NaNoWriMo 2022

Land of Fantasy

American Kingdom: Day 20

Previous chapter:

“Right here, right now,” I said after taking a slurp of my Bud. “there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to ranking us in any sort of order, military or otherwise. We’re from a mix of services and branches, ages, genders, and personalities. If there were any fairness and equal chance, then what criteria would they use?”

“You mean, how would they compare Hazel, an airforce tech, to Nathan, a highly trained but flawed special ops fighter?” asked Annie.

“Hey!” Nathan protested. “I have no flaws!”

“Too sensitive,” Annie said, throwing him a smile. “Hey, Oscar, you’ve been in this outfit the longest. You must have some ideas how this works.”

“And you think I’d let you know if there were some sort of competitive advantage to be gained, is that it?”

“Worth a try,” Annie said.

“I’ve heard,” I said, gaining everyone’s eyes, “that the Regent’s Palace is a destination for one of we five, and that there is some element of competition involved.”

“Honestly, that’s about as much as I know too,” Oscar said. “I know that they want to assess our military skills, such as they are, but I think that involves topics like basic firearm handling, navigation, working as part of a team, military traditions and ceremony, first aid, living in the field, things like that.”

“We’re all ex-service with several years up and a bit of rank. I imagine that our records have been accessed in some way — I was asked for my service number and a few other ID points — and we have all been found to have solid career histories, honorable discharges, good reports and so on,” I said. “So they know that we can work well in a military environment. If they aren’t assessing our specialist skills here, then what are they doing?”

“Perhaps we’ll find out more tomorrow,” Oscar said. “Day full of classroom work, nice easy day.”

“Huh, it’s all easy,” Nathan said, and I nodded my head. “I don’t know about the Rangers, maybe they get nights and weekends off, but for SEALs it’s 24/7. There’s no sitting around after hours having a few leisurely beers.”

“What’s the deal with that?” I asked. “I could wipe myself out for twenty bucks at these prices.”

“No, you couldn’t,” Oscar said. “They cut you off after four drinks. That’s why I’m drinking Scotch. More alcohol and it tastes a lot better than beer. You want any more tonight, it will have to be A&W root beer.”

“So that includes the two glasses of wine with dinner?”

“Sad to say, but yes.”

Oh well. Two wines and two beers was enough to make me mellow.

“The first time I met anyone from the Kingdom,” I said, “we had three bottles of wine between the three of us. I’m pretty sure that counts as more than four drinks apiece.In fact, I’m sure of it because Marion and I split a bottle of bubbly before dinner in the bathroom, and then we finished off two bottles with dinner.”

“Do tell us more, Molly,” Oscar purred. “What was going on in the bathroom?”

“I was having a bath, silly!”

“And Marion, hmmmm, what was she doing?”

Ah. I could see where I’d put a foot wrong now.

“We were just talking.”

“That’s not how I heard it,” Annie said. “I heard there was role-playing and a gun involved. You were showing off your scar.”

“You two,” I said to Nathan and Oscar, who were looking at me like I was the Army-Navy game in the last minutes of a tied match, “can just put your eyeballs back in your sockets. It was all perfectly innocent.”

And I was going to have some words with Duke Francis next time I saw him.

“Ahem,” Oscar said. “In answer to your implicit question before you went off the rails there, no, there’s no general restriction on alcohol in the Kingdom. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if our instructors are hitting their fifth in their club right now. It’s just we students who are restricted. Power games, you see. They might not be bouncing dimes off our blankets and telling us to give them another ten pushups but they are sending a message.”

I’d had about enough of military chickenshit today. I drained my glass.

“I’m going to call it a night. I’m tired after all that banging. Nathan, would you like to walk me back to the barracks?”

Next chapter:

The whole story (in progress)

Notes

Here’s a secret. I don’t have much more idea of how this American Kingdom operates than you do. I scribbled a few notes on the weekend but realistically there are a dozen ways I could take this concept and make a story out of it.

Something is forming in my mind as I write but how viable a concept that is, I don’t know.

The real problem is that a kingdom with real power would have to be part of some sort of geopolitical structure. Clearly this does not currently exist or have any influence.

Or does it?

Right now, what Molly and her friends are seeing is no more than the tip of the iceberg.

I may keep it that way until I know more about how this thing works!

There’s plenty of scope for adventure in what I have so far.

One thing I don’t want and that is to emulate something I read a while back about some shady government black-ops program. They would make a hit on some enemy of the state and if anything went wrong there was a fleet of black semi-trailers full of gear to magically sanitise the crime scene.

These trucks apparently ran around unnoticed by anybody, least of all the local police.

If I should have to resort to magic at any point then clearly I will have lost the plot.

Molly