The Infinity Brigade #1 Stone Cold Read Free Page A

through the MEPS which was through the door behind the small office. MEPS was an FLA (four letter acronym) for a Military Entrance Processing Center. One of the first things I learned about the military was that they loved their TLAs (Three Letter) and their FLAs.
    If the office out front was boring and plain, the MEPS was anything but. There was high-tech equipment all over the place. Over the course of the next few hours I got scanned and prodded in places I didn’t even know existed.
    One of the first things they did was ask me to drop and attempt to perform a pushup. The marine who gave the order demonstrated ten pristine pushups. His back was flat enough to iron a suit on. Rather than resting his hands on the ground he held himself up on his fingertips. With each repetition, his chest came to within a quarter of an inch of actually touching the floor.  
    Now keep in mind my arm had just been dislocated. I dropped and banged out fifty reasonably decent one-armed pushups. When I was done I stood back up. The Marine looked at me and then asked me to drop and do them correctly.
    I explained that my shoulder had been dislocated a few hours earlier. He nodded and said, “Potential recruit unable to perform at even minimal level” as he wrote the same on my MEPS profile.
    “WHAT!” I yelled. “I just did fifty!”
    “Fifty done incorrectly is still zero done correctly. I am prepared to change my assessment if you would like to have another go at it recruit.”
    I gritted my teeth and dropped to the ground. I would not give this bastard the satisfaction of seeing me fail. I tried to put most of my weight on my good arm. I failed horribly. It was all I could do not to scream but I forced myself to do ten of the most painful pushups I had ever attempted in my life. When I was done I stood back up. The evaluator must have seen how red my face was and the sweat trickling down my brow.
    “Not great,” he said “but good enough for now. Let’s take care of that shoulder.”
    I was walked to another area of the facility where ten other recruits were waiting in a line for a medical checkup. They had us strip to our underwear. Our clothes were placed in sealed bags and we were told that if we survived they would be returned to us. The corporal that made the comment had a grin on his face.
    I’m not a particularly shy person. But standing in a room with nothing but boxer briefs on for the better part of an hour while doctors and technicians did strange and nefarious things to me in the name of evaluating my medical fitness is not my idea of fun. Three of the recruits were gals. I suspect they had it rougher than us because, like us guys, they were topless. On Earth that was no big deal. On Mars it just didn’t happen.  I’m not sure who was more uncomfortable, me or them. I spent much of the hour trying to look elsewhere.
    Then it was my turn to spend some quality time with the doc.  He came up and looked me over with a hand scanner.
    “OK, I see we have some recent tissue damage to the rotator cuff in your right arm. I’m going to give you an injection of medical nanites. They will aid in healing but I’m going to warn you any place where you have had a previous injury is going to inch for a few days. That’s just the nanites doing their job.”
    “Thanks Doc.”
    “All part of the service son,” the medical officer said as he pushed the injector against the side of my neck.
    “HOLY CRAP!” He was not kidding. I felt like I had ants crawling all over my body. I had broken my leg when I was sixteen. It hurt worse now than it did when I first broke it. My shoulder burned.
    “Oh, I probably should have mentioned this first, but those tattoos aren’t regulation. The medical bots will take care of those as well.”
    Sure enough as I watched, the ink I had paid good money to lay down slowly faded. The feeling of ants made sense now. Everywhere I had ink, I felt the ants doing their jig. Unfortunately for me, I loved