A difficult choice

It’s high time to pick up weapon in hand and go struggling for the righteous cause. It’s never late to do this, though. The most difficult thing is to choose the enemy.
For this case the following Algorithm is offered.
First, you come to the recruiting center. There you are given military uniform, some papers are filled in and that’s all - you become a soldier. Henceforth, the Algorithm supposes your unconditional subordination to the Commander.
But one shouldn’t think that the Commander doesn’t have any Algorithm of his. Going upwards through the military hierarchy, however, we face the highest rank – the Commander-in-Chief. Nevertheless, he also has his Algorithm, which begins by coming to the recruiting center, being given the uniform, waiting for the papers to be filled in and becoming a soldier. Henceforth, the Algorithm supposes your unconditional subordination to the Commander. But stop. What did we begin with? The most difficult thing is to choose the enemy.
As everybody knows, the army has a rigid structure, elaborated through many generations; and it dictates that the will of the superior rank officers must be carried out by their subordinates, so that the common battle efficiency would be at the maximum.
So, if you have become a soldier, it’s your Commander’s duty to give you the right to choose the enemy. But it can’t be carried out efficiently without a proper training.
At first, you are ordered to enjoy a peaceful life, on purpose that in the battle you would wish to finish it as fast as possible, and in such a way, you would mobilize all your efforts for its successful completion.
The peaceful life’s enjoyment must pass in barracks of red brick, with a minimum amount of windows and one watchtower.
At first they will lead you along some narrow dark corridors, then they will point to your place near the kitchen.
The kitchen must be even darker than the corridors and it also ought to be always extremely greasy.
A no less important feature of the kitchen is the absence of any cook within the presence of cooking ingredients; and moreover, it is strictly forbidden to use the kitchen on your own. All these things are introduced for a special reason: in the result, the soldier will have to associate his peaceful life with constant hardship, which, in its turn, shall bring him to dreaming of fight, which he will end as fast as possible.
So, when the novice begins to faint of hunger, he undergoes the next step of the Algorithm.
The Commander comes, gives a fatherly pat to the exhausted soldier on the shoulder and then offers him to satisfy his hunger with a bowl of gruel. The soldier gulps it down, and that’s all! He is ready for the last step of his training – the choice of the enemy. 
We have already mentioned that this step is the hardest. The Commander leads the soldier into a huge hall, its ceiling the height of a nine-storied building, and its width not less than three hundred meters. Unlike the barracks, it’s quite light because there are nine rows of same-sized windows all along the wall opposite the entrance. The windows open onto the balconies connected between themselves with ladders.
At first, the soldier, who has entered the hall, screws up his eyes, which lost habit of seeing light, but soon they accommodate. After this the Commander tells him: “Order to choose a window and get to the balcony through it”. The soldier answers: “Copy that!” – and he obeys. So, what makes the difficulty of this choice? The nub of the problem is in the fact that one can reach the balconies only through the lowest windows. Although one can climb the system of the ladders to get to the upper balconies, it’s absolutely unclear which of the windows is right. So, we can choose one of the lower windows at random. But what if none of the lower windows is right?
Then the soldier dares ask his Commander about what will happen if he chooses a wrong window. The Commander will only repeat his order in a more stern voice, pointing out that the soldier hasn't been invited to ask anything.
After being confused for long, the soldier chooses one of the lower windows. He gets through it to the balcony, then looks back and sees that the Commander is not in the hall anymore. The soldier tries to go back to the barracks, but he finds out that the door of the hall is locked from the outside. Then he decides to go out to the balcony again and begins looking for the exit.
It’s worthless to jump out of the balcony, since the military base is surrounded by a thick fence with dense barbed wire, which stands very close to the system of balconies; and the fence’s height makes about the third floor’s one.
But the soldier hopes to find the possible exit inside the system of the balconies, whatever it takes. Thus, he climbs to the top, but there is still no precious exit. Then he goes down in hope to see the Commander, but he is still absent. He searches for the exit during the whole day, and when the forces, which the soldier got from one bowl of gruel, begin fading away, he leans on the railing and, in a choking voice, starts to call for help. But his voice is so weak that nobody can hear him.
Anyway, he remembers the aim of his ordeal – to choose the enemy.
Then, the last forces gathered, he slowly climbs as high as he can and – jumps over the railing of the balcony. If he doesn’t climb high enough, he slowly dies of blood loss on the barbed wire. If he climbs high enough to get over the barbed wire, he falls on the ground out of the fence, but he breaks his bones after jumping from the height of the fourth floor and, unable to move, dies of pain and hunger. If he manages to climb higher than the fifth floor but can’t reach the eighth one, at first, he gets onto the barbed wire, then he bounces off it and gets into a worse trouble. And if he turns out to be the staunchest and jumps out of the eighth or ninth floor, the curve of his fall ends on the ground out of the fence, but anyway, it means death.
There is another option: not to climb and not to jump out.
So, if 48 hours later the Commander finds the soldier inside the hall, the examination is considered to be passed successfully. The soldier is provided all medical assistance and offered a rehabilitation course. Now he is an officer.
But what will be after that? Whatever! But from now he doesn’t have to pass the examination with the windows and balconies. He has a right to leave the base, he has a right to enjoy the good of life, and maybe, he won’t die ever.

Nebelschwimmer, June 2012.