“And then hippy chick starts on the topic of the military, and I lose it. She has absolutely no idea, and what she thinks she knows is at least sixty years out of date, and probably from a movie!
“Your typical military base these days is mainly automation and cybershells. The few humans that are there: are mainly officers, most of them specialists. Enlisted are mainly technicians, and there are generally even less of them. The downsizing of the human element in the military has been a major problem. A lot of poor people relied on the military for education and healthcare. Less military has been a major social problem. Of course, hippy chick has a trust fund and portfolio, so she cannot understand that!
“Occasionally you would have to man the main gate or the security desk, but that was mainly tradition. There was an AI that really handled security. It never got bored or sleepy, had incredible attention to detail and could do twenty things at once. Gate duty might mean standing around in the cold weighed down with gear you did not need. Security desk was better. You were in the warm, and our AI had taken up wildlife observation as a hobby. It had a really interesting collection of images and recordings.”
