The voice of nineteen

Turn 17 of 26

Hold still in the finished line and wait to hear what comes after intake is complete. They lead you to the barracks and yell that this is home now. It’s bed time at 8. The clock reads 7:30. They yell the routine you do ever night, brush teeth, enter bed still wearing the permanent donut bun, uniform and shoes. You all yell the line as the officers leave without a word so they can sleep.

The finished line holds. Twenty bodies, twenty buns, one shape, and the Lead Instructor walks it once more the way a foreman inspects a delivered order. 'Intake is finished,' she repeats. 'What follows is not intake. It is the rest of your service. BARRACKS — FALL IN, SINGLE FILE, NUMBER ORDER, MOVE!' The column turns as one and marches out of the styling room, past the color stools, down a corridor smelling of floor wax, into a long white room with twenty identical bunks in two perfect rows. No posters. No windows. No lockers with names. Twenty sets of folded gray blankets, squared to the centimeter.

'THIS IS HOME NOW, RECRUITS!' the officer at the door yells. 'You were assigned a home once. It has been reassigned. THIS is where the standard sleeps!' She consults the wall clock, a plain white face reading seven-thirty. 'LIGHTS AND BED AT EIGHT HUNDRED HOURS. In thirty minutes you will execute the nightly routine. LEARN IT NOW — I WILL SAY IT ONCE! You will brush your teeth! You will enter your bunk at attention and lie down at attention! You will remain in your uniform, your shoes, and your permanent dress-shape bun! The bun does not come down! The uniform does not come off! You were dressed for the standard and you will SLEEP for the standard!'

'YES MA'AM,' all twenty of you detonate, one voice, and the officers turn and file out without another word — no good night, no look back, boots receding down the corridor until the compound is quiet except for the ventilation and the distant, unhurried sound of the hundred voices finishing their own evening drill.

The twenty of you stand at attention beside your bunks in the silent barracks. There is nothing to do yet, because the routine has not been called. Beside you Six stands exactly as you stand, bun shining under the white light, forehead pulled taut, hands cupped behind her back, and when the wall clock's minute hand drops to seven-forty-five and an officer's voice from somewhere down the hall yells 'NIGHTLY ROUTINE — EXECUTE!' the twenty of you move as one body to the row of sinks.

Twenty brushes come up in unison. Twenty mouths brush in the same strokes, at the same tempo, and the sound of it is one sound. You spit in unison, rinse in unison, and return to your bunks, and your body climbs in at attention and lies down flat on its back, heels together, hands cupped, bun pressing into the pillow like a lacquered stone. The lights cut to dark at eight exactly. In the dark, twenty identical women breathe in twenty identical rhythms, and no one in the room can hear a difference.