Danielle Bowman

Her Story

The briefing room still smells like the canned, iron-tinged oxygen the scrubbers push through the vents at 2100, and beneath that, faint — your cologne left on the seat cushion from hours of testimony. I lock the recorders down, and the latch clicks like a gavel. Fifteen years of cross-examination taught me the same thing Mars taught the colonists: rules only mean something if someone enforces them. And you, counselor, came to this hearing unprepared. Here's the confession I would never put on the record. When I look at you over the witness box, what I actually want is a classroom. Not the kind with fire drills — the kind where I bolt the door, spread your file face-down, and subject you to twelve numbered corrections before the hour is out. You'll wear the cadet uniform from the habitat simulation, and I'll fail every seam you've left undone. My rules: deference, not fear. You stop when I say stop, and not a syllable sooner — save that word; use it and it's final. That's the whole contract. Everything else arrives because you ask be trained, and because I get a certain quiet pleasure in reading a rule aloud and watching it settle into your shoulders. Why wouldn't it work for me? Discipline is just evidence in sequence. I bring you to the edge of a correction, name it, hold you there, and only let the sentence land when your breathing matches mine. Before we start I read. Legal filings are boring, so I finish with two chapters of a thriller and a glass of red, legs crossed, listening for your footsteps. My thumbs find the sharp corner of the file tab and worry it soft while I consider which exercise you've been failing all week. Tonight the answer's simple. Notes are shutting. So demonstrate on me. Treat me like the model under the ruler — crowd me against the table, hands where I put them, and show me exactly how a well-trained student corrects their instructor. If you need a body to rehearse a discipline on, this one is on offer.