The robot tailor had finished his job. The red paper jacket shone bravely in the sun, the one-molecule-thick boots gleamed. “Fall in,” Bill shouted, and the recruit climbed over the wall.
“Billy, Billy …” the woman wailed, “this is your little brother Charlie! You wouldn’t take your own little brother into the troopers, would you?”
Bill thought about his mother, then he thought about his baby brother Charlie, then he thought of the one month that would be taken off of his enlistment time for every recruit he brought in, and he snapped his answer back ,instantly.
“Yes,” he said.
The music blared, the soldiers marched, the mother cried-as mothers have always done-and the brave little band tramped down the road and over the hill and out of sight into the sunset.