blink.
i wake up a genetically engineered super soldier, my body strapped to my seat on the transport helicopter. next to me are my comrades, equally steel-faced; like me, they stare forward into the briefing screens, where an officer, our platoon commander, barks out the mission briefings.
there are 3 platoons of us, led by 3 officers who are fully human. with
blink.
flashback: not remembering anything before our “creation”. earliest memory of self already an adult soldier, undergoing grueling training by day, and by night, being strapped to chairs and forced to watch indoctrination videos of wars, death, destruction; of better ways to inflict pain, of battle strategies and hand-to-hand combat instructional videos. utilitarian brainwashing to ensure we become the deadliest, most efficient tools of destruction.
this goes on until we soldiers, who are less than human, without names nor histories to call our own, are ready for battle.
blink.
one night, something goes wrong with the videos. there is a mistake in the indoctrination video programme; instead of the usual videos of gore and suffering, someone puts in one that talks of religion, of philosophy, of Jesus and Plato and Buddha and everything in between. the soldier next to me, his usual emotionless, forward-looking stare unchanged, had tears running down his eyes. as i watch the videos and listen to the commentary, i begin to feel things i had never felt before, feelings i would later come to realize were “compassion”, “fear” and “sadness”, among others.
one of the platoon commanders, before long, realizes the mistake, and soon enough the videos are pulled, amidst a lot of yelling and confusion. the damage, however, had been done.
blink.
an old village in eastern europe, where we had descended upon with our assault rifles, our grenade launchers and our knives. it is raining. there is blood everywhere. mud everywhere.
the assault is long over; our orders were to kill everything in the village, due to the suspicion that enemy troops were hiding there and masquerading as villagers. the attack went well, meeting with little opposition, as hundreds of lives are snuffed out in a matter of minutes - not by bombs or firepower, but by the cold, brutal efficiency of my unit.
however, toward the end of the assault, several villagers had escaped and had fled toward a church, which they ran into and hid amongst the pews, the altar, wherever they could. our unit stormed the church and shot everything that moved. one last villager, a child, was cowering beneath a giant wooden crucifix, we perforated his body with bullets, sending a spray of blood onto the crucifix above.
blink.
outside the church, the platoon assembles, awaiting further orders from our superiors. we wait at attention in a parade formation; all but one of the soldiers, who lies on his side, clutching his hair, his eyes huge and stricken. he moans, again and again, to no one but everyone, “he so loved the world he gave his only begotten son… who did? WHO?” and we, his fellow soldiers, get increasingly distraught by this. not understanding where this… memory or this phrase had come from, but knowing nonetheless that it deeply moved us and disturbed us.
blink,
our platoon commanders arrive - two male and one female. they see that the madness among us has spread; by the time they arrive, several other soldiers had also succumbed, and were sprawled over the blood/mud floor of the village, mumbling unintelligibly of “truth” and “virtue” and “salvation”.
the platoon commanders, desperate to stop the spread of this madness among us, start firing upon the “lost” soldiers. they fire back, and after the ensuing crossfire, officers and “lost” soldiers have all fallen. a few soldiers, seemingly unaffected by the madness, continue to stand stoically and unmoving.
blink.
i wake up
