I feel heavy. I sit down on my bed. I try to stare at the thick white envelope hovering a meter away from me. I rub my hands across my thighs. I close my eyes, then open them really fast to glance at the bulletin board. It’s still there. “Go away.” I look down again. No way, are they really calling a draft? I stand up. My hands tremble as I grab the envelope. I am in college, surely I’m exempt. This is a big fucking mistake! I drop the envelope and quickly rip open my painkiller bottle and take a handful of them. I go to pick up the envelope from the ground but pause—my foot is closer to it than my hand. I could just kick it under the bed. Forget it ever came. The white envelope stares at me, uninterested. I finish bending over and grab it then tear open the top of it, fumbling with the letter as I unfold along the crease to read.
ON ANTICIPATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL,
RESOLUTION 746,
TO BE SIGNED APIRL 09, 2112 BY ALL MEMBERS OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL
AND SUPREME CONGRESS,
WITH THE DECLARED ABSTENTION OF CHINA,
ALL SELECTIVE SERVICE MALES ARE NOW CALLED FIRST FOR
THE USA NATIONAL DRAFT,
YEARS OF BIRTH, 2092 TO 2094
ARE THE FIRST SLECTIVE SERVICE MALES
DRAWN FOR INITIAL WAVE OF DRAFT,
REPORT TO THE NEAREST FEDERAL RECURITMENT CENTER IMMEDIATELY
I pin the letter against the bulletin. I don’t want to fight! I am in college, this is my life. Right here. I don’t even believe in violence as an acceptable answer. Never have my pacifistic morals ever conflicted with what the Party decreed—I thought we were synonymous. But now they do… but now they also need me. They need me to fight, to aid our brothers under massacre. What should I possibly do? Forsake myself or my country?
I lie on the bed with my hands ripping at my hair for a while.
Disobeying the state would bring punishment, disobeying myself would only bring resentment. But resentment, I could at least hopefully change into acceptance. Acceptance that sometimes, the sword is stronger than the pen, that these aliens have shown they can’t be negotiated with—they instigated the violence. That it is either us or them. And I mean, they aren’t human, so they couldn’t possibly rationalize like humans do, to realize that war is wrong, otherwise they would have never started one, so the only option left was for us to fight back. Finally, the Party, with its knowledge and power, surely knows better than me. They surely went through this same thought process as I, and came to this logical conclusion. I don’t need to rationalize it all and have this headache, because they already have for me.
Late into the night I hear banging and stumbling—Isaac. He slumps into his bed. “You too?” I say, glancing at his stuffed bags.
“It’s over Peter,” he slurs. He’s drunk. “We’re fucking doomed. Fuck this place!” He jumps up and goes to the door, but instead falls over from the dizziness of being wasted. He crawls to the base of his bed and cries.
I have already shared my tears about it, and Isaac’s disposition was not encouraging my moral decision I came to earlier. I sit beside him and try to get him to drink some water.
He spends the next few hours puking into a bowl.
After finishing his spell, he rests easy against my shoulder. “Peter, I don’t want to die,” he repeats weakly as he falls asleep.
The next morning, I pack everything I have after a phone call to my parents and younger brother Creon. I am to become a warrior of the USA. All my future plans, to finish my education, are indefinitely postponed. When I come back though, I will have finished participating in a great cause. And with this mandatory service, I could even now apply to be an officer in the Party Representation Core, like I flirted with as an earlier career option. But even so, it’s a weak reassurance to the fear still inside of my chest.
I walk down my usual hallway for the last time, through my favorite area of the university with all my belongings stuffed into bags around my shoulders. A familiar voice calls me from an office; it is Mr. Martin. I enter his room to see him behind a desk packed with papers.
“Oh God, my dear boy, I heard the news. Only students in post graduate learning were exempt from the draft. I tried very hard to find any loopholes to keep you here. But the only one that would have worked has become obsolete as of the UN Supreme Congress’ decision to fight the Herculeans last night.”
It’s official. I refused to watch the news in hopes it wouldn’t happen. I lower my head so he doesn’t see me trying to hide the tears. I look back up after a moment. “What was it?”
“To participate on the new Interstellar Abroad program—”
I cut him off early, “Well it looks like I am still heading to Nova Terra anyway.”
“The bitter irony of this terrible situation,” says Mr. Martin. “To think, I could have sent you as a student or educator,” he stops to see that I am repressing with all my strength to not bawl before him. How can he not see that his wishful words only push deeper this dagger that is already in my heart? That I am trying so hard to be a strong and a good citizen. “Right,” he finishes solemnly.
I have nothing left to say, but as I start to leave he begs me to come back to his desk. “What is it Mr. Martin?”
“I have something, a quote, from a man long dead. This quote was before the Terrible War. And even though it is my duty to inform you that we live in a better society than ever before in all of humanity’s history, I implore you to open your mind much bigger than before.” He leans into my ear whispering quickly, “There is a reality about our society, our government that few see or succeed to pierce through, which is the veil covering the authority of the Party that controls us. This authority, that can at any moment take your life such as it has right now, and cast it into something you were never destined to be, a soldier in a war. This authority is, and I hope you will never tell anyone what I am about to say, but this authority is wrong, it is corrupt, and it has no right to send young men to die for its power scheming agendas.”
Power scheming? I would hardly call aiding fellow humans scheming. I just don’t want to die. God, I don’t want to die.
“I see confusion on your face,” he says. He produces a key from his chest pocket and unlocks a cabinet in his desk, from which he displays a paper and quote to me.
Imagine being born into a dream: a mass illusion transformed over thousands of years by billions of people into what today you call reality. The billions of people subdivided into territories they called countries, into belief systems they called religions, and into groups they called races.
Countries subdivided into states, provinces, and cities, which then subdivided into neighborhoods that subdivided into buildings or single-family homes. Religions divided into conservative and liberal sects, which then grew into more conservative and liberal branches. Races divided themselves by all of the above, including color, tone, ethnic makeup, and financial status.
Each group then teaches and defends that its way is the way and its truth is the truth, and each group creates its own reality out of what it believes. Each group then tries to sell you on its current forms and laws, telling you that this is what is ‘right’. Each teaches you that the closer you are to following its form, the happier, more successful, and peaceful you will be. And somewhere deep within, you know that it is your right to be happy and to be at peace. So you buy into it, and regardless of how little sense the illusion makes, you keep participating, for if you stop, you will be judged as an outcast, a troublemaker, a bum.