So in the sixties, my parents decided to leave Korea for the bright, beautiful shores of America. Financially speaking… it was a wonderful choice. Their already copious pockets got deeper over here through the years. But other than that, I gather it sucked balls. It was the sixties. There was racism in every damn place. They could speak English, but with these thick accents that made them difficult to understand. And I was, very literally, born in adversity. The hospital near to their house refused to let my mother in despite the fact that she was in labor at the time. This was just mere months before Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by the way. Anyway. So I was born in a cab on the way to a different hospital. Apparently, she was pissed off about having to go to Chinatown.
So I grew up in New York City through the tumultuous time of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, disco. The 80's. I was a non-traditional girl in a very traditional Korean household. I was tomboyish and rude and liked to hang out with the kids the rest of society thought were weird. That whole… men created equal thing really stuck with me, I guess. My saving grace, according to my father, was that I was smart. I did well in school, I worked hard. Outside of school, though, I was pretty much a little punk. I would fight a lot with my folks… mostly about my friends. We used to hang around smoking cigarettes on the street corner, or my drag queen friends would try to teach me about make up, or my boyfriend and I would be stealing stupid shit from the little shops around. Just wasting time, basically.
I got out of high school at sixteen. I know, I was just so brilliant. It wasn't brilliance, though, really. It was determination. I did not want to be in my parents' house a minute longer than I had to. So I got out. I went to college. I decided to go into law, which was… dry as hell, but the application of such was amazing, I thought. It wasn't something I really wanted to do, but it was something I wanted to learn. Which is how, seven years later (including one really terrible year. But I don't talk about my first year at law school. Let's just say, it cut my partying completely out. Talk about shameful!), I walked out of Berkeley with a law degree. I even passed the bar. And I found out, my mother and I had a far better relationship when there were miles and miiiiles between us. My father, well, I didn't know just how many miles we would need just yet.
Of course… neither of them understood my wanting to join the military. And really… I don't know, either. I just knew I wanted to do something with myself that mattered. And I probably could have done that through law, but really… I was burnt the fuck out on the whole law profession by the time I got out of school. It was the last thing I wanted to do with my life. So. I joined the Army. And it was a paperwork snafu that landed me in the MPs, but it was one I never corrected. I liked it there. At the beginning, there at the tail end of the Cold War and into the operations of the early Nineties, I didn't see much in the way of combat. Because I was a giiiirl. It was one of the challenges I faced in the service. Sexism, racism. I had commanding officers offering me promotions if I'd sleep with them. (No, I didn't agree.) I had people patting me on the head and telling me I wasn't fit for combat. Nevermind that I was good with a gun as well as hand to hand. Because lord knows, to be seen as an equal as a woman, you had to be better. And that was my goal. It paid off. I did get promotions and even some pretty ribbons to put on my uniform, oh my god you guys! No, seriously. You have no idea.
Anyways, so I did well, but didn't really see any action. Until.
On September 11th, 2001, I was on leave, visiting my family. Lots of us were there, aunts and cousins and so forth. It was supposed to be this big reunion week. I had reached Captain by then. Captain was a respectable enough rank for my father to actually stop feeling embarrassed. For my mother, it was this crazy thing, a woman being able to get that far. And an Asian woman, no less. It was a big deal for her. When she was my age… it would have been unheard of.
Of course, she knew and I knew that when those planes hit the Twin Towers, that I'd be going back to war. So I spent my leave volunteering to help out wherever I could. It was only a few days, but god, those were life altering days. I remember one day I was sitting with a group of kids whose fathers were part of the fire department, who were waiting on news if their fathers were going to be coming home. And one of the girls there, maybe thirteen or fourteen, she looked at the other kids and she said… no matter what they do to us, I refuse to feel afraid.
Now, I don't know what that girl had been doing a week before. Maybe she was always sort of a gung-ho freedom fighter, who knows. But if she was like most young teens… she was worrying about how she got that terrible teacher for math this year and does that boy like her and what will she wear to the first school dance.
That's the kind of life altering I mean.
