Chapter Five: Limits, Absolute Limits, and a Nudge

Five Months Ago

“Malnix!” Sergeant Gammon’s voice bellowed from just behind her, “If you don’t get your sorry excuse for an ass up, and over that wall, I’m not sure they’ll even be a place left for you in my Corps! Now get your pansy ass up and over!” 

“Sir, yes, sir!” Jahenna panted, picking herself up on thin, raggedy arms that buckled under her. A cut on the side of her arm burned from sand clinging to blood, and she could feel the grit of it shift against her as she forced herself up. 

Without thinking about it this time, she threw herself against the seamless vertical two-and-a-half meter wall with a clash, her jump still not high enough. She crumpled back down to the sandpit she’d just risen from, already scampering to stand back up as another recruit leaped over her. Finding purchase at the very top of the wall with their fingers, the recruit hauled themself over, practically falling over the other side of the wall. 

Jahenna, already frantic to pick herself up and try for a fourth time to get over the wall, didn’t see the recruit’s foot as it uncontrollably came up, smashing square into her face heel first. White light and the smell of iron and something wet on her face flooded her senses, and she felt something disconnect painfully from the roof of her mouth. 

She landed on the sand again, flat on her back. 

Jahenna coughed wildly as she rolled to her side, spitting out blood and bits of broken tooth as she tried not to drown in her own fluids.

“Malnix!” Sergeant Gammon yelled at her again, “stop helping other recruits over that wall with your face and start helping yourself! Get over that wall!”

She tried to say something to the affirmative, but only slurred out the words in a jumbled, bloody mess of vowels. 

Push, the raw emotion inside her commanded.

Push. 

Do not stop; keep pushing. 

They will never respect you if you don’t do it yourself.

Don’t stop.

Push.

With eyes watering and face covered in blood, Jahenna crawled on her hands and knees to the wall, gasping for air. She pressed her shoulder against the wall, then forced herself forward—sliding up the wall uneasily as she winced in agonizing pain. 

The world was hazy; down was ahead of her, and to her right and left was up. Her vision swam as she held a hand out to the wall to steady herself, then stepped away, looking up at the wobbly top. 

Get over it, the raw willpower inside her commanded. Just get over it! Push though the pain!  

She stepped forward to try again…

…and collapsed into a rubbery sack of limp bone and meat against the wall itself.

* * *

When she woke up, Jahenna found herself propped up against pillows on a bed in the infirmary. 

The first thought to run through her mind was, what am I doing here? 

The second was realizing she never made it over the wall.

She knew she wasn’t getting washed out of training…not yet, at least. Worst case—and this would probably end up being the case, she knew—she’d be recycled to the next training regiment after having a chance to heal, and carry on with a new group.

But she didn’t want to recycle. 

She didn’t want to do the last two weeks all over again, and she especially didn’t want that black mark on her record; “recycled.”

Jahenna either did things right the first time, or she didn’t do them at all. She hated half-assing anything, and this felt like half-assing it.

Was she just not good enough?

Was she just…weak? 

…was doing this even worth it? 

Maybe Dad was right. Maybe she should just let good things happen to her. Take advantage of the opportunities presented instead of looking them all in the mouth and feeling judged for it. She’d still get to go through school, she’d just end up a little more sheltered than she wanted to be. 

A little more beholden to others than she wanted to be. 

A little less of the person she wanted to be. 

…

Jahenna didn’t realize she’d been sobbing until a visitor approached her bed, and she quickly stowed her emotions away before they were noticed. 

Her visitor was escorted to her bed by a nurse in white corpsman scrubs, who then fetched an unseen chair off to the side and then quickly left, giving them some privacy. 

“You’re awake,” the visitor said, and it was only then she realized it was her bay mate from the barracks: Brom Bowdoin.

He was a self-described country-moon boy from Lacaille, and he fit the part: over two meters tall, with thin, lanky limbs that seemed disproportionate compared to the rest of him, and a thick drawl of an accent. He wore standard fatigues over his scrawny frame, and sported the same close-cropped buzz cut that every recruit wore—including Jahenna herself. 

