Are You Even Human

Stories

### Chapter 1: 1 At Least We Still Have The Internet

I scowl at the glass door in front of me, but despite the righteous fury of my expression it stubbornly refuses to open itself. Normally this sort of thing wouldn’t really bother me, but this is the local Selective Service headquarters. A government building. Aren’t basic accessibility options like… the law?

Leaning heavily on my cane, I reach out and grasp the handle with my other hand, pulling on it with the limited strength available to me. Holy crap it is heavy. This thing is all glass and metal. I could… probably squeeze myself in there. Probably . But I’m not really in the mood to risk falling on my face today. I turn slightly backwards to call out to the massive van that’s waiting by the curb, doors all hanging open in a vain attempt to combat the unusually hot Chicago weather. I clear my throat.

“Um, Peter?” I call out, putting on my best and most innocent smile. “Could you get the door for me after all?”

The boy in the passenger’s seat snorts, stuffing his phone into his pocket as he twists to more-or-less fall out of the side of the car, landing easily and strolling up to me with a smug look on his face.

“Told you,” he brags. “It’s less of a bother if you just let me do it from the start, Jules.”

I chuckle apologetically, making a conscious effort to not get on his case about calling me by that stupid nickname. I like my full name. A long, beautiful name like Julietta is just the thing I need to distract from how hideous I am. ‘Jules’ makes me sound like the bench warmer for a boy’s little league team, which frankly quite oversells the athletic ability of a girl who can’t even open a pull door by herself.

“Sorry, Peter,” I say instead. “You’re right. I feel bad making you follow me everywhere, is all.”

“It’s fine,” he brushes off easily, holding open the door for me. “Seriously. Now do your best in there, okay?”

“I suppose I’ll try?” I answer hesitantly. I’m not really sure exactly how my best or my worst will make any difference, though, since I’m just here to sign up for the fucking draft. And I, for rather obvious reasons, will not be accepted into the military unless I am the literal last person left alive on Earth.

…Which I’m perfectly okay with. The person behind the front desk can’t help but stare at me as I slowly hobble inside and make my way towards the counter, but it’s fine. I’m used to it. Everyone stares, their eyes roving over my body without even an ounce of self-control. It’s not an outright leer, of course. More of a glance, then an awkward redirection of their gaze, then another look that they secretly hope is respectful this time, then a realization that it isn’t, and so on and so forth until they have accomplished what could have just been a straightforward stare if they had bothered to commit.

“Um, how can I help you, miss?” the man behind the counter asks.

“I turned eighteen today,” I answer, “so I am here to register for the draft.”

“Oh! Yes, of course,” he nods. “Driver’s li… er, identification?”

I suppress a sigh and pull out my passport. I have never once actually used the thing to pass a port or any other barrier between countries, but (correct guess, Mr. Front Desk Man, ten points for you) I cannot drive. A different government ID is therefore needed.

I hand it over to him and he looks it over, noting that today is indeed my birthday and the lumpy movie monster in the picture is indeed my face. A solid ten minutes of bureaucracy later, I am given leave to sit down and complete a fun little questionnaire about myself before a nurse pops in from the back and invites me to take a medical examination.

Or… well, she’s dressed like a nurse, but she looks more like an MMA champion. Her tan skin and military-cut hair are framed by a mountainous mass of muscles, the kind someone working ten hours a day as an underpaid health professional likely doesn’t have time for and definitely doesn’t need. Her nametag, which reads “Lance Corporal Erna Shuzen,” confirms that this isn’t her only day job—or at least it wasn’t. A nasty scar crawls up her right thumb, the whole hand stiff and subtly shaking even when not in use. Recent transfer, then.

“You’re… Julietta Monroe?” she double-checks, glancing at her clipboard.

“I am,” I nod.

“Medical papers?” she prompts. I pull them out of my handbag and pass them over to her without a word. There’s nothing quite as fun as getting all your private health information printed out in a big packet to hand over to the government. I try my best to not look too excited.

But I admit, I'm begrudgingly impressed when Lance Corporal Shuzen has the absolute balls to whistle after reading them for a bit.

“...Wow, quite a lot here,” she says, a smile on her face. “Limited mobility, limited flexibility, limited strength, limited stamina, bad eyesight, bad grip… you’ve got quite the collection!”

“Thank you?” I manage.

“Well, get in,” she says, jerking her thumb towards a small private room. “We’re gonna scrub you down and test all of it.”

“Um, what do you mean by ‘scrub me down?’” I ask, slowly making my way into the room as instructed. It looks like a pretty normal doctor’s office, at least. Nothing too weird.

