first iteration
When Becker is ten, he goes through a dinosaur phase. It has a little to do with seeing Jurassic Park three times in the cinema and a lot to do with being ten.
He has the film poster on his wall and a well thumbed encyclopaedia of dinosaurs. He has about fifty small plastic dinosaur figurines designed for kids about half his age, sent as a birthday present from a kindly, if slightly misguided, unfavourite uncle (he'd smiled carefully on receipt of the present and didn't bother telling his uncle that mostly these dinosaurs would be parachuting out of the window attacking Action Man).
When Becker is eleven, he throws away the poster, lets his mother donate the encyclopaedia to a charity shop and the plastic dinosaurs are not biodegrading somewhere the other side of London. A large stargate adorns his wall and he draws up battle plans of when the world is inevitably invaded by aliens.
When Becker is twelve, he joins the cadets and the battle plans become ever more intricate. By the time he becomes a Cadet Corporal two years later, a series of bunkers interconnect through the British countryside and the South Downs is lost to a massive training ground. In the summer of that year, Becker starts giving serious thought to where the technology development centres ought to go.
He is fifteen before he kisses a girl and even then, it's just Tammy Hendall and she blushes red and doesn't speak to him for three days. He tries his hand at writing poetry for her, but when his little brother finds them, he punches Becker in the head and calls him a goit (Becker holds him by his ankles from the landing window and gets a hearty smack on the head from his mother; he gets some small satisfaction when she clips his brother around the ear and bans him from watching South Park on the living room television).
After that, everything's a rush of uniforms and guns and orders and running and training and Becker's very, very good at what he does. He sometimes thinks about the old plans he made, blueprints on graph paper languishing somewhere in someone else's attic, in a box marked with his name, with stains from an exploded bottle of Dr Pepper. Sometimes he let's his mother ruffle his hair and tell him to slow down, sweetheart, you've got a whole life to get where you're going, but then he turns eighteen and the world changes and he's caught up in it like she always knew he would be. And she's gone to foreign lands and her eldest son follows her soon after. When they get a chance to talk, they cobble together a pattern of the rest of the family back home, tailored from snippets and snatches of stories and tell each other that they'll be home soon.
She goes home before he does and he never sees her again.
And he's better than ever. He's young to be where he is, everyone tells him that, and sometimes he's a little confused by it, doesn't understand why other people couldn't just apply themselves like he's done. He takes the praise in his stride and walks tall, carrying himself with the ease of a man who knows exactly how much he's worth, and the value of everyone around him as well.
When he can't sleep, he manoeuvres units in his mind's eye, aiming towards the sky.
He has the film poster on his wall and a well thumbed encyclopaedia of dinosaurs. He has about fifty small plastic dinosaur figurines designed for kids about half his age, sent as a birthday present from a kindly, if slightly misguided, unfavourite uncle (he'd smiled carefully on receipt of the present and didn't bother telling his uncle that mostly these dinosaurs would be parachuting out of the window attacking Action Man).
When Becker is eleven, he throws away the poster, lets his mother donate the encyclopaedia to a charity shop and the plastic dinosaurs are not biodegrading somewhere the other side of London. A large stargate adorns his wall and he draws up battle plans of when the world is inevitably invaded by aliens.
When Becker is twelve, he joins the cadets and the battle plans become ever more intricate. By the time he becomes a Cadet Corporal two years later, a series of bunkers interconnect through the British countryside and the South Downs is lost to a massive training ground. In the summer of that year, Becker starts giving serious thought to where the technology development centres ought to go.
He is fifteen before he kisses a girl and even then, it's just Tammy Hendall and she blushes red and doesn't speak to him for three days. He tries his hand at writing poetry for her, but when his little brother finds them, he punches Becker in the head and calls him a goit (Becker holds him by his ankles from the landing window and gets a hearty smack on the head from his mother; he gets some small satisfaction when she clips his brother around the ear and bans him from watching South Park on the living room television).
After that, everything's a rush of uniforms and guns and orders and running and training and Becker's very, very good at what he does. He sometimes thinks about the old plans he made, blueprints on graph paper languishing somewhere in someone else's attic, in a box marked with his name, with stains from an exploded bottle of Dr Pepper. Sometimes he let's his mother ruffle his hair and tell him to slow down, sweetheart, you've got a whole life to get where you're going, but then he turns eighteen and the world changes and he's caught up in it like she always knew he would be. And she's gone to foreign lands and her eldest son follows her soon after. When they get a chance to talk, they cobble together a pattern of the rest of the family back home, tailored from snippets and snatches of stories and tell each other that they'll be home soon.
She goes home before he does and he never sees her again.
And he's better than ever. He's young to be where he is, everyone tells him that, and sometimes he's a little confused by it, doesn't understand why other people couldn't just apply themselves like he's done. He takes the praise in his stride and walks tall, carrying himself with the ease of a man who knows exactly how much he's worth, and the value of everyone around him as well.
When he can't sleep, he manoeuvres units in his mind's eye, aiming towards the sky.