Page 1548 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"Like a really dumbed-down Battle School. We put up with it for a long time till Fly Molo finally gave up and when one of the teachers was quoting one of Von Clausewitz's stupider generalizations, Fly continued the quotation, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, and the rest of us joined in as best we could -- I mean, nobody has a memory like Fly, but we do OK -- and they finally got the idea that we could teach the stupid classes to them. So now it's just ... war games."
"Again? You think they're going to spring it on us later that the games are real?"
"No, this is just planning stuff. Strategy for a war between Russia and Turkmenistan. Russia and an alliance between Turkmenistan, Kasakhstan,, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. War with the United States and Canada. War with the old NATO alliance except Germany. War with Germany. On and on. China. India. Really stupid stuff, too, like between Brazil and Peru, which makes no sense but maybe they were testing our compliance or something."
"All this in five weeks?"
"Three weeks of kuso classes, and then two weeks of war games. When we finish our plan, see, they run it on the computer to show us how it went. Someday they're going to catch on that the only way to do this that isn't a waste of time is to have one of us making the plan for the opponent as well."
"My guess is you just told them."
"I've told them before but they're hard to persuade. Typical military types. Makes you understand why the whole concept of Battle School was developed in the first place. If the war had been up to adults, there'd be Buggers at every breakfast table in the world by now."
"But they are listening?"
"I think they record it all and play it back at slow speeds to see if we're passing messages subvocally."
Petra smiled.
"So why did you finally decide to cooperate?" he asked.
She shrugged. "I don't think I decided."
"Hey, they don't pull you out of the room until you express really sincere interest in being a good, compliant little kid."
She shook her head. "I don't think I did that."
"Yeah, well, whatever you did, you were the last of Ender's jeesh to break, kid."