“I mean I am going to physically scrub you with a mild solvent to see if all that crap on you is real or makeup,” she says.

…What.

“What?” I say.

She shrugs.

“Just protocol, hun, nothing personal. Draft dodgers get real creative when they want to. Hop up, you won’t have to strip or anything. Just an arm or two will do.”

Well. The ‘crap on me,’ as she puts it, is quite real. So… I guess I have no reason to object, beyond trivial things like respect and decency. I struggle onto the raised examination table and hold out an arm for her. She takes the arm I don’t offer. Huh.

“...Does this seriously happen that often?” I ask, letting her scrub at me. I hope she’s not scraping me up too hard; I can’t really feel it, so it's hard to know if she's injuring me.

“Well, with how wide we’re casting our net here you need a pretty specialized set of problems to get out of service,” the Lance Corporal answers. “So people have to fake… well, a lot of stuff.”

“Huh,” I manage.

“...Wow, this really isn’t coming off,” Lance Corporal Shuzen says, almost excitedly.

I… okay. I’ve never had this one happen before, I’ll admit. This is new. She gets points for that.

“That is because,” I say slowly, trying not to sound too condescending, “it’s real.”

“So it seems,” she nods, moving to my other arm. “Wow! This is just… it’s almost comical, you know? Your file is a little difficult to believe.”

“I don’t really know what to tell you,” I say, since there is truly no other polite and honest way to respond to that.

“Well, okay. It’s true, then? You lost all your skin in Denver? All of it?”

“I… yes,” I frown. “Pretty much. It was burned off by acid, apparently. I don’t really remember it well.”

“Well that’s probably good,” she laughs. “How’d you live through something like that?”

“Regenerator was at the field hospital. Which is why I have skin now, it’s just…”

“It’s all scars,” Lance Corporal Shuzen finishes for me. "Yeah. Because he makes you heal faster, not cleaner. I'm familiar."

She waves her own injured hand. I almost snap 'then why did you ask,' but I guess this was just all part of the test. To prove I'm actually what I say I am. I swallow my irritation as best I can, but it's difficult. Being accused of lying always rubs me the wrong way. The accusation just hits too close to the truth sometimes.

"Faster saves lives though," she continues, "especially when he's that fast."

I know this. I had all my skin burned off, plus a good chunk of stuff underneath it. I'm not a nurse, but I'm pretty confident most people don't survive that sort of thing. I am insanely lucky, not just that Regenerator was there but that he was close enough to actually have me in his effect radius. But I don't really want to talk about it—especially not with the rude woman rubbing my arms raw enough to likely cause me problems later—so I just shrug.

The subsequent tests aren't as long, but they do their best to be just as demeaning. The fitness tests seem mainly designed to get me to slip up (I technically do, in the sense that she has to catch me), the vision tests involve flashes of light to see if my one blind eye reacts in ways a working eye would (it does not, because it is blind) and the usual reflex hammer-to-the-knee stuff is largely waylaid because she can't actually find my patellar tendon under all the scar tissue (I don't blame her, there's a lot of it).

The good news is that most of my body can't really feel pain, so it's all just annoying and mildly demeaning more than anything.

"...So, um, I take it your hand has a similar story to mine?" I venture, trying to make this a bit less embarrassing by getting her to talk about herself instead of jabber about me.

"Well, I don't know how it compares to you, but yeah. Nearly lost the thumb trying to retake Nebraska. Can't hold a fucking gun anymore, so I work here now."

"Why not just retire?" I ask, honestly curious. "You, uh…"

Don't seem to have the disposition for a job like this? No, she might take offense to that. Are clearly too much of an asshole to be working as a nurse? Wait, that's worse.

"...Have certainly earned it?" I venture.

"Eh. I'm on the list for a prosthetic, and while I doubt I'll actually get one I've wanted to fight the good fight since I was a little girl. Not gonna quit now just because my actual fighting days are done. All these jobs are important, y'know? We might even get you in, despite all this. You need all kinds to keep an army working."

"Huh," I frown. "What inspired you to join the military in the first place?"

She looks at me like I'm crazy.

"Well, it's the apocalypse, innit?" she says, quirking her head. "Of course I want to fire lead up its ass."

Right. Of course. I guess I should have expected that.

By the end of this entire humiliating endeavor, I am left with a small card that proves I went and a polite assurance that I will be sent a message if I am selected for the draft, which I of course will not be because I can barely walk. Even if they need someone for a desk job, they're going to exhaust most of their options before they ask me because I can barely read either. I was homeschooled, like most people, but my foster parents aren't really the most dedicated to education and the fact that I am farsighted as heck no matter what attempts at corrective lenses I've been saddled with doesn't help either.

