Border

Sergeant Boq strode through the underbrush. Weeds and snapping vines whipped at her ankles, unable to get past her firm boots.

I looked down at my fatigues. Given the humidity, the requisitions team had suggested linen. They were thin as cheese cloth over my skinny legs. Already there were mosquitos zapping around my body, biting straight through the trousers. I smiled. At least it was something natural. There was even some natural light! Even mosquitoes could beat the last few weeks. I slapped one against my thigh. Though who knew—give it a few more bites, and I might feel different. I shouldered my pack and followed behind the sergeant, wincing at the cuts of the razor sharp plants against my legs.

We’d been driven for hours, and I wasn’t made to see the outside at all. I was just in the back of the van with some other enlisted. We dropped off one, then another, and finally me. Each time, a sergeant paired off with the younger soldier and walked off with them. The first couple got some of our grizzled greats. Unlucky. When it was my turn, Sergeant Boq, beckoned to me and walked straight out. Unluckier. We stepped out into a dense jungle space, but one with hints of civilization.

As we kept walking, I realized it was more than just a hint. At every turn, there was a new freestanding stone archway. Or a milestone. Or a half-broken stone carving. Like a city taken so thoroughly by nature that only very specific things remained. Only unwanted things, perhaps. Did it mean that nothing else in whatever this place had been before was made out of stone?

The jungle itself was more dangerous than it looked at first. At a couple turns, I spied unexpected drop-offs into ravines. Sometimes, branches of the path just led into the underbrush, with no true passable way. The trees were colossal and ever-present. They blocked out the sunlight, forming a thick canopy overhead. The light was… odd. It was certainly not bright, but the sun was definitely up. It was hard to tell whether it was dawn or dusk. Hard to tell the difference. A couple gaps in the canopy let light shine through, sometimes falling softly over a stone archway.

The colors in this space were green and gold and slate gray. Warm, quiet colors. As opposed to the colors the sergeant and I were blasting. Our clothing and gear were blue and black and stark orange. We were a fiery splash of paint defiling a sylvan paradise. I looked around me at the stonework, at everything taken over by nature.

“What is this place,” I asked Sergeant Boq.

She let out a loud, exasperated sigh. “Repeat after me,” she said, not slowing her pace a bit. “Nothing ever happens here.”

“Nothing ever happens here?” I said. Should have sounded more confident. I looked around at the draping ivy over the stonework. It was actually easy to believe that nothing’s happened here ever.

“But I am a new recruit and therefore a complete and total idiot.”

I gritted my teeth. ”But I am a new recruit and therefore a complete and total idiot.”

“So it is extra important…” she continued.

“So it is extra important.”

“That I not embarrass my sergeant.”

“That I not embarrass my sergeant.”

“I will maintain my post…”

“I will maintain my post.”

“I will do my duty precisely as ordered.” Sergeant Boq ducked effortlessly past a spiny swinging vine. I walked straight into it.

“I will do my duty precisely as ordered,” I said, rubbing at my face.

“I will not ask dumb questions…”

Well, that was just mean-spirited. “I will not ask dumb questions.”

“And I will leave when relieved.”

“And I will leave when I am relieved.”

She turned around sharply. “Good. It’s very simple. When we get to our destination, you simply stand. You position yourself where directed. You do nothing else. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir.”

She scoffed. “We’ll see. You’re what I have to work with, so I guess we’re going to do it. No more questions.”

We strode on in a grumbly silence for another fifteen minutes or so. I kept my eye on the surroundings. The path we walked on was thin and winding. Every now and then it would fall away on the right side to reveal a ravine, dark and wooded and precarious.

The sergeant turned left abruptly onto one of the side paths that broke off the main one. This one did not even have space for two people side by side, and we continued down this one for another ten minutes. The light quickly faded away on this path, as the canopy above thickened. There were stone markers every hundred meters or so, low squat things at calf height.

There was yet another turn later, followed by five more minutes walking, and then some more splittings as the path forked. I could see no markers, nothing to set apart these paths as distinct or more important than any other.

“So, uh,” I spoke up, “is there a map to follow here, or do you just know where to go?”

Sergeant Boq paused, turned back to me, gave me a withering glare, and resumed walking without saying a word. I rolled my eyes when I was sure she had turned back around, and I kept following her.

