It's surprising how many of our memories are associated with specific smells. Up here, they keep it as sterile as possible. The aromas are of food, and sweat, and disinfectant. Quite a lot of disinfectant. And, of course, the bathrooms sometimes reek of urine or feces or vomit. But there's never any scent we don't create, nothing unexpected.

The earliest memory I have is associated with the smell of pine needles. It was eight days before Christmas, and I was exactly eighteen months old. Mind you, I wouldn't know the age or the date if Maman hadn't told me. I only know I was really little. And I'm gonna recount the memory in third person... because it's not me, you know? Besides, I've heard the story from Maman so many times that I'm not sure how much of it is the "real" memory.

Caitlin was sitting in a playpen, surrounded by the aroma of pine needles. Though she didn't know it, the scent came from a candle on a shelf above her, too high to easily see. Her favorite book lay next to her - Where The Wild Things Are. She was just beginning to make the connection between the alphabet she'd recited for a couple weeks and the words on the page. Reading wasn't keeping her attention at the moment, though - she was far too entertained by playing with her toes.

The doorbell chimed softly, and Caitlin clapped her hands. "Doorbell!" she cried, gleeful in her knowledge of the word. Maman came in fron another room, paused long enough to say, "That's right, sweet," and went to the door.

The visitor was a short, lean man in a pale blue uniform. He and Maman talked for a while, occasionally looking or gesturing at Caitlin. At one point, it seemed like Maman was crying. But then she came over to the playpen, picked up the little girl, and bundled her into her coat and warm snuggly shoes.

The three of them got into a car. Maman sat next to Caitlin, which was new. But no one was explaining anything...

And there, frustratingly enough, is the end of what I can remember. I'm pretty sure that's when I got my monitor. That, or it was like a checkup to make sure it wouldn't make my head explode. I'd not be surprised if it was when I got my monitor, though, because the next memory I have is a year later. (And this time, I know that it's a year later. I was starting to keep track of my age by then.)

I was at playschool, climbing on the slide with a handful of other monitor-children. Nearly all the children at this particular playschool had monitors. But one of my usual friends was missing all morning, and when Jemmie returned after lunch, he had no monitor.

This really disturbed everyone else with monitors. We'd never heard of someone's monitored-status changing. Either you had one, or you didn't. So finally, I asked one of the teachers. And her response was, in retrospect, heartless as hell: "You all have monitors so the Fleet can find the best of you. Jemmie wasn't good enough."

That really shaped the rest of my time landside. I started asking what the Fleet wanted, what it meant to be the best. A little later, I met an older boy named Nicholas. I didn't know how important he'd be to me later on. I only knew him as someone who'd just lost his monitor. He was, mmm, probably a few months past five. When he was eight, he would start gathering his own little army together. And I'm sure that in the six years I've been gone, he's been gleefully wreaking havoc somewhere. Or in prison. But I digress.

The September after I turned three, I was enrolled in preschool. Not a year early, like a lot of monitored kids - no, I was in the "learn the alphabet and colors and shapes" three-year-old shit. Maman didn't want to rush me. It paid off, I guess, because I did a lot of studying on my own, a lot of exploring the library. In May, Chen came home.

Nicholas and Chen had been in the same class at one point. He hadn't been rushed either. Anyway, so word got out that he had come home, and that he was going to go to school for the last month so he had something to do, and then start school normally in the fall. Now bear in mind, there was a lot of jealousy on Nicholas's part. But he was curious. And, after all, the kid had failed out or something, so he wasn't too much of a threat.

Nicholas and I, along with another monitor-brat named Mattim, walked over to Chen's house after school. It was uncomfortable in the beginning, but finally Chen's mom got us cookies and we all sat in the playroom at his house.

Nicholas asked the first question. "What was it like?" Vague, yeah, but it was the only time I can remember hearing awe in Nicholas's voice.

"It's hard," Chen began. "Everyone's divided up right from the start. Newest kids are "launchies", and then the older kids are put in "armies" by the teachers. The armies are led by a "commander" who's one of the really big kids. And then meanwhile, the armies fight each other, and everyone, all the kids have class, only ten times harder than here."

"So why did you come home?" That was Mattim, not tactfully at all. But it was the question all of us wanted to ask, though

Chen swallowed. Looked really sick, poor kid. And then he said, "Well... you get trained to fight without any gravity, and I couldn't deal with it, and the classes were hell... and I just wasn't fitting in. It was really obvious. Not like I was being picked on, just... I couldn't handle it. And I missed home so much. I mean, I was supposed to be saving it, but I wasn't doing a good job of it."

