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sonreirSelected Service
I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher.
In high school, I took child development classes and volunteered in the school's preschool program. I loved it, and I was good at it. I loved working with kids, watching their faces light up as they gained independence and learned to do little things, like tie their own shoes or write their names, however lumpy their letters. I didn't pick it because it was easy (it wasn't), or because "the world will always need teachers". I picked it because I loved it.
The April before I graduated, they made us take an aptitude test. It was something we'd known was coming -- a government-ordered requirement for graduation.
It was an aptitude test to tell us whether or not we were required to join the Selected Service, some government program none of us had ever paid much attention to.
Rumors went that if you scored the way they wanted you to, you were immediately taken from your school to some government facility, way out in the middle of nowhere, subjected to more tests, and depending on the outcome of those, either sent home with an apology and a note not to tell anyone else what had happened, or immediately drafted into the Selected Service.
I'd never heard of anyone being picked. I didn't worry about it. I walked into the multiple-choice test with a smile on my face, thinking it was the last box to tick off before graduation. I had good grades in all of my classes, I'd been accepted to the college I wanted to go to -- I was set.
I walked out, frowning. The test hadn't been what I expected. The questions I'd expected, all basic reading comprehension and math, weren't there. There were others, instead. "Have you ever seen something in a dream, only to watch it happen in real life?" and "Have you ever had an experience where time seemed to slow down or stop?"
I answered honestly, bubbled in the scantron to the best of my abilities. When they called 'time' and collected everyone's booklets, I was the only one still working.
"Ms. Martine," said Mr. Bay, the teacher in charge of proctoring the test. "Your test sheet and booklet, please."
I handed it to him, and saw him put it aside -- because I didn't finish, I thought. At least it's over now.
I couldn't have have been more wrong.
All the rumors said that if you were chosen, you'd be chosen right away -- ripped out of school and not allowed to graduate, taken instead to some shadowy center somewhere in the Midwest (the rumors said Iowa, and that it was disguised as a cow barn), and forced to go through horrible, thorough training.
When I didn't hear anything within a week or so, I breathed a sigh of relief, and signed up for orientation at the college I'd been accepted to. I started thinking about classes, reviewing the website with suggested courses and schedules, determining what the right path forward would look like for me.
I graduated in June. I signed friends' yearbooks, and we promised to stay in touch. None of us talked about the Selected Service exam, or what it might have meant.
The packet in the mail had my name on it, with an address from somewhere in Vermont.
I thought, looking at it, that it was something about college. I'd gotten random letters and information about different programs after taking the ACTs, and the envelope matched them.
I slit it open with a knife, standing in the kitchen. Mom was in there, too -- she'd just gotten home from the clinic, and we were chatting about what to make for dinner. She was talking about spaghetti, when I ripped the envelope open.
A letter slid out, first, addressed to me.
"Dear Ms. Martine," it began. "Congratulations! You have been chosen to join the Selected Service."
They call it the Selected Service because no one volunteers, and you don't have a choice of whether or not to participate.
After the packet came the phone call. They told me where to report, and when, and what would happen if I didn't.
I asked what I'd done that made me a candidate, and the woman on the other end of the line sighed. "We'll talk about all of that. Don't worry. Report to the local office at the appropriate time, and we'll take it from there."
The rumors had always said that the Selected Service had something to do with aliens, that they were testing to figure out who would bug out and who wouldn't when confronted with a lifeform that didn't gel with our idea of what life should look like -- that had too many legs or too few, or that was too terrifying to look at. There were whispers, around the school, that the test was actually a personality test -- that they had it down to a fine science. If you scored one way, you were sent off to train and become an alien diplomat, negotiating with some unknown species in hopes that they wouldn't blow us up or eat us.
They were convincing, pervasive. I didn't believe them, but a lot of people did. There was a whole series of books that had been written about it -- all fiction, all using different titles for the federal agencies, but everyone knew what they were referring to.
I always figured that the real Selective Service wasn't that weird.
I was wrong.
"Magic," said the recruiter, leaning back in her chair. She was an older woman wearing a no-nonsense brown pantsuit, with carefully styled hair that reminded me of the First Lady. "We test for ability. The aptitude test is itself a ruse -- most students don't see through it, and so they go through it believing it to be a very basic exam that tests their knowledge of reading, math, and science. Others, however, have the innate talent required to see through to the truth. Ms. Martine, you saw through our test."