A few minutes later, she came to an abrupt stop. There was one of those stone markers and next to it, a soaring, but thin archway. It went up into the canopy, and I could not see where the two sides of the stone joined. It could have just been two angled bits of stone sunk into the earth. Like all the other arches, this was freestanding. There was no other stonework holding it in place, and apart from its similarity to all the other arches and columns we had seen, nothing to suggest that it had ever been part of a grander structure.

If this space had been a building, that had been many years ago, in a different life. It was now a forest. A forest with stone surprises.

“This is your post,” said Sergeant Boq.

“This?” I asked. I looked at the front of the arch. I ducked my head behind it. Just greenery. Nothing different on one side or the other. As if a doorway were the only remaining part of a long-ruined cathedral.

“Yes. You are not to go through the arch. You are not to look into the arch. You are to stand with your back to the arch right here and face away, in the direction we’ve just walked from.”

“O…kay? Am I meant to look for anything?”

“Remember what I said about dumb questions? Nothing ever happens here. But you are guarding the border. The rules are to not let anything get past you and through the arch. That is your only requirement. I will come to retrieve you when the vulnerable time is over.”

“The vulnerable time?”

"No dumb questions!”

“Umm, okay, but how am I going to stop anything from getting through? With my hands?”

The sergeant looked very irritated. She slung down her pack and pulled out a small metal rod. It was the same slate gray as the stonework. She pulled it out and held it horizontally. She pressed a button and the rod telescoped to either side. It was taller than the Sergeant herself. About as tall as me. She tossed it in her hands a couple times, spun it in the air, and then threw it to me.

I had my water bottle halfway to my mouth, dropped it, fumbled the rod, and lost half my water in the process. Sergeant Boq watched me.

“Use this to enforce the border. You won’t need it. Nothing ever happens here. But if it makes you feel better, there you go. Happy?”

I nodded.

She said no additional word. Just strode off in the way we came.

I let out a big breath when I couldn’t hear her anymore. The truth is that the sergeant was not doing anything out of the ordinary. I suppose one could even say that that was a pleasant interaction for her. It’s funny how many sergeants perfectly fit their stereotype. Gruff, unfriendly, and uncaring. Guess they’re trying to shape us up.

I scuffed at the ground in front of me and began leaning on the metal rod. The birds called in trees. There were insects chirping too. Did that make it more likely to be evening? Or morning? I guess I would figure out soon enough.

I looked all around. Nothing surprising. Green shrubs. Fronds. Draping boughs and vines. I could hear chirps from pretty nearby, and I caught sight of a bird down the path to my left, perched up in a branch. It looked at me. Chirped some more.

I sighed. It was going to be quite a task to last for the duration. I turned around to glance at the archway. It was just standing there, like it probably had for a thousand years. I didn’t get close to it. I didn’t touch it. I’m not an idiot. The sergeant was irritated at me, but I wouldn’t have been given an assignment like this for no reason. And if she said to not let anything through the archway, there was probably some meaning to it.

Ten minutes passed. It seemed that if anything, there were more animals sounding off rather than less. So… that meant it was morningtime?

In the days leading up to this assignment, I had had to spend all my time in a windowless clockless facility, alongside about fifty other enlisted. We did all the normal things, but all at entirely weird hours. Our schedule would have us wake up, run some drills, and then take a nap with the help of a sedative. Then we’d wake up again and be given a lavish meal. Well, lavish as compared to what we got outside the facility. We certainly weren’t complaining. We’d eat, then we’d study, go to class. Nothing unusual there, just the same military history and politics and foreign policy that we did outside. Small classes though, as everyone was at a different stage in the curriculum, and they separated us out by chunk. We’d then take another nap. Then more exercise. Then another meal, except it was an unpredictable sort of meal. Sometimes it was breakfast food, sometimes just a wide variety of soups, and sometimes—I kid you not—bread and jello.

It got so that by the end of a couple weeks, no one had any notion of what the real world’s schedule was like. All our bio rhythms were off. And it wasn’t as if they lined up to anything else sensible. Wasn’t like we’d just flown across the planet or anything, where things were shifted, but still consistent. No, everything just broke out into sleeping and wakeful times.

Of course, they never told us why. It wasn’t a secret what they were doing. This isn’t something I’d deduced carefully. They came right out and said it. “Your next assignment is likely to require you to adapt to unpredictable daylight patterns. This facility will prepare you,” my briefing paper said tersely.

Hence why I’d been curious to deduce whether it was morning or evening during my walk. It’s the first time I’ve seen any natural light in some weeks!

(unfinished)