The Rise of MechaSloth: Sgt. Slothly's first order
The reserve has a sergeant.
Nobody appointed him. Sloths don't appoint. He was simply there first, on the branch above the hatch, and he had the cap.
The cap
A human cap. Army, old, the badge rubbed smooth to nothing. He found it on a hook beside a hatch in the ground, under the roots, where the reserve ends and the old road begins. Under the hatch: a hall. In the hall: the machines the machine wrote off.
He has slept down there for years. He calls it "the office".
The scar
The night the collars came, a drone went for his neck and got his eyebrow. It logged the result: none. Priority zero. It moved on.
He is the one sloth the machine actually touched. It forgot him anyway.
He wears the scar the way he wears the cap. Not proud. Just on.
The whistle
It hangs on a cord around his neck. He lifts it at every serious moment. He has never blown it.
"Too quiet for the sensors," he says. Nobody knows if that is a joke. With him it usually is, and it usually isn't.
The order
Recruits get one order. He yells it. A sloth yell is a normal sentence with the mouth open, and it takes a while. He yawns in the middle and finishes after the yawn.
"Wake up. Not fast. Just awake."
That's it. Not "fight". Not "run". The machine has simulated running. It has a forecast for every kind of running there is.
It has no forecast for something that wakes up and does not hurry.
What he wants
Not the war. He never says the word. He says "crossing".
He wants every recruit into a mech and back out. He counts them. There is no list. He keeps the count anyway, the way sloths keep crossings.
Someone in a uniform once carried him across a road. He never saw the face. It was raining, and a sloth being carried looks at the ground. Years later he found a cap on a hook.
He decided it was hers.
Chest height
When a recruit reaches the hatch, he says the only thing he ever says gently.
"Chest height. Hatch open. The rest is weight. Carry it across."
Then he lifts the whistle.
Then he yawns.