"Sophie," I said, automatically. "Please."
She shook her head. "Sophie, then. Your scores were off the charts in the abilities range we look for. We'll be transferring you to a government training center, where you'll be assessed and trained in the areas you score best in. We will provide a generous monthly stipend during your training, and then you will be salaried and begin working for us in earnest. Where you work and what your salary is will depend on your abilities. In general, most recruits, post-training, will have a low six-figure annual salary."
"What if I don't want to go through the training?" I asked her, desperate.
"I assume you read the packet you were sent?" said the recruiter.
I nodded.
"Then you are aware that failure to appear for training will result in criminal charges?"
I nodded again.
"There you have it."
I wanted to cry, but I didn't. I steeled myself and asked: "When do I need to report?"
"Three weeks from now," said the recruiter. "You'll have an intense two-year training, and then you'll begin apprenticeship."
"What comes after apprenticeship?" I asked.
"Ms. Martine -- Sophia," she said. "Haven't you always wanted a chance to serve your country?"
No.
I reported to the training center on time. What choice did I have?
They tested me for everything under the sun, eventually discovering what I had abilities in. I was excellent at breaking curses -- truly great at it. They could give me something, tell me to lift the curse on it, and I'd do it without thinking. I could strip the magic off of anything.
Putting it back was something else.
I trained for two years. I went home on leave every chance I got.
The first few times were difficult. I hadn't lied to my friends about what had happened to me, but no one really understood the Selected Service, or believed in what I did. Everyone made jokes about aliens and how I was terrible at diplomacy. Eventually, we drifted apart.
I didn't give up on my idea of becoming a teacher, someday. The average career length in the Selected Service was twenty years. Two years of training plus twenty years of service. I'd be forty by the time I was able to retire. I wouldn't have time to go through a four-year program, but getting certified to teach preschool was a possibility, or I could always work in a daycare. Of course, I might have children of my own.
The others in the Service with me told me not to get my hopes up. "It -- becomes you," said my friend Margie. "Eventually you forget what you wanted before, and, well..."
She'd been a pianist, in a former life. I'd seen the trophies she'd won, the competitions she had played in. She'd been accepted to an elite music program in Boston, had been forced to withdraw her acceptance after she was drafted into the Service.
"I hardly think about it anymore," she said.
I wondered how this could possibly be true.
"Everything else kind of -- takes up space," she said. "You never stop thinking about it. You'll always be on the lookout for the different threads, wondering what you could do."
I didn't want to believe her.
After I finished training, I had to take a battery of tests, finally culminating in the careful removal of a curse placed on a necklace. The curse was designed to kill whomever wore it.
"If you succeed at this," said the test proctor, "you will be drafted into service for the Executive Branch."
"Has anyone ever succeeded?" I asked, studying the necklace.
The test proctor smiled grimly. "One, about eight years ago."
I sighed, and did my best. I could feel the malevolence of the spell, even through the protective equipment I wore. I wasn't stupid -- I wasn't going to put it on -- but it wanted me to, and I could feel it.
"There's multiple layers," I said, after a moment, because identifying the spell stack was part of the test. "It's not just a simple curse. There's a come-hither charm to try and get the wearer to put it on, even if they know about the spell. That's on top of, um. A charm to lower your resistance to magic, a curse to make it impossible to take off once it's on, and the actual killing curse itself, which seems to make the necklace...strangle you."
"Can you remove the layers?"
I studied it carefully. "Yes. I'll have to do it one piece at a time, but once I do..."
"Do that."
I looked at it. Is this what I want? I thought, then: Does that matter?
"Okay," I said. "I'm going to start with the top layer, which is the come-hither..."
Four hours later, I'd succeeded in removing all hint of magic from the necklace.
"Congratulations," said the test proctor, handing me a card with my grade. "This is the highest score I've given in ten years."
I began work in the executive branch two months later. I had an office in DC with an attached magic lab area, a small lab group to help with curse-removal as necessary, and access to the archives and library that were part of our field of discipline.