“…what’s going on?” She asked him, feeling incredibly self conscious that her bay mate would feel obligated to visit her like this. 

“Wanted to see how you were holding up,” Bowdoin said, careful to keep annunciating his words to try and break through his accent—something that Sergeant Gammon and the other Drill Instructors were trying to instill in him now, before they spent time on the radios later, where it would become a serious determent. 

“I’m here,” Jahenna sighed. 

“Yeah, and there’s a reason for that,” he said. “You fell. Bonked your head pretty good, too. Nobody’s above me to keep me awake at night with their snores while you’re in here, so I wanted to come check on you.” 

“…you’re here on your own?” She asked. “You spent time to come see me?” 

“Wouldn’t you? If it was me in here ‘steada you?” 

Jahenna thought for a moment…

…and found that no, she wouldn’t have. She would have written another useless letter to her father, or her brother, or maybe just cleaned her rifle again rather than go see someone. There was no room for other people, a trait she’d learned from her father…and she felt bad about that. 

She decided she would improve on that for the future. 

“…thank you,” Jahenna said. “I just…I don’t know what to say to that.” 

“Don’t say anything then,” Bowdoin mused, grinning. “Just enjoy the time off and the free dental work. You looked right funny with no front teeth, lemme tell you. Chalet really got you good when he fell over that wall.” 

“Hurt like hell, too,” she said, not sharing in his amusement but rolling her eyes all the same. 

“I’m…glad to see you’re doing better,” Bowdoin said. “You know how long you been here?”

“A few days, right?” 

“Two,” he said. “Today’s Sunday. Only way I could get liberty to come visit.”

“Well…again, thank you,” Jahenna said, forcing a smile she didn’t feel like. 

Bowdoin smiled something more authentic at her, as if trying to imply he not only knew how she felt, but that it was okay to feel hurt like this. 

“I wanted to come by to see how you were,” he began, “and…well, to just talk with you for a little bit.”

“Yeah?” She asked. “What about?”

“That blasted wall,” he said. “I saw you really struggling with it.” 

Jahenna relaxed her back, sending her a few centimeters deeper into the pillows behind her. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. 

“You might want to,” Bowdoin said. “They’re recycling you for sure after all that dental work.”

“I figured,” she said, feeling another tinge of guilt and sadness again. 

She hadn’t been good enough…or strong enough, it seemed. 

“That ain’t a bad thing,” he said, picking up on her nuance. “Hell, I got recycled myself because I couldn’t hack this ‘standard gravity’ business; I don’t know how you Shorties do it, but you do. I did the first two weeks over again, then recycled into your training class for my second run.”

“Really?” Jahenna asked, suddenly connecting events from when they’d first met: why Bowdoin was so prepared, why he was so put together, why he was already knowledgeable about how to make their bay ready for inspection…

“R-e-a-lly,” he said, enunciating the vowels in an almost comedic effect. “It sucked when I got recycled. I was at my limit, but it wasn’t my absolute limit.”

“Your…’limit’?” She asked.  

“Something my first DI said to us…well, to me specifically when I was still struggling along,” he said. “It’s like, or at least how I put it together, ‘limits’ are like hard lines or barriers that you naturally want to stop at. You’re either afraid of what happens if you go beyond them or you just don’t want to supersede them like heat limits on an engine or a power supply, yakeen?” 

“…that kind of makes sense,” she said, implying the meaning of the Lacaillian slang on her own. “Kind of.” 

“Now, absolute limits are like a sort of finite limit; you can’t physically go beyond it. Light is like an absolute limit.” 

“And…what does that have to do with a regular limit?” Jahenna asked.

“You can’t cross it,” Bowdoin said. “It’s a hard line. No matter what you do, you can’t cross it. If you’re at your absolute limit, you’re doing everything you already can, and you just can’t go any further. Hard stop.”

Jahenna thought for a moment. 

“So…you’re saying you were just…’afraid’ or something about going past your limits, then? Until you got recycled?” 