And yes, I'm farsighted and I have no depth perception. It is exactly as fun of a combination as it sounds.

"Jules, you made it back!" Peter waves at me as I stagger through the much-easier-to-operate push door that should still definitely just be an automatic. "You were in there for a while!"

"Yes, well, it turns out it's a lot harder to fail the draft than it is to get added to it," I answer, trying to inject some genuine humor into my tone. I probably succeed.

"You can fail?" Max asks worriedly from the back of the van, sticking his head out between the middle seat and the door so he can see me.

"I can fail," I correct. "You should be just fine, don't worry."

There was, after all, no IQ test.

"They're not shipping you out, then?" Andre asks. Of all my foster brothers, he is the one who cares about me the least. I've never held it against him; if anything, it makes him easier to deal with.

"Sorry kids, I'm afraid you're all stuck with me," I smirk, my grin only widening as the entire car immediately protests the label. I'm the oldest, but not by much. I just had my birthday first, is all.

"It sucks that you don't get to fight, though," Max sighs. The others in the car—including my foster dad at the wheel—nod in agreement. I nod along as well, a look of melancholy on my face while, internally, I remain as baffled by this general opinion as I have ever been.

Why would anyone want to go fight extradimensional horrors to death? Like seriously, I get that we have to. When aliens start pouring in from cracks in the universe and killing everyone they find you can't just ignore that. A military response is needed. Fine. But why would you want to be part of that military? Why would you want to subject yourself to that horror? I've been in an incursion, and a flying, acid-spitting bug monster removed all my skin, and I am not exactly in a hurry to go back to that sort of thing! Do people actually look at the commercials and propaganda and recruiter videos and genuinely get excited for them?

It makes sense that fighting to save the world is an obligation. But as an aspiration? I don't understand it at all.

"Well, go ahead and get in, Julietta," my foster father calls out. "We've still got to go home and have your birthday party!"

"Home?" I ask. "Aren't we picking up Emily first?"

"Eh, sorry, Julietta," he shrugs. "She texted to say something about her girlfriend dragging her out of town. She's apparently not going to make it."

What? Okay, screw that. I pull my phone out of my handbag and slowly tap away at it so I can call the one kind-of-sibling I have that I actually like. I have one of those oversized models for old people, with the huge buttons and the big text so I can actually use it and read the letters and numbers and whatnot, but I still much prefer calls to texts. Plus, they're harder for Emily to ignore, even with her asshole girlfriend pressuring her.

"Um, hello?" she squeaks in answer, picking up on the third ring.

"Emily!" I whine. "Are you really not coming to my birthday party?"

"J-Julietta!" she stammers. "I'm so sorry, it's just that I thought… you know, we were going to, um…"

"Hey, is that your sister?" a muffled voice says in the background. "Put her on speaker."

"U-um, okay," Emily says, and soon I hear the fuzzy buzz of background sound getting amplified.

"Jules!" Emily's girlfriend greets me. "Hey, happy birthday! How's it going?"

"Well, Lia, it would be going better if Emily was attending my party," I say flatly.

"Ah, geez, I'm sorry," Lia sighs. "It's just, y'know, Emily really wanted to go to this place in Chesterton today, so we made plans, and just… gosh, I'm sorry. We both completely forgot."

That's a lie. I know that's a lie. There's no way in hell Emily forgot my birthday. She's better at remembering my birthday than I am. But I just say nothing. Calling her on the lie would derail the conversation, letting Lia focus on the minutiae of who is and isn't responsible to satisfy her obsessive need to save face. If I just don't give her that opportunity, it keeps her on the backfoot, and her narcissistic need to seem kind and reasonable will lead her to offer a concession instead.

"...I'm sure we can swing by for a little bit, though," she offers after barely a few seconds. "I drive fast. We won't miss the reservations if we just say hi."

"Thank you, Lia," I say, forcing a smile on my face to make my voice sound more honestly happy. "I'd really appreciate that."

"Please don't drive too fast," Emily whines, though Lia doesn't even answer and Emily doesn't act like she expected one. It will be slightly harder than usual to not try and strangle that rich bitch when I see her, but fortunately my arms are very weak so I can usually just remind myself it wouldn't work anyway.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

We exchange a few more pleasantries and hang up. Talking to Lia always makes me feel dirty. I've tried to get Emily to see that she's an abusive, narcissistic bitch (without quite using those words) but she just doesn't want to listen, and that means I'm stuck constantly having to step in to make things less awful for her.