My work was simple. Others would identify if an item was cursed or not. Items they knew were cursed went to me. Items that were determined not to be cursed went to others, who were responsible for determining if there were any other threats. Items of unknown power had a few different fates. During slow periods, they'd be sent to me, and I would remove whatever magic was on them, period. I hated these assignments. Curse removal was straightforward. Identification and magic stripping was exhausting and nasty. Usually items weren't cursed, but had such a stack of enchantments on them that they may as well have been. Different, odd little charms were put together and layered such as to do stupid things, like turn the wearer of a certain hat into a pig, or make the person who handled a specific book speak only in limericks for a week.
I was good at curse removal. I wasn't good at straight-up magic stripping -- though my superiors disagreed with my assessment, and kept sending me items to "debug" regardless.
Occasionally, I was sent to clean out suites after visiting heads of state had stayed in them, checking for any curses left behind in the room itself, or in the bedroom, bathroom, or other high-traffic areas. I rarely found anything, though after one visit, I did discover that the Prime Minister of one of our allies had enchanted the toilet so that it made a farting noise whenever the user sat upon it. (That, I let be.)
Work spilled into my daily life. I didn't realize it, when it started, preoccupied as I was with not getting myself cursed (or, worse, dying of boredom). It was a gradual sort of thing. I went from never noticing magic around me to seeing it everywhere. I could spot the threads of it from a mile away. I saw curses on public transit (useless little things that were intended to make whomever stepped on a certain piece of flooring trip, or miss the next train, or whatever else), charms on apartment buildings (well-loved spaces; the charms were designed to keep the inhabitants safe), in restaurants (making the guests more relaxed and receptive to the atmosphere), grocery stores -- everywhere.
I'd never noticed the threads before, but I'd never been looking for them, either.
I knew that there were those that had washed out of the Selected Service. Not everyone's skills were useful. Not everyone was powerful enough to end up with a job like mine. Some people were taken through training and then failed their final tests, resulting in a polite "thank you for your service" and an honorable discharge.
They were the ones, I thought, that were placing all the odd little spells I saw around the city.
I lifted the curses and strengthened the charms, if they were good ones. Protective spells or simple ones that were designed to boost the enjoyment of others -- those, I heightened.
After a while, I started putting down my own charms, too -- things to keep the metro running on time, to make certain crosswalks and areas of the city safer for pedestrians, for kids, for older people. I found ways I could help, and I started doing that.
Over time, I made my peace with my job. It wasn't what I wanted to do, I hadn't chosen it, but it had chosen me, and that was...enough, in a way.
I wanted to help people. I do that, now, though not in the way I thought.
The charms I have put up around the city have made it a better, brighter place to live. Other people can feel them, even if they can't see them. I see their smiles, the way they stand a little straighter, are a little kinder to each other when they're under that influence.
I have seen the way it ripples out and forward, how it affects everyone and everything.
I can't do what I wanted to do. I'm not sure that now, if given the opportunity, I would.
I can help, and so I do.
~*~
I don't usually give context on things, because I feel like the connection should speak for itself, but here, I feel a need to.
I view writing as being something I can't help doing. I'm constantly taking little mental notes, filing ideas away in a folder, making time to sit and write and put things together. It is a bit like having "homework", in the sense that there's always a feeling of, "I should..."
I opted not to go for a literal interpretation here. I've had the idea of a sort of government agency that utilizes magic (and requires an aptitude test to draft its perhaps not completely willing participants!) for quite a while. (Blame my dad the Vietnam vet and hardcore conspiracy theorist.)
Sophie doesn't want to join, but she does, and after a while, she finds: this is her calling, and she can't "turn it off" just because she's not at work. That's what the original quote said to me, and here we are now.
Thanks for taking the time to read. :)
I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher.
In high school, I took child development classes and volunteered in the school's preschool program. I loved it, and I was good at it. I loved working with kids, watching their faces light up as they gained independence and learned to do little things, like tie their own shoes or write their names, however lumpy their letters. I didn't pick it because it was easy (it wasn't), or because "the world will always need teachers". I picked it because I loved it.
The April before I graduated, they made us take an aptitude test. It was something we'd known was coming -- a government-ordered requirement for graduation.
