Academy Welcome Speech, Rookie doss, A.F. 05
Speaker: Gen. Davis Steele (SN:00-2214•0004)
Class Roster under separate cover: File X> \ \ACl44523
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Okay. You're good. That's a given. You're good at a lot of things or you wouldn't be here. You're killers and healers, hunters and hiders, builders and destroyers. Some of you seek knowledge and some of you seek to conceal it. You are good because there is no alternative. For the' next five years, you will live in a place whore there is nothing and no one who is not, at the very least, good.
You're good or you would have been dead a long time ago. You're good or you would right now be fish food in the bottom of a Hab's recycling tanks with a bullet in the back of your head, put there by my operatives, on my orders, because I wanted it to happen.. lots of others who would have liked to be here aren't because they weren't good enough. And they're dead now.
So lets just get past that. let's forget that you' re good, because it doesn't matter. You might as well just say you're breathing, because it has the same amount of importance. Being good only gets you here. You are going to have to get much better than good. It doesn't matter how 'good' a firefighter you are, once you've been sent to hell.
I see some of you out there. Cocky. Rolling your eyes like you've heard it all before. You're all such badasses, aren't you? There's nothing you can't handle. Well, cherish that confidence, troops. Hold on to it like the gunwale of the ferryman's boot. You will need it. Starting tomorrow, everything you've learned will be wrong.
I'm not going to sugar-coot it. There's no way to pretty it up. This is hell. You're going to be taught and trained, humiliated and beaten to a broken, bloody mess. You will feast and you will starve. We will test the limits of your body, exceed your endurance, teach you the purest pleasures and the severest pain. We will put unbearable strain on your mind and force you to question your motives, your faith and your own will to live. You will face death, and some of you will die.
And if you survive, you will wake up late on certain nights, sweating and cold, wondering whether it was worth it.
But it is.
When you leave here, you will be among the 800 most competent, all-around bad motherfuckers alive. You will be better than half a billion other people, the whole remainder of humanity. No one you meet for the rest of your life, will be able to outdo you in anything, unless it's another one of your own You will kick ass and take names. In effect, you will have complete freedom and unlimited resources to do whatever it takes to get your job done. You will be gods among men.
Which isn' t lo say we won't own you. We will. Forever. But with that ownership comes a great boon. You will exist outside of society. You'll walk between the raindrops. Nothing will touch you except for us. And even that won't matter lo you. By then you will have been incorporated. You will be us.
So you live in hell for five years; you do your time, and when you get out, you'll be handed a life that's richer and more exciting than anything you can imagine. You will do things that everyone knows are impossible. You'll experience things that live only in the minds of lunatics and visionaries, things you thought were made up to scare children. Trust me; it's a whole 'nother level. It's the bargain of a lifetime. And if you don't like the bargain, you can have what's behind Door No. 2. A bullet
Dismissed.\ \ end transcript
:dfs
