“Alright maggots,” the Drill Sergeant shouted.
“Let’s get a move on… hut-two-three-four. March dammit! Stop bouncing, dress it up ladies!”
Cruel? No. This is everyday life at Aphid Basic Training. It’s still on a volunteer basis, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy. The scene described is from Sgt. O’Hara’s barracks. His platoon is being marched to the mess hall. Today they run the obstacle course to see if the troops put to use everything they’ve learned so far and are ready to graduate out of this hell.
The aphids make it to the mess hall and have a hurried breakfast of old lettuce — it’s tough, but it beats starving. When they finished they make their way outside and into formation for the march back to the barracks for a five minute personal period in which the troops are free to perform a quick proboscis polishing and whatnot.
Once again they get into formation outside their barracks. This time wearing full gear. The sergeant waits, hands on his hips. “MOVE IT!” he roars, spittle flying. The slower aphids fall in and snap to attention. The sergeant gets them facing the right way and begins the march. The sun should be coming up over the horizon by the time they arrive. For now, though, the troops trudge forward silently, moving to the cadence of their echoing foot-falls. They’re cold, tired, and hungry. They know, however, that it’s time to grow up and be full-fledged aphids. Soon they’ll all be shipped off to far flung gardens, greenhouses, nurseries, farms, or wherever free plants grow. Sadly, the war never ends, but they have to do their part and this is a step in that direction. Call it honor.
They arrive in a trance. Foot-sore already, most of the aphids are ready to kick off their three pairs of tiny boots and bury their feet in some soft petunia fuzz. The sergeant stops his troops and lets them stand at parade rest — feet apart, more feet behind the back. He turns and begins speaking to a very large, hairy aphid. Another sergeant. The aphids can’t hear them, but they just know in their tiny green hearts that it isn’t good.
“Alright maggots, TEN-HUT!” the sergeant says as he heads back to them. The aphids snap-to. “We’re gonna run the obstacle course today and you are going to be under Sgt. Nelson’s loving care.”
With that he leaves and Sergeant Nelson steps into his place and growls. The aphids are intimidated. Nelson is new to them, fierce-looking, and really hairy. Finally his proboscis begins to move:
“AYY-PHIDS, MOOOVE OON OUT!” he screams.
With the grease of fear the aphids run towards the obstacle course starting point. The first part is nothing more than a run. A short one of only two clicks. Then the fun really starts: Resistance Training (the RT Segment). Statistically, one in four aphids will drop out dead away at this point in the course. It seems harsh, but in real life, “out there,” the aphids will have to be ready for anything.
Throughout their development in camp, the aphids are regularly subjected to a regimen of pesticide exposure. The idea is to bring on a resistance. This is chemical warfare and it’s not pretty. The two-click run gets the aphids breathing hard they are sent into a greenhouse-like structure where they are subjected to a powerful chemical fog. Unlike the real military where the men and women don their gas masks at this point, at Aphid Basic Training the troops aren’t afforded such luxury. They must tough it out. Some make it, some don’t. Roughly seventy-five percent move on towards the next obstacle.
The wheezing troops move towards the Exclusion Exercise station. The object of this segment is to infiltrate a secure zone as a team, take a prisoner, suck the life out of it, then raise a flag, and escape. The aphids perform their task flawlessly. It’s tough getting in — there is an unyielding mesh blocking their entry like some sort of giant screen door — but they find a way to circumvent the barrier. They have the flag raised long before the zone attendant gets wise, and they get out of there unscathed. Victory for the troops. Cocky and confident the aphids swagger over to the sergeant. Sgt. Nelson doesn’t like this one bit, thinking it was maybe too easy.
The aphids form-up and double-time it over to the next segment: Live Warfare. “Live War” or “LW” as they call it for short, is broken down into two parts: The first part is to face predatory foes; The second part they face parasitic foes. They arrive at the LW-1 zone, ready to face the predators. The object is for the troops to penetrate and cross a protected area with a variety of real-world predators that will literally chase them down and eat them. Another 25% will likely fall during this phase. It can be quite challenging. The aphids are prepared for this by weeks of training, but now it’s do or die. Literally.
