dawn drills: the bucket waits at the finish line

The Star Drill's terminal fixture says everything about what the regimen expects of a body: at the finish point of the timed sprint-maze stands "a janitorial bucket... placed in the doubles alley... for potential distress." The retch-bucket is standard equipment, pre-positioned, part of the drill's furniture like the stopwatch and the taped squares. And the using of it is routine, "pro forma" — everybody but the two most machine-like bodies pukes, matter-of-factly, on schedule. The bucket is not a mercy the academy provides; it's an appliance the academy plans around.