It was an aptitude test to tell us whether or not we were required to join the Selected Service, some government program none of us had ever paid much attention to.
Rumors went that if you scored the way they wanted you to, you were immediately taken from your school to some government facility, way out in the middle of nowhere, subjected to more tests, and depending on the outcome of those, either sent home with an apology and a note not to tell anyone else what had happened, or immediately drafted into the Selected Service.
I'd never heard of anyone being picked. I didn't worry about it. I walked into the multiple-choice test with a smile on my face, thinking it was the last box to tick off before graduation. I had good grades in all of my classes, I'd been accepted to the college I wanted to go to -- I was set.
I walked out, frowning. The test hadn't been what I expected. The questions I'd expected, all basic reading comprehension and math, weren't there. There were others, instead. "Have you ever seen something in a dream, only to watch it happen in real life?" and "Have you ever had an experience where time seemed to slow down or stop?"
I answered honestly, bubbled in the scantron to the best of my abilities. When they called 'time' and collected everyone's booklets, I was the only one still working.
"Ms. Martine," said Mr. Bay, the teacher in charge of proctoring the test. "Your test sheet and booklet, please."
I handed it to him, and saw him put it aside -- because I didn't finish, I thought. At least it's over now.
I couldn't have have been more wrong.
All the rumors said that if you were chosen, you'd be chosen right away -- ripped out of school and not allowed to graduate, taken instead to some shadowy center somewhere in the Midwest (the rumors said Iowa, and that it was disguised as a cow barn), and forced to go through horrible, thorough training.
When I didn't hear anything within a week or so, I breathed a sigh of relief, and signed up for orientation at the college I'd been accepted to. I started thinking about classes, reviewing the website with suggested courses and schedules, determining what the right path forward would look like for me.
I graduated in June. I signed friends' yearbooks, and we promised to stay in touch. None of us talked about the Selected Service exam, or what it might have meant.
The packet in the mail had my name on it, with an address from somewhere in Vermont.
I thought, looking at it, that it was something about college. I'd gotten random letters and information about different programs after taking the ACTs, and the envelope matched them.
I slit it open with a knife, standing in the kitchen. Mom was in there, too -- she'd just gotten home from the clinic, and we were chatting about what to make for dinner. She was talking about spaghetti, when I ripped the envelope open.
A letter slid out, first, addressed to me.
"Dear Ms. Martine," it began. "Congratulations! You have been chosen to join the Selected Service."
They call it the Selected Service because no one volunteers, and you don't have a choice of whether or not to participate.
After the packet came the phone call. They told me where to report, and when, and what would happen if I didn't.
I asked what I'd done that made me a candidate, and the woman on the other end of the line sighed. "We'll talk about all of that. Don't worry. Report to the local office at the appropriate time, and we'll take it from there."
The rumors had always said that the Selected Service had something to do with aliens, that they were testing to figure out who would bug out and who wouldn't when confronted with a lifeform that didn't gel with our idea of what life should look like -- that had too many legs or too few, or that was too terrifying to look at. There were whispers, around the school, that the test was actually a personality test -- that they had it down to a fine science. If you scored one way, you were sent off to train and become an alien diplomat, negotiating with some unknown species in hopes that they wouldn't blow us up or eat us.
They were convincing, pervasive. I didn't believe them, but a lot of people did. There was a whole series of books that had been written about it -- all fiction, all using different titles for the federal agencies, but everyone knew what they were referring to.
I always figured that the real Selective Service wasn't that weird.
I was wrong.
"Magic," said the recruiter, leaning back in her chair. She was an older woman wearing a no-nonsense brown pantsuit, with carefully styled hair that reminded me of the First Lady. "We test for ability. The aptitude test is itself a ruse -- most students don't see through it, and so they go through it believing it to be a very basic exam that tests their knowledge of reading, math, and science. Others, however, have the innate talent required to see through to the truth. Ms. Martine, you saw through our test."
"Sophie," I said, automatically. "Please."
She shook her head. "Sophie, then. Your scores were off the charts in the abilities range we look for. We'll be transferring you to a government training center, where you'll be assessed and trained in the areas you score best in. We will provide a generous monthly stipend during your training, and then you will be salaried and begin working for us in earnest. Where you work and what your salary is will depend on your abilities. In general, most recruits, post-training, will have a low six-figure annual salary."
