demonstrate slightly diminishing fear around the weapons with each training event over the next two weeks, there was no change elsewhere.

“Say they have a week,” the secretary said with forced calm. “Say we’re preparing to move out. Scare the ever-loving shit out of those women.”

“If it doesn’t work?” the general said.

“We do what we have to. Hey, we tried to let them choose.” He made a sucking sound with his cheek, a what can you do, and strolled out of the room.

*

The secretary and the general watched new footage two days later. The secretary didn’t think it was necessary to wait a week; if after receiving news of a coming deployment the women were going to act at all, it would be immediate.

What they saw was more cleaning, a few observably innocent conversations between men and women in the ugly space between their buildings, visits to the range, tv time, eating, weapon cleaning—

“Hey. Hey! Slow it down,” the secretary said. They’d just started speeding through footage of the bouncy brunette from 3C disassembling her rifle on her coffee table. The angle of the camera put her dead in the center. “This oughtta be fun.”

At that moment, she dropped a component on the floor. The secretary laughed. She got on her knees and crawled around, looking up when a woman walked into view. The brunette checked her watch and said something, and the other one adjusted her time, looking relieved afterward. The brunette wiped her brow, then laughed, and after the woman left the brunette went back to searching until she found the dropped component. She sat back down and looked at it, then gazed upward.

“She looking at us?” the operator said.

“She’s thinking, Walt,” the secretary said. “Thinking real hard.” He shook his head.

Now she was slowly trying to fit the piece into a variety of slots.

“Jesus Christ,” the secretary said. “You see? This is why—”

“Are we in real time?” The general was leaning back in his chair to address the operator.

The operator paused the footage to check the time stamp. “About thirty minutes behind.”

“Let’s catch up. See how the new secretary did with her weapon,” the general said.

Before the secretary could respond, the screen flicked to a live recording and the general was securing his former boss's wrists in zip ties. The woman from 3C was standing in front of the camera, rifle butt in one hand to prop the weapon against her shoulder. In her other hand, she held a piece of paper with black block letters reading, Welcome to your new reality. The time is now ours. Thanks for the training. And the guns. :)