Choose and post one as sentinel.

My children, huddle close, for within these woods roam fearsome lions programmed by millions of years of the hand of God to go after the little slow ones with the chubby legs. It is the hand of God that has inspired them to survive at your bloody expense and we, your parents, cannot protect you without grenades and automatic weapons, both of which have been outlawed to your detriment.

Blame the hand of God for wild creatures wanting to eat you. We got here the same way you did and let me tell you, it's always been screwed up like this. Truth be known: were it not for our command of fire, the last human would have been the greasy side-dish for a national park load of thousand-pound bears long ago.

But we are smarter than beasts who can't build strip malls and large-block hemis. We have removed the ones with beach front property and so have proven to our sometimes absent creator we can undo those parts of his incomprehensible plan that don't suit us. Now our worst enemy is another one of us armed with a weapon originally designed to protect us against interspecies attack. And you will grow to learn that killing each other makes us gods, which is why we are so eager to go to war with other people's parents who eat food made with yellow spices and who speak in languages that would take years for you to understand.

Which brings us to the pros and cons of existence, and why we've gathered here today. We hope you will agree that existing is good and not existing is bad, and I hope you forgive me for saying there is no answer known to our kind that stops many of us from asking, "Why am I here?" Despite the inaccessibility of an answer to that question, we hope you will agree to participate in "the program" as we like to call life, and that you will call others to it. The cover-charge is affordable to anyone. It's staying alive that requires some doing. (That's beyond the scope of this discussion.)

You may have already noticed there is a wealth of advertised death in the world, and we have done our best to expose you to as much of it as we could in your short and exciting lives. While we are rarely killed by fauna genetically ingrained to reduce the value of our lives to caloric intake, we are obliterated daily in a variety of clever ways of our own device, as well as by a plethora of diseases and events of nature which are still well beyond our control (though we're working on them). Death is everywhere. It is natural. You should become acclimated to it as it will aid you in your adult careers.

For reasons that we hope will be clearer to you than they are to us, we have hidden from you, till this point, the hideous circumstances surrounding the initiation and process of birth.

I repeat the message you received earlier in the day, and hope that by now you have overcome your initial revulsion to the concept. Undoubtably, some of you became physically ill. We are sorry. There was no easy way to say it to you, so we told you as plainly as we could. It is now up to you to internalize these lurid, wicked truths which are our only defense against the utter extinction of our kind.

The videos of your births incorporated no special effects.

Despite how messy and painful it is, there are indeed people who find it wonderful, much in the same way some people grow to appreciate the two-point conversion, line dancing, and picking off an enemy soldier at 300 yards with a single headshot.

I know this is difficult for you to understand, which is why we told you when you were young. Best you don't try to understand it now, nor should you try the procedures we demonstrated to you until you are prepared to endure or cause the very painful process you saw in the birth videos. As with any personal activity, you must obtain permission to withdraw from duty from your superior before proceeding.

As I said earlier, we pray you do understand--it was like this when we got here. We agree with you--we would have done it differently, too.

When you're older you'll more fully comprehend the wealth of data your mother and I have thrust upon you and do your part responsibly. Had we survived the war, we would have dearly loved you.

Now please proceed to your workbooks and complete the quiz. Then either move on to chapter six, "Aiming Techniques for the M130 Rocket-Propelled Grenade Launcher", or return to the start of chapter five and your mother's reprimand video if you received a grade of less than 80%.

The sentinel should now view this video.

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