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seven-fifteen only. The floors were sticky with old food, and the plates so slick with grease that my eggs slid right off and onto the filthy parquet below. I held out my plate for more eggs, but the cook said, “Get out of my line and learn to get in present time,” and just like that, I wasn’t going to eat.
    Later, we met my mom at the recruitment office. The head of recruitment put down on the desk a white piece of paper with two sea horses flanking the words “Sea Organization Contract of Employment.”
    “You have to sign a contract to be here,” the officer said.
    I looked at the contract and was baffled. I was asked to pledge myself for an eternal commitment to the Sea Org for a billion years in order to bring ethics to the whole universe. In accordance with Scientology beliefs, members are expected to return to the Sea Org when they are reborn over time in multiple lives.
    “Mom, we’ve got to sign this?”
    “Yes, you have to sign it.”
    “Nic, are you going to be here in a billion years?”
    “Yeah,” she said. “Are you?”
    “Oh, definitely.”
    “What are you going to look like?”
    “Really fucking old.”
    We both started laughing, but Mom shot us a look. Then we both signed.
    Ironically, even though she was promised by the recruiters that she could become a member of the Sea Org, my mother, who at this time had been affiliated with the church, worked for it, and been on course for a few years, didn’t qualify for the organization, because she had done LSD over a decade ago.
    After we signed our billion-year contracts, Nicole and I were put on the EPF, or Estates Project Force, part of the basic Sea Org training for new recruits. It was a lot like boot camp. All EPFers spenttwelve hours a day doing hard labor, like pulling up tree roots with our bare hands, working heavy machinery on the grounds of the Fort Harrison and the Sandcastle, or cleaning bathrooms and hotel rooms. Then for two and a half hours each day, we would do the basic courses for the EPF, in which you learned the Sea Org policies and rules and what it meant to be a member. We were all given detailed check sheets, which listed all the actions we needed to take in order to complete each course. The first course being how to study Scientology.
    In studying the policies, we quickly learned that there is no middle ground or room for interpretation. Any question we asked was answered with “What does LRH say?” You couldn’t ask your supervisor for help, other than “Where can I find the policy that says what I do here?” If you disagreed with something, the supervisor would answer that with “Okay, well, let’s see what you don’t understand here.”
    Once, as a requirement during my coursework, my supervisor gestured toward a Demo Kit, one of which was located on every student’s study table. It was a little basket filled with everyday objects like paper clips and chess and checkers pieces.
    My supervisor told me to physically act out the sexual policy for Sea Org members with the objects in the kit, in a room filled with other trainees—some reading, others doing drills.
    “By using these things here, show me what the sexual policy is,” the supervisor said. Policy stated it was forbidden for Sea Org members to have sex or physical contact of any kind before marriage. So I took a paper clip and a chess piece, to stand for the girl and boy, and rubbed them together, saying, “This is not allowed.” Then I had the girl and boy touching each other side by side. “This is not allowed.” I put the girl and boy on opposite sides of the Demo Kit basket and said, “This is allowed.”
    The supervisor took my check sheet and signed it, so that I could move on to the next assignment.
    One day when I was working, Mike Curley, an older man whowas the head of the EPF, singled me out right away. He was tall and gaunt, reminding me of a cowboy from the movies.
    “You’re a little troublemaker, huh?” he said.
    “I don’t