“Yakeen!” he muttered, grinning. “You got it!” 

“And…when you did get recycled…you figured out a way to get…past your limit?”

He nodded excitedly at her.

“Well of course you figured out a way past your limit,” Jahenna said, careful with her admonishment to not sound cruel. “You developed the muscle mass to do it, you dingbat.”

Bowdoin looked at her like an animal in a vehicle’s headlights. 

“You got better at it because you practiced it. A bunch. You expanded your limits because you improved them; you had time to get better at it.You didn’t get over it like some fear. Come on, Bowdoin! You’re better than this!”

“But that’s exactly what I did!” He protested. “I manifested something, worked for it, and it happened!” 

Jahenna wanted to just sink into her mattress and just evaporate away. It wasn’t that she was negative, it was that this was unhelpful; none of this made any sense to her, and did not help her mood. 

“Oh, never mind,” she said defeatedly. “Ultimately, you’re saying I’ll just get better when I recycle and it’ll all be alright in the end, right?” 

“A’yup.”

“And what if I don’t want the extra practice?” Jahenna argued. “What if I don’t want to be recycled? What if I don’t want to get placed with a different regiment? I like the one I’m in right now; I just want to get out of this hell and just be done with it already.”

“And I wanted to get done with those first few weeks and just move onto the next thing, too…but I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready!” 

“You weren’t because you hadn’t developed the muscles yet,” she sighed frustratingly. “I just don’t understand; how is any of what you just said not wishful thinking?” 

“Because I worked on it every day.” 

Jahenna groaned loudly, the agony in her voice filled the small space around her bed like water through a break in a dam. “…that is literally what I’ve been saying!” She said. “How? How is any of this different? I’m so confused…I don’t even—”

She stopped herself before she finished the thought.

“‘don’t’ what?” Bowdoin asked. “‘You don’t even’ what? Talk to me, Malnix.”

“Nothing.”

Bowdoin looked at her, then shifted his gaze as he studied her expression. His light-blue eyes were crisp and deep, and for a moment Jahenna thought she could see them sneak a peak into her soul. 

“You don’t think you belong here,” he said finally after a long moment, “…that right?”

Jahenna infinitesimally shook her head, and felt very small. 

Am I that obvious? She thought to herself. Am I that readable? I really am hopeless! I don’t belong here at all! God damnit, Dad was right.

“Oh, Malnix,” Bowdoin said, “you are a crafty one…but a confusing one, all the same. Why do you think you don’t belong here?”

She struggled to find the words, and settled on a whimper. 

“You are supposed to be here,” Bowdoin said. “You are good enough. It’s not about what you can or can’t do, it’s how you do it that matters.” 

“That makes about as much sense as that limit stuff,” she said, stifling tears. “What’s the difference between being able to do something and saying you can do some—”

Jahenna stopped speaking the moment the answer came to her, and rolled her eyes as she shifted in the bed. 

“‘Can’ and ‘Do’ are two different things,” he said, moving to sit his rear end on the mattress by her legs. “You…figured that out already though, didn’t you.” 

Jahenna nodded, still upset.

“You’re here because you want to be here,” Bowdoin said. “Not one reason more. You can leave any time, but you want to endure here. You want this, and you’re pretty convinced that you can.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” she said softly. “Not everyone gets to be a Spacy. Hell, I don’t even want to be a Spacy that much anyway—this was all to pay for fucking college—”

“—Regardless of why you’re doing it,” Bowdoin interrupted sternly, silencing her protests before she’d even gotten rolling on them, “you’re still choosing to do it. The ends do justify the means, regardless if we want them to or not. And usually, they do—because we want them to.” 

Jahenna looked up at her friend, contemplating his words. 

“You belong here,” he said after a slight pause. “You can do this. I believe in you. And while you’re at your limit now,” he said with a slight flourish, “I don’t believe you’re anywhere near your absolute limit. For you, there’s always going to be a way up.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” She asked, the desperation and frustration exploding from inside her. “This—this is the part I’m hung up on with your limits. Your limit was gravity. You needed the muscle mass to develop so you could move around more and complete the objectives. My limit is height! I’m short! I’m a hundred and seventy two centimeters tall; how the fuck am I supposed to get up a wall almost twice my size, with no handholds or braces?! You grew new muscle; I can’t grow longer bones!” 