The aphid platoon breaks into four squads in hopes of using confusion and diversionary tactics to their advantage. Squad A moves to the left perimeter, squads B and C move ahead but keep their distance from one another. Squad D takes the right perimeter, which proves to be a fatal move. They are being a little careless, chatty and all that, and encounter a huge red beetle with black spots. This they know from their training is what’s known as a ladybug, and they learned it ain’t no lady. The last squad member, as he is being taken by the beetle’s mandibles, remembers this part from the training film.
The other squads, after losing radio contact with the D guys start being really alert. It pays off for squad A who see a few lacewing larvae off in the distance. The larvae would have likely found them and punctured them with their incredible piercing and sucking mouth parts, but since they saw them first, the aphids stayed low to the ground and continued their forward progress unabated. B squad, who never see a thing and likewise make it to the other side. Squad C has a hell of a scare. The Air Force. Specifically they see an aphid predatory midge flying their way. It looks like a mosquito, sort of gangly and awkward, but the aphids are terrified and start to run. The midge bears down on them fast. Too fast. They will never make it out alive. Until someone remembers their training: “If it’s flyin’ you won’t be dyin’,” as their instructors have told them numerous times. If it’s airborne it’s an adult. And the adults don’t eat aphids. Just as this is remembered, the adult midge flies harmlessly over their heads and continues almost out of sight before landing.
The midge lands to lay some eggs, though. Developing in a grossly exaggerated Hollywood time, the eggs are hatched by the time the troops reach the landing zone of the midge. Before them are harmless-looking orange worm-things. The worms, really midge larvae, raise their pointy ends (the head?) and seem to look over at the aphids. They start this weird undulating movement. It’s awkward but effectively closes the distance between the two groups. The soldiers are alarmed and double-time it to the termination point of the segment. The worms give chase but can’t keep up — but, boy, can they move.
The troops leave the containment area, but the midge larvae continue the pursuit. Sgt. Nelson, who always wears his side arm, a can of Raid, takes out his weapon and fires upon the worms. They die quickly and easily, much to the surprise of the aphids. They laugh and call them wimps. With that the troops, the half that have survived this far, anyway, move on. The parasitoids await. Soon they enter the exercise area. It’s richly vegetated, much more so than the last stage, and almost immediately the aphids are deep within and decide to pair off to better increase their odds of survival.
One duo moves to the West and are the first to make an encounter. A wasp — one of the several species in the segment — locates them and starts zooming in at an alarming rate. Like a Kamikaze the wasp swoops down on them. The aphids duck; a near miss. The wasp quickly banks and points itself in their direction again. The pair panics and separates. The wasp goes after one. The other aphid watches from a distance as it swoops in and lands on his partner. The wasps takes its rear portion — the “abdomen” — and rams it forward, between his legs, and stabs his victim. The wasp makes a face, pulls out, and looks over at victim number two. The wasp hop-flies on over and repeats the procedure. “Hey–” the aphid screams then faints dead away. Both aphids wake a few moments later and shake it off.
“We’re alive,” one says to the other.
They both laugh nervously and cautiously continue through the containment area towards their goal. They see several more parasitoids flying around but the wasps seem oblivious to them. Then again, the aphids both “bear the mark” sporting a reddish-brown dot on their back.
The same thing happens to many of the pairs. Only half come back without bearing the mark. The ones who do seem wiped out, dead tired. They all sit down to the surprise of the others. Sgt. Nelson doesn’t seem surprised and doesn’t shout at them or tell them to get up off their lazy butts. He just looks at them and shakes his head sadly, almost human. One aphid lets out a moan. Then another, and another. Soon all the marked aphids are crying and moaning. They roll around on the ground in agony. The sergeant warns the troops that they might not want to watch but they are all rubber-necking. The affected aphids now begin to die and turn papery, it’s horrible — these, too, developing in that grossly exaggerated Hollywood time. Sgt. Nelson tells the remaining 25% of the original platoon that there is only one segment left. The aphids move on.
