"Today is an inaugural day, Cadets. It marks the completion of the construction of your very own 25 station obstacle course. It also marks the completion of your accelerated online study courses for which you all earned highest marks across the board. Hardy congratulations are in order for you all." The Officer stated with pride and satisfaction.
"WHOOAH!" The Cadets shouted together.
"Today. To celebrate your established tradition of accomplishment and excellence, you will all be running drills on the obstacle course throughout the entire day! And as a special treat and to mark the gravity and importance of this long awaited occasion. The dress uniforms will hereby by retired from standard dress rotation. You will each find your new daily activity clothes in your respective lockers. The dress uniforms will now be warn only during formal and ceremonial occasion. Lets see you dressed and ready for your first day enjoying the privilege of your creation, Cadets. We begin at 04:30. Dismissed!"
The Cadets all bounded to their lockers excited to discover their new assigned clothing. They Found a pair of straight leg camouflage print cargo pants, a forest green canvas belt, green military issue socks, and thick heavy military issue boots in black. They each donned their respective outfits with their usual speed and tenacity. Cadet Stevens was the first to notice the set of dog tags hanging from his locker. The chain they were situated on was missing any kind of clasp, but he held the chain around his neck experimentally and was surprised to find the chain ends linked magically together and the slack in the chain was removed until it was perfectly matched to the circumference of his neck. He didn't see any way of removing the tags, but was pleased by the way it completed his attire. The other Cadets followed suite, but they each took a moment to read the tags before consigning them to live under their chins and outside of their field of view indefinitely.
CARTER
CADET
102-01-6603
O POS
Lutheran
STONE
CADET
534-30-0400
A POS
Atheist
"What do mine say Cadet Carter?" Cadet Stevens asked with interest
"It says your blood type is O positive and your religion is Catholic." Cadet Carter read matter-of-factly
"Hey, I didn't know that... About my blood type I mean. That means we're the same!" Cadet Stevens exclaimed
The Cadets found their shirtless uniforms to be very practical and and were excited by the improvements in their range of motion. They'd have to justify that improvement with an equally large improvement in work efficiency.
The Cadets lined up again. Eager to start their day. They had all been waiting a long time for the chance to finally put the results of their hard work to practical use. They'd each fantasized about navigating over each obstacle. They'd each considered the optimum path and technique to traverse each unique structure and at last they would be able to test their accumulated skills and ideas...
It was now a couple months into summer. The Cadets had all changed physically in dramatic ways. The sharing of their unventilated communal space and the exchange of sweat through physical activity and wrestling had caused their basic physical parameters to become indistinguishable from one another. Their heights were equal, their shoe sizes were the same, their arms were the same length, even their fingers and toes were all of equal lengths to one another. If not for their unique hair colors and distinct facial features they would appear to be triplets. They were an ideal team and their shared dimensions made for an economical and practical order to many aspects of military life. They could all wear the same sized clothes, they didn't require any specialized equipment, nor did they have any one an advantage over the others in any part of the obstacle course. The military could only dream of such uniformity, but here it was a reality.
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The Cadets spent an incredible carefree day squeezing every bit of excitement they possibly could out of their creation. They invented games and special handicap rules to make each obstacle even harder and took great satisfaction in figuring out new and better ways of solving the ever changing challenges they created for themselves and each other.
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The Officer was growing concerned that the he was running out of lessons to teach the Cadets. He couldn't keep making them build more and more obstacles. They weren't growing from that anymore... They were beyond those kinds of lessons. The accelerated learning courses had helped up to this point, but even those only consumed a fraction of cadet's entire 17 hour days. On top of that he was becoming entangled in a high profile case out of state, and it was becoming clear that he would most likely need to leave for an extended period of time to lend his unique knowledge and assistance to the ongoing investigation. He was running out of time to figure out a way to move the Cadets into their next stage of development. A stage they would most likely need to navigate without him.