"What if I don't want to go through the training?" I asked her, desperate.
"I assume you read the packet you were sent?" said the recruiter.
I nodded.
"Then you are aware that failure to appear for training will result in criminal charges?"
I nodded again.
"There you have it."
I wanted to cry, but I didn't. I steeled myself and asked: "When do I need to report?"
"Three weeks from now," said the recruiter. "You'll have an intense two-year training, and then you'll begin apprenticeship."
"What comes after apprenticeship?" I asked.
"Ms. Martine -- Sophia," she said. "Haven't you always wanted a chance to serve your country?"
No.
I reported to the training center on time. What choice did I have?
They tested me for everything under the sun, eventually discovering what I had abilities in. I was excellent at breaking curses -- truly great at it. They could give me something, tell me to lift the curse on it, and I'd do it without thinking. I could strip the magic off of anything.
Putting it back was something else.
I trained for two years. I went home on leave every chance I got.
The first few times were difficult. I hadn't lied to my friends about what had happened to me, but no one really understood the Selected Service, or believed in what I did. Everyone made jokes about aliens and how I was terrible at diplomacy. Eventually, we drifted apart.
I didn't give up on my idea of becoming a teacher, someday. The average career length in the Selected Service was twenty years. Two years of training plus twenty years of service. I'd be forty by the time I was able to retire. I wouldn't have time to go through a four-year program, but getting certified to teach preschool was a possibility, or I could always work in a daycare. Of course, I might have children of my own.
The others in the Service with me told me not to get my hopes up. "It -- becomes you," said my friend Margie. "Eventually you forget what you wanted before, and, well..."
She'd been a pianist, in a former life. I'd seen the trophies she'd won, the competitions she had played in. She'd been accepted to an elite music program in Boston, had been forced to withdraw her acceptance after she was drafted into the Service.
"I hardly think about it anymore," she said.
I wondered how this could possibly be true.
"Everything else kind of -- takes up space," she said. "You never stop thinking about it. You'll always be on the lookout for the different threads, wondering what you could do."
I didn't want to believe her.
After I finished training, I had to take a battery of tests, finally culminating in the careful removal of a curse placed on a necklace. The curse was designed to kill whomever wore it.
"If you succeed at this," said the test proctor, "you will be drafted into service for the Executive Branch."
"Has anyone ever succeeded?" I asked, studying the necklace.
The test proctor smiled grimly. "One, about eight years ago."
I sighed, and did my best. I could feel the malevolence of the spell, even through the protective equipment I wore. I wasn't stupid -- I wasn't going to put it on -- but it wanted me to, and I could feel it.
"There's multiple layers," I said, after a moment, because identifying the spell stack was part of the test. "It's not just a simple curse. There's a come-hither charm to try and get the wearer to put it on, even if they know about the spell. That's on top of, um. A charm to lower your resistance to magic, a curse to make it impossible to take off once it's on, and the actual killing curse itself, which seems to make the necklace...strangle you."
"Can you remove the layers?"
I studied it carefully. "Yes. I'll have to do it one piece at a time, but once I do..."
"Do that."
I looked at it. Is this what I want? I thought, then: Does that matter?
"Okay," I said. "I'm going to start with the top layer, which is the come-hither..."
Four hours later, I'd succeeded in removing all hint of magic from the necklace.
"Congratulations," said the test proctor, handing me a card with my grade. "This is the highest score I've given in ten years."
I began work in the executive branch two months later. I had an office in DC with an attached magic lab area, a small lab group to help with curse-removal as necessary, and access to the archives and library that were part of our field of discipline.
My work was simple. Others would identify if an item was cursed or not. Items they knew were cursed went to me. Items that were determined not to be cursed went to others, who were responsible for determining if there were any other threats. Items of unknown power had a few different fates. During slow periods, they'd be sent to me, and I would remove whatever magic was on them, period. I hated these assignments. Curse removal was straightforward. Identification and magic stripping was exhausting and nasty. Usually items weren't cursed, but had such a stack of enchantments on them that they may as well have been. Different, odd little charms were put together and layered such as to do stupid things, like turn the wearer of a certain hat into a pig, or make the person who handled a specific book speak only in limericks for a week.