So, when we all were eventually called back into active duty, I didn't let them stick me in some cushy post, hell naw, ladies and gentlemen. And since I actually had a bit of clout and some friends in the right places… they listened to me. I was put in charge of one hundred and fifty soldiers. Men and women. The rest of the base called us the Pink Commandos. One night my officers got me drunk and we all woke up the next day with these tattoos. There was a lot of pride over the nickname, no matter how it was meant when it was given to us. We had a few duties outside of general policing things. The worst was probably route reconnaissance.
Route reconnaissance probably sounds really boring to the folks at home. And at home, it would be. I mean… it's what Mapquest does. We were sometimes a bit like Mapquest. Only, we when we were finding the quickest route for the troops to take from place to place? We were trying to avoid bombs, not toll roads. I was leading this group of kids, basically, at the time, who were all trying so hard not to look as scared as they felt. I found that sometimes, my being a little outrageous helped put them at ease. Telling stupid jokes over the sound of tires ripping up the desert, passing out beers when we completed a dangerous mission, shouting obscenities whenever I had reason to fire a weapon. It gave them an example, a way to get rid of all that pent up tension without crying or something embarrassing like that. Better to be outrageous.
It also made them very aware of my moods. When I was serious, they knew shit just got real. They knew to shut the fuck up when I told them to shut the fuck up. It was on such a day, traveling through some dangerous territory when everything went to shit. I was in the lead vehicle, because I didn't believe in putting the kids in front like a shield. I didn't believe in commanding from the rear. Which is probably why I ended up with a lot more commendations over my tours there.
And scars.
Badass scars, though.
Both me and my driver knew the moment we drove over that detonator, and he floored it to try to get away from the blast, while I shouted some warning over the radio… not that there was really time for the warning. The explosion caught our rear end, sending us tumbling through the pass like a grade school gymnast. Later we'd learn there was a string of explosions that took out the whole of the team I'd taken out that day. Except me and my driver.
Now, we really should have been dead. Blown up and tossed around the desert… Our jeep was certainly trashed, but when we finally settled and the explosions stopped, I was fine. My driver was fine. I remember thinking there was something wrong with my vision, I was seeing this weird oil-on-water effect in the air. But when I reached out to touch it… it was hard, firm, like a wall. And it was freezing to the touch. I looked over at my driver, because I knew that wasn't coming from me. Wasn't some new feature on the jeeps.
And back then, we didn't know what Evolved were. It was years before the President cleared things up and I didn't have a clue what a forcefield was. And this boy next to me… maybe eighteen, nineteen years old… he looked back at me like he wasn't sure if I was about to kick his ass or not, and truth be told… I didn't know, either. But for the moment, getting out of there was the top priority.
The what the fuck did you do conversation came once we were out of enemy territory, but before we got back to base. And he explained that a few months before… he'd just started being able to do things. I agreed to help keep it a secret, he was so afraid of what people would think of him if they knew. Prejudice was something I understood.
He was right to be afraid.
It was toward the end of that particular tour, other people had started finding out. It was hard to hide when he'd pop his fields every time there was any excitement. War was hardly the place to learn to control something like that. Anyway… eventually the wrong people found out and started to blame him whenever anything went wrong. Whenever anyone got hurt. And then… one of my boys died. And his friends dragged this poor kid out of his bunk and beat him to death. For being what he was. Because of some idea that he was responsible for everything. That it was his fault for not stopping it. They pinned a note to his chest with some of the same derogatory bullshit people have always shouted when they don't like something different.
I've lost people under me before, but that one stuck with me for a long time. His name was Mark Sanchez.
It was when I was writing the letter to his parents… trying to find a way to explain why their son died and explain what an impact he'd made on me personally that I decided to move to the JAG corps. Because damnit, I wanted to see justice happen for Sanchez. And for others like him. Not just Evolved, but the kids getting picked on and wronged because they're different. I may have a soft spot.
Anyways, I won't bore you with the red tape that is changing one's MOS. It's a bitch, seriously. But it eventually happened in 2005. I had a good handle on military law, the whole UCMJ jazz and was a stickler for procedure. I never really thought to use my law degree, but hey. Might as well let it come in handy. I did a lot of investigating during those years, as well as some trial work. I got smacked upside the head by a superior officer when I quoted A Few Good Men the first time I stepped into a court room. (He was, after all a Navy lawyer.) I was pretty good. It wasn't a perfect record, but it was still impressive.
