Heavy Object

Volume 12, Prologue

Attention all of you who ended up in the army after failing to find a spouse or a job! I am Captain April of the Training Unit and you can think of me as the oh-so-kind goddess who will give you an identity that society will actually accept.

Now, when you heard this was the army, you might have thought you’d be out there firing rifles or missiles, but that isn’t all the army does. In fact, everyone hates firefights between flesh and blood soldiers in this clean age of Objects. This boot camp will pound the proper skills and dignity into your heads, but you can assume you’ll barely ever get to use them.

The army does a lot of things. You might teach the local youths how to fire a gun to increase the number of fighters, you might take photos for pamphlets to rid countries of their impoverished image and bring in tourists, you might retrieve landmines or unexploded ordnance, you might help film movies, you might help excavate dinosaur fossils, you might build schools or hospitals, you might provide disaster assistance, you might prevent the spread of disease, and the list goes on. Unless things go awry, you might very well find yourself holding a shovel more often than a gun.

This is a peaceful use of an army.

Are you thinking this sounds easy? Or that it isn’t as much work as you thought? Be honest and raise your hand...and then I’ll let you off with only twenty laps.

This is anything but easy and you will be sorely mistaken if you think it isn’t much work. Didn’t I tell you? This is the army. Even if it looks like we’re doing the same things, we’re fundamentally different from the Blue Cross that places their donation boxes next to convenience store cash registers.

This is war.

It may have taken a different form, but it’s still war.

Oh, was that too large a leap in logic? And it doesn’t matter much as far as your training is concerned. We’ll teach you how to hold a gun and hold a shovel. By the time you’re heading off to your mission, you’ll know all too well what war is.

Hm? You don’t think guns are necessary in wars these days?

I wouldn’t be so sure. In my experience, people aren’t all that thankful even when you’re building a school or a hospital.

I wonder why that is.

It doesn’t happen all that often in the grand scheme of things, but maybe it’s because we tend to bring out the guns when we need to settle something once and for all.

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