The Volunteers

In Mara's country, the word volunteer did not mean what the dictionary said.

The dictionary, technically, said that to volunteer meant to offer freely. The country said that to volunteer meant to fulfil the citizen's two-year State Service obligation between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. The official forms said Volunteer Application. The school assemblies were called Volunteer Awareness Days. The state had been calling it volunteering for thirty-eight years. It was, by now, what the word meant in Mara's country, regardless of what the dictionary said.

The Service was — depending on whom you asked — either an excellent civic institution or a quiet form of conscription with no opt-out. The official line was that it was fully voluntary in name and in spirit. The unofficial fact was that, if you did not volunteer, your university applications were declined, your employment record was permanently flagged, and certain types of housing were not available to you for the rest of your life. The mechanism was so polite, so well-mannered, that nobody had quite been able to point to a moment of coercion. There was always a smile. There was always a form to sign. There was always a we very much hope.

Mara's older brother Lukas had gone the previous summer.

He had been sixteen. He had wanted, originally, to go to university to study music. The Service had — the family had been told,very politely — strongly recommended that Lukas defer his studies for two years and complete his Service first. The polite recommendation had been on a card with the State seal at the top. It had been delivered to the house. The family had understood.

Lukas had gone in September of last year.

He had come back, on his three-week home leave at New Year, very thin and very quiet. He had told the family what he was allowed to tell them — which was almost nothing. He had hugged his mother for a long time on the first night. He had played one piece on the piano on the second night and stopped halfway through. He had spent most of the visit in his room reading old novels.

Mara was fifteen and a half. She had been watching her brother carefully.

She had also been watching the family next door — the Vogels — whose daughter had come back from her own Service the previous year and had refused to talk about any of it. The Vogels' daughter, Iris, was twenty now and had taken a job at the local farm rather than going to university. She had said, when asked: I do not want to do anything that requires me to fill in another form.

Mara had also been watching the news. The news, in her country, was — like the Service — polite. The news did not, ever, criticise the Service. It did, rarely, mention small reform groups. It mentioned them as fringe groups, well-meaning but impractical, who advocate for an alternative to the Service that has never been demonstrated to be feasible. Mara had, since Lukas's home leave, started — quietly — looking up these reform groups in the school library.

She had found a small pamphlet, printed on cheap paper, hidden inside a book on civics. The pamphlet was unsigned. It said:

The Service is not voluntary. The Service is — by international definition —