The Augmented Man: (A Military Psychological Thriller) by Joseph Carrabis

Author:Joseph Carrabis [Carrabis, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sixth Element Publishing
Published: 2021-03-11T22:00:00+00:00

6 Days

“Tell me about us, Jim. You didn’t want to help us–” Donaldson looked up and Nick smiled, “–at least not then. What were you trying to do with us? Were we some kind of experiment or did you have something in mind?”

“Oh, we had something in mind. Laqueur wrote ‘The only promising way to improve intelligence performance is to select recruits who have at least some of the faculties needed, and then give them a good training’ in the mid-1980s. He was right as far as he went with it.

“There were lots of key characteristics in the recruitment protocol. Fear and distrust were near top of the list and always come together, never singly. Or rarely. Anyway, we wanted to foster that fear and distrust.

“Some people who survive your background develop various schizotypal states as part of their survival mechanism. We wanted to trigger you people into a perpetual schizo-affective state, to instill a controllable social psychopathism in all of you. That’s why we fed you Naltrexone during training. It made you desperate for the traumatic bonding that went on in your homes. Most of you had already learned to ignore massive physical insult. All we needed to do was finish the job.

“We gave you permission to live out your wildest childhood revenge fantasies. Do you remember we had you read about Amin, Gaddafi, Pol Pot? Hell, we had records about sadistic motherfuckers as far back as Caligula, King Herod, and the Caesars. We showed you videos of Hitler, Baby Doc, Shwe… it’s amazing what these men knew.

“And we showed them to you like they were home movies. Hell, to you Augments, they were.”

Trailer’s eyes closed. “Yes, they were.”

“We said, ‘Here’s your blueprint. Here’s your template. See if you can do better,’ because we knew you couldn’t experience guilt about your missions because you were already driven by the primary belief that you were guilty, period. You didn’t think humans were going on your missions, you thought monsters were, and monsters never have remorse or seek forgiveness for what they do, so we were covered, we were good. We selected you because you thought you were morally wrong before we ever got to you.”

Donaldson wiped his mouth, finished explaining. He got up and took the towel into the lav. “But any functional society’s role is to protect, not to exploit.” He ran water. There were splashing sounds.

Trailer called after him, “That part about schizotypal states. That’s like hearing voices? Stuff like that?”

Donaldson, wiping his face with a clean towel, stood in the lav door. “Why do you ask that?”

“There was a time I thought I could read minds.” Trailer waited for the reaction, waiting for the parental dismissal. “I guess that was just some of the schizophrenia, huh? Just paying so much attention to everybody else I thought I could read their minds?”

“I don’t know, Nick. It’s not uncommon, though. People subjected to what you went through as a kid. It’s called Forced Adaptation, an aspect of Theory of Mind.

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