“…well,” Bowdoin began simply, his tone level and calm, “you just gotta figure out a way that doesn’t involve height.”

“How?!” Jahenna practically screamed. “It’s impossible! That’s like flying from here to Lacaille without using a Null-Jump!” 

“And yet,” he continued, “people still did it. It took a long-as-shit time, but people still traveled the Void between the colonies back in the day. It ain’t practical, but they did it.”

Jahenna paused to think. To argue. To fight and stand her ground. 

“They did it for centuries, too…right up until they figured out a new way to travel,” Bowdoin went on, “your aforementioned Null-Jumps. Did they have those back in the old days? ‘Course not! But when they finally figured out a way to make ‘em work…everything changed almost overnight, didn’t it?”

With a sigh, Jahenna relented. He wasn’t wrong, but arguing with him was like slamming into that wall again, and again, and again.

“…I don’t,” she began softly, “…know…how to get over it. The wall, I mean.”

“They always say the first step is admitting you have a problem,” Bowdoin said softly. “Something for you to consider, now that you admit you don’t know how to get up over that wall: you weren’t the only Shortie with a height problem, and a fair number of them still got over that wall well enough—some of ‘em were even shorter than you!” 

Something obvious clanked Jahenna in the back of her head. Of course she wasn’t the only short person on the O-Course—why hadn’t she thought of that? How had she not even considered that?”  

…because she’d been so focused on trying to get herself over the wall, she didn’t notice how others were getting over it at the same time. 

“I am an idiot,” she mumbled out loud to herself. 

“You’re a hyper-focused perfectionist,” Bowdoin corrected her. “Don’t beat yourself up too bad.”

“This isn’t me beating myself up,” Jahenna grumbled, sitting up in the bed again as her snuffles quickly dried away into optimism. “This is me kicking myself to a pulp.”

“Eh, who’s counting?” 

“Well you are, apparently!” She said to him. “God…I didn’t even think of that.”

“They used timing and the momentum of their leg swings to get over the wall,” Bowdoin said as he moved to stand up from the bed. “In case you wanted another hint.” 

Leg swings and timing. 

She could do that. 

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m…not sure if I would have figured that out on my own.” 

“Oh stop,” he glimmered. “You’re a smart kid, Malnix; you’d have figured it out eventually…I just gave you a nudge, and it was all you needed.” 

She smiled as a warmth built in her cheeks again, a warm, grateful glow that she’d experienced so little of as a little girl. 

“Thank you, anyway,” she repeated. “I really appreciate you coming by to see me, Bowdoin.”

“I appreciate seein’ you,” he said, “and seein’ that you’re gonna be alright is a big load off of my mind. Going to miss you, Malnix.” 

“With my snoring at night?” She asked. “I doubt that.” 

Bowdoin grinned. “Good luck to you,” he said, nodding his head in farewell. “I’ll be thinking of you.”

“Same,” she said. “You’d probably best be going…Sergeant Gammon isn’t one you want to keep waiting.”

“Hey, you…heard who your new DI is yet?” 

“No?” she asked. “Who is it?” 

“It’s Senior Drill Instructor Sergeant Kaveh Takes himself!” 

Jahenna’s stomach fell out underneath her. 

“He’s actually leading a regiment?!” She stammered in a mild panic. 

“Seems like it,” Bowdoin said. 

“Welp, I’m dead now,” she said. “Drilled to death by Gammon’s own boss, no less. He’s probably going to drill me extra hard because I’ve already done all this before…ugh!”

“I’ll send the nurse by when I pass her then,” he mused. “You take care of yourself, Malnix.”

“…you too,” she said from her bed. 

With a silent nod of his head and a warm grin, Bowdoin turned and walked away, leaving Jahenna to contemplate how she was going to navigate the Senior Drill Instructor himself.