“The end is near,” Sgt. Nelson laughs in an evil way as he points to the entrance of the final segment of the obstacle course, the most physically demanding part, Physical Avoidance or PA it’s called.
Fear comes up from the depths of their little green hearts as the aphids meekly make their way onto what looks like a battlefield with sparse vegetation and the remains of countless battles scattered everywhere. The object here is simply to make it to the other side. It’s one-half click away, but for some it will be unreachable.
The aphids fan out but stay with in easy sight of one another. Forward they move. The end getting close. One-quarter click remains. Half way there. Nothing yet. It’s like a barren lonely expanse for the aphids who have to traverse it. They continue their progress. Light shines from the end of the proverbial tunnel. The sound of swelling hearts, optimism, and rising confidence can almost be heard. One-eighth click remains. The remaining 25% of the troops must make it the remaining 25% of the way. If they make it they will become full-fledged aphid soldiers who will be given wings and immediately shipped out to conquer new regions. They will win numerous battles during their lives. The training they are getting now will indeed properly prepare them for success. Their secret is to work in numbers and to produce new soldiers at an alarming rate. To overwhelm their enemies. Here they learn to be all they can be and to do more damage by 9:00 am than most pests will do all day. It’s more than a job, it’s an adventure. They learn to aim high. Semper fi… boo-rah, and all that.
They can see the gate. The end of their training is near. The aphids begin to jog. Before long they are moving at a full run. Their confidence soars. The exit is a mere tenth of a click away. The gap closes fast. They are so close, but not close enough. The aphids are brought to a halt. Scared nearly to death by the din which fills their world like a suffocating liquid it seeps into their very beings. But it’s not a liquid, it is sound. The most tremendous roar they have ever heard. Like a thousand planes overhead and a thousand trains running alongside them. They stop and place their tiny hands over their tiny ears and shut their tiny eyes.
“DAMMIT JOE, IT LOOKS LIKE WE HAVE APHIDS,” the energy waves of sound seem to say.
The noise stops and silence fills the air. The troops get up, dust themselves off, and again make their way toward the exit. The aphids are scared. The sounds drains their confidence. But the gate looms closer. The aphids can read the exit sign now. It says “exit.”
It’s getting dark, though, so the sign is getting harder to read. It is getting dark very quickly. The sign is getting hard to even see. Too quickly the light slips away. Something is amiss. That’s when they see it. In training the aphids are told about all sorts of enemy armament. Chemicals, sticky things placed out of reach, awful predators and parasitoids, the beetles and the wasps, the aphids had now seen it all. But one thing, an ultimate weapon, a weapon of mass destruction, they hadn’t yet seen. But they were, however, seeing it now. It was just like the training film said:
The ultimate weapon always works in tandem — it is a two-part threat. Typically the parts come from opposite sides, trapping its victims in the middle. There is no way to run, no way to avoid it. No place to hide. In the training film they name each component distinctly. One, the smaller of the two is referred to as “Forefinger,” they other part is called “Thumb.” When the two sides come together anything and everything in between is brutally crushed. And hundreds can be taken out. And the troops are seeing it now. Pale with fear, they cannot run but stand there like statues. So close.
Sgt. Nelson stands there at the gate and watches. Sgt. O’Hara is back and stands next to him. The thumb and forefinger close around the troops. All of them are violently crushed and they all know there is nothing that can be done. The thumb and the forefinger leave, bits and pieces of the soldiers falling to the ground as they do. Sgt. O’Hara tosses his clipboard carelessly over his shoulder. He turns and walks away with a sigh. 0% of his platoon makes it — none survive. There will be no graduation ceremony today. He goes back to the barracks. Soon a bus will pull in front of it with a fresh bunch of whiney baby aphids in need of training. It’s his job, and he does it the best he can.