I was good at curse removal. I wasn't good at straight-up magic stripping -- though my superiors disagreed with my assessment, and kept sending me items to "debug" regardless.
Occasionally, I was sent to clean out suites after visiting heads of state had stayed in them, checking for any curses left behind in the room itself, or in the bedroom, bathroom, or other high-traffic areas. I rarely found anything, though after one visit, I did discover that the Prime Minister of one of our allies had enchanted the toilet so that it made a farting noise whenever the user sat upon it. (That, I let be.)
Work spilled into my daily life. I didn't realize it, when it started, preoccupied as I was with not getting myself cursed (or, worse, dying of boredom). It was a gradual sort of thing. I went from never noticing magic around me to seeing it everywhere. I could spot the threads of it from a mile away. I saw curses on public transit (useless little things that were intended to make whomever stepped on a certain piece of flooring trip, or miss the next train, or whatever else), charms on apartment buildings (well-loved spaces; the charms were designed to keep the inhabitants safe), in restaurants (making the guests more relaxed and receptive to the atmosphere), grocery stores -- everywhere.
I'd never noticed the threads before, but I'd never been looking for them, either.
I knew that there were those that had washed out of the Selected Service. Not everyone's skills were useful. Not everyone was powerful enough to end up with a job like mine. Some people were taken through training and then failed their final tests, resulting in a polite "thank you for your service" and an honorable discharge.
They were the ones, I thought, that were placing all the odd little spells I saw around the city.
I lifted the curses and strengthened the charms, if they were good ones. Protective spells or simple ones that were designed to boost the enjoyment of others -- those, I heightened.
After a while, I started putting down my own charms, too -- things to keep the metro running on time, to make certain crosswalks and areas of the city safer for pedestrians, for kids, for older people. I found ways I could help, and I started doing that.
Over time, I made my peace with my job. It wasn't what I wanted to do, I hadn't chosen it, but it had chosen me, and that was...enough, in a way.
I wanted to help people. I do that, now, though not in the way I thought.
The charms I have put up around the city have made it a better, brighter place to live. Other people can feel them, even if they can't see them. I see their smiles, the way they stand a little straighter, are a little kinder to each other when they're under that influence.
I have seen the way it ripples out and forward, how it affects everyone and everything.
I can't do what I wanted to do. I'm not sure that now, if given the opportunity, I would.
I can help, and so I do.
~*~
I don't usually give context on things, because I feel like the connection should speak for itself, but here, I feel a need to.
I view writing as being something I can't help doing. I'm constantly taking little mental notes, filing ideas away in a folder, making time to sit and write and put things together. It is a bit like having "homework", in the sense that there's always a feeling of, "I should..."
I opted not to go for a literal interpretation here. I've had the idea of a sort of government agency that utilizes magic (and requires an aptitude test to draft its perhaps not completely willing participants!) for quite a while. (Blame my dad the Vietnam vet and hardcore conspiracy theorist.)
Sophie doesn't want to join, but she does, and after a while, she finds: this is her calling, and she can't "turn it off" just because she's not at work. That's what the original quote said to me, and here we are now.
Thanks for taking the time to read. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2019-03-21 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-22 05:09 am (UTC)Thank you for reading! :)
no subject
Date: 2019-03-21 09:18 pm (UTC)But continuing your train of thought, from now on I will look upon all that goes well as being a charm from someone in the selected service!
no subject
Date: 2019-03-22 05:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-22 12:01 am (UTC)I loved how you drew me in and for the first few lines I did think it was a non-fiction piece until I went "...ah-ha...oh...okay! Cool!"
no subject
Date: 2019-03-22 05:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-23 11:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-23 08:30 pm (UTC)There's nothing like a threat to endear people to the idea of working for an organization!
I liked this, all the way from the rumors about what the Selective Service might be (mostly all wrong) to the aptitude test that appeared to be an entirely set of questions to someone with potential than it did to the other participants.
It's a neat abstraction of the prompt, too. :)
no subject
Date: 2019-03-23 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-24 09:46 pm (UTC)