Just before November 2006, I was stationed at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. I had been so happy to get that assignment, back in my home town, back near family, and two months after I got there… the Midtown Man happened. (I'm starting to think I just shouldn't come home anymore, am I right?) You know, I'd become a sort of underground contact for Evolved in the service, someone they knew they could come to for help, or just to talk. And I knew, I just knew it in my gut that it wasn't a bomb, but a person when it first happened. Sometimes, you just get a feeling. It was a sinking feeling. Dread. What a way for the world to find out. Through another tragedy rocking an already wounded New York City. The following year, when the announcement went out… I was ready for the insanity. I'd seen it on a smaller scale, but it was no challenge to see how things were going to go. I handled a lot of cases of military personnel from various branches who decided to be totally batshit in those years following the bomb. People who decided we were at war and Evolved were the enemy and Evolved that decided blowing up shit was awesome and they should do a little more of it… it was a bad time. And being in the law field, god, you just saw the worst of people. It wasn't just in the service. Following the bomb… it was like the whole city just lost it.
I got my promotion to Major during all that mess. Personally, I think it was because right now, seeming tolerant of racial and gender matters is a big deal and maybe a little because I was running at the forefront of this Evolved madness and needed the boost to do the job no one else wanted to do. (I note, still I got called things like 'Major Rack' instead of Major Pak around the base, though.) So, anyway. I did a lot of work surrounding the Evolved and their reveal and the madness after. It became a more publicly known (at least, within the military) that I had been a sort of go-to for the Evolved in the service before. It pissed some people off. It made others look at me a little closer.
So in 2008, I had done twenty years. I was proud of those years, fighting for my country and the work I did… but I was done. Time to move on. I took my honorable discharge and my fairly good reputation and hopped, skipped, and jumped right out of there. On to new pastures! Sort of.
I didn't really have to work by then, but not working drove me a little crazy. So. I did a lot of work in the Civil Rights field, which sort of made me feel like my life had come full circle from way back in the sixties. But that's what I did. Raising awareness, lobbying, propaganda, etc. I did still work for the military as a civilian, serving as a legal consultant with the JAG still. People still called me Major.
Of course, I have to address the issue of Raymond Praeger. Who was sort of the 'everything I want to do' guy. He was doing it already. And looking good doing it, I must say. So, yeah man. I wanted to work with him, you have no idea. I mean, I was getting shit done, but that guy… was getting shit done, you know what I'm saying? Of course you do, you read the news. Don't you?
Anyways, so working with the Department of Evolved Affairs was pretty much a dream job for me. In the thick of my very favorite issue. And what an issue it is. They assigned me as a liaison between us and DHS. It's sort of like how the Marines use the Navy's medics because they don't have their own? Except the opposite. We use their dogs because we don't have enforcers. So I sift information and reports that come in, and call in the DHS dogs when they're needed. I don't think anyone would be surprised to find out how often I have to go talk to those guys.
I was in D.C. over the run of the Great Storm, but I came back to NYC as soon as it cleared to deal with the fallout. Fallout is always such a headache. Unless we're talkign about the video game, that's not so much. But, anyway! The fallout was just in time for the visions that hit everyone that summer. Mine involved me watching fires and riots from a window in some skyscraper. And damnit if that isn't just what happened. Thankfully, the damage was a lot less than I'd seen in that first glimpse… but it was all bad enough. And this time I was drinking a Captain and Coke. I mean… shit, who didn't need a drink that day? Whoever that is is a far stronger person than I.
I'm sad to say I wasn't moved terribly by it all. But then, I lived through this all those years ago, after Midtown blew. It never fails, when disaster hits, we tend to see the best and worst extremes from people. This time, though, I'm not sure we saw the best of anybody. And if we don't come up with some viable, long-term solution? Things are going to get so, so ugly. Uglier than they already are. It's getting difficult to pitch a calm solution. It seems like everyday, we're getting reports of some terrorist organization or another. Messiah, Ferrymen… I sympathize with their positions, I really do… but it isn't how we do things in this country. Sometimes I wish the SLC-Expressives would calm the fuck down and let us try to help. I don't know how to explain to them that what they see as freedom fighting is really just plain terrorism.
Maybe I should work that into my next speech.
