“No, Ma’am. As I recall, he did very well in the earlier part of the training. I think he would be better served having a different experience next summer.”
“And the cadet who busted his knee?”
“She didn’t feel she had a choice,” Catie said. “Sanchez outweighed her by twenty-five kilos and she wouldn’t have been able to keep up with him if the fight had kept going on much longer at that level of intensity.”
“And the cracked ribs?”
“Possibly the cadet lost her temper,” Catie said. “Some disciplinary action might be in order.”
Commandant Lewis smiled. “Cadet Sanchez indicated that he deserved the kick in the ribs. He said he was getting tired and wanted you to end the fight, so he was more aggressive than needed.”
“I see,” Catie said.
“Moving on. When I asked Cadet Major Baker why he hadn’t made you a Flight leader once you were back, he said that you had asked him not to. Care to explain?”
“Oh, so that’s where she’s going. I guess he had to rat me out,” Catie thought. “Ma’am, I’ve been told by people I trust that I need to learn to follow more than I need to learn to lead,” Catie said.
“Interesting, but that is true no matter what rank you hold.”
“Yes, Ma’am. But if I’m not in a leadership position, it’ll be easier for me to focus on the following part.”
“Ah, I see. There are twelve reviews from your time in Guatemala that say you’re a natural leader,” Commandant Lewis said. “Half of them are from the Marine instructors. It’s quite unusual for them to make such strong comments about a cadet.”
Catie just looked straight ahead. She didn’t know how one should respond to such a statement, and since it wasn’t a question, she decided on silence.
“I see. Very well, I’ll respect your wishes and reevaluate after the semester,” Commandant Lewis said. “You’re dismissed.”
Catie stood to attention, saluted, did an about-face, and left. She breathed a sigh of relief once she was out of the office, then made a beeline for the dorms.
◆ ◆ ◆
“What did she want?” Yvette asked once Catie made it back to their room.
“Just checking in,” Catie said.
“About Baker?” Yvette asked.
“Oh, I guess everyone knows about that,” Catie said, “and, yes.”
“Mon Dieu, it was the talk of the leadership team,” Yvette said. “Poor Baker couldn’t move without someone asking for his help in deciding who they should date. It was a good thing they sent him to Guatemala early. Even then, I heard the instructors there gave him a hard time about it.”
“I didn’t realize that,” Catie said.
“Then Cadet Baker must be a good officer,” Yvette said.
“I thought he did a good job in Guatemala.”
“And Cadet Hoffman?”
“He was an ass. I guess he’s been asked to leave the Academy.”
“That’s good. That story also made the rounds. Most of the leadership team were happy to see him go.”
“Glad to hear that. Are you ready for dinner?”
“Oui.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“You know, I find this city amazing,” Yvette said.
“Why, besides the fact that it is floating in the middle of the ocean?” Catie asked.
“Because people come from everywhere, but everyone speaks English. In France, there are protests about the fact that we have to provide services in so many languages.”
“Oh!” Catie said. “Well, Delphi City requires everyone to learn English as soon as they arrive.”
“Requiring people to learn a language is one thing, but how do they get them to learn it?” Yvette asked. “I learned English in school as a little girl, and still, mine is not so good.”
“Oh, they teach them using their Comms and specs,” Catie said, pointing to the specs they were both wearing.
“We too have computer programs to teach French, how can this one be so much better?”
“First, everyone wears specs all the time, and they always have their Comm with them. When you first start learning a new language, they tell you to wear your earwig when you sleep. Then when your Comm detects that you’re sleeping, it starts to play recordings in the language while you sleep.”
“Hah, learning while you sleep, that doesn’t work!”
“It only helps. They say that when a baby is born, it already understands the grammatical syntax of the language its mother speaks. Just by hearing it all during the pregnancy, its brain has already started to parse it. So this does the same, helping your brain learn to hear the language. It’s especially important for the sounds that are not in your native language; some people cannot even distinguish certain sounds from similar ones in their language.”
“Okay, so maybe that helps. But how do they teach you?”
“From day one, your Comm points out objects you encounter by highlighting them in your specs, while it says the word for them. It saves all those in a database, then it replays them for you later, showing you the image you saw and resaying the word. Eventually, it starts to test you on them. After you have a vocabulary of objects, it starts to point out action or activities. Most people develop a rudimentary understanding within a couple of weeks.”
“Within a couple of weeks?”
“The program is relentless,” Catie said. “And everything around you is in English, so there’s plenty of reinforcement.”
“They don’t allow you to speak your native tongue?” Yevette asked, not sounding happy about it.
“Oh, sure they do. You hear other languages all the time,” Catie said. “But your Comm tells everyone that you’re learning, so they know to only speak English around you.”
“How do they learn to speak?”
“Mimicry, at first. After three weeks, it has you repeat all the phonics that you’ve heard until you get them right. I’ve heard that it’s pretty miserable for a couple of days, but then it gets easier.”
“Sounds like torture.”
“Pavlov’s principle. You get a nice tune when you get the phonic right, an awful buzzing sound when you don’t.”
“And it works?”
“Yes,
