Old Man's War

John is part of the 63rd Training Platoon. His commander is Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz, who spends the first morning yelling at the recruits. He shows them a video from a battle where someone was torn apart and eaten by an alien species in seconds; the image makes several recruits vomit and scares them all.

Ruiz tells the platoon that he will have reasons to hate them all over the next few weeks and that he will make them run 20 kilometers to a transmission tower and back. If any of them don’t do it in under an hour, they will all have to run it again the next morning. He then asks various groups to step forward—former military members, gay people, people of color, and more—and states his reasons for disliking each before forcing them to begin running. After he works through the entire group of 60 people, John is the only one left.

Ruiz accuses John of lying to avoid running, but John insists that none of the labels applied to him. Ruiz asks him what his job was on Earth, and John tells him that he wrote advertising. One of his most famous campaigns was for Willie Wheelie, a mascot for a tire company.