We all nodded, trying to digest that for a bit. So then came my question, and I think that asking it was this great big monstrous foreshadowing that I'd be picked. I bet the monitor-watchers knew that, but I certainly didn't at the time. "What kind of things do you need to stay up there?"

Chen thought about that one for a while. "Strength. Emotionally and physically - you've got to be focused emotionally, and physically... you have gym time every day, but it really is hard work. You have to be good at following orders and being respectful, and you've got to be good in schoolwork. And you can't ever let yourself get overwhelmed, or dwell too long on missing home. I think that last part is where I failed."

So we asked a couple more silly questions, about the food and the teachers and all that, and then he and Nicholas talked about the kids they knew, and that was that.

I wish I'd known, then, to warn Chen to stay away from his old friend. I didn't, of course. I was too busy starting my own personal Get-Caitlin-To-Battle-School routine. I did as much physical exercise as I could, asking Nicholas to compare me to boys older than I was, so I had a goal to work for. I studied. I got Chen to teach me algebra, and discussed current events with Nicholas. I'm still not sure why they put up with it, but I think it was their pet project - they'd washed out, but they could help me. After all, I was a little girl, and not an immediate threat, and since I was so very respectful, they figured, hell, I'd be a decent lieutenant at least.

Time passed more or less uneventfully. I mean, I have memories, but nothing big. And then, Nicholas started putting together his... gang, I guess. He called them his "boys". And they called themselves that too. That was the June right after I graduated from kindergarten. Mattim lost his monitor a couple days after our graduation, and he was one of the first that Nicholas recruited.

Chen didn't like the idea. He didn't want to serve at Nicholas's side, he wanted to be the teachers' perfect pet. Nicholas had been planning this a while, though. I think he wanted to consolidate a core group before his fifth-grade year, so he'd have that time to build power, rule the school as a sixth-grader, and then move on to junior high, taking as much of his influence with him as he could. In August, Chen found out that Nicholas had been sending his "boys" to steal stuff. Not like candy or dirty magazines - he was going for knives, one or two of them the ceramic kind that the real gangs carried, stuff that wouldn't get picked up by metal detectors. Firecrackers left over from Independence Day or Victory Day. Scraps of weird shit from junkyards. And he was training some of the boys to be able to climb fences with barbed wire on top.

He confronted Nicholas about this. In private, which was stupid. Even I knew that, and I only know it's more true now.

We were at the park and Nicholas came running, tears streaming down his face. "Patrick, go find a phone and call 911!" he ordered. "Chen fell out of a tree and he's hurt really bad!"

Nicholas looked at me, right then. I knew as soon as he came running. If he did fall, he was pushed. But Nicholas was pretty much telling me not to step out of line. My only response was to nod. I think if that had happened now, I'd probably have had the guts to tell a teacher... if I had wanted to.

So Patrick went, and an ambulance came, and they found that poor Chen had broken his collarbone in two places and dislocated his right shoulder. His parents decided to homeschool him. The best - or worst - part of all is that he completely blacked the whole incident from his memory. Nicholas asked him, when he'd gotten out of the hospital - this was maybe a week before I went to Battle School. I was there watching.

Nicholas, cold as ice, no adults in the room. "Do you remember what happened?"

Chen shook his head. "No. I don't even remember climbing the tree. Just that I was gonna talk to you about... you know."

Nicholas nodded. "I know." Still ice cold.

Chen's eyes widened. Now he knew too. But he went on, brave soul, "The first thing I remember after we walked away from the others was waking up in the ambulance."

I still don't know if he really did climb the tree. I would not at all be surprised if Nicholas knocked him out, dragged him up the tree, and dropped him off. But, at any rate, there was no longer objection, and Nicholas went on with his "boys". I ended up being pretty useful, as I kept my monitor and continued to build muscle - so he could taunt his "boys" by comparing them to me.

Then I lost my monitor, and I had Nicholas cut my hair so that Maman would notice something was different, and I told him I wanted to be one of his "boys". Little I might be, but I knew I could work my way up - and I was only a first-grader. If I squirmed into a place at the leader's right hand by third grade, I'd be well-positioned to take the reins by fifth grade and have two years of leadership.

Of course, the next morning I left for Battle School.

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