by Jack L Knapp
I've thought about it, suicide; we all do. But my death wouldn't bring any of them back. Maybe it wouldn't even work. I couldn't poison myself because one of my abilities protects me from toxins, and I probably couldn't even shoot myself because the bubble would form in time to protect me. Stupid goddamned subconscious.
There’s no answer to the depression; just...live through the misery.
Survivor’s guilt, it’s called. It's part of the PTSD, but having a name for it doesn’t help.
Occasionally I saw civilians in my dreams, innocents in the process of being blown up by suicide bombers and IED’s. I couldn’t stop those either. A fellow believer had decided an all-powerful God needed help from his locked explosive vest. I’d been in one of the armored HMMVW’s once when that happened. The reddish droplets spattered the side of the truck, all that was left of that suicider. I glanced at the spots when I got out of the vehicle, wiped my finger through the haze on the thick window. It smeared, and no matter how I wiped, the stain stuck to my finger.
The vests are locked because sometimes the martyr decides he’s not yet ready after all. Fortunately, the thoughtful jihadists always provide a remote trigger. All they need do is punch in a number on a cell phone and boom; tell Allah I sent you.
The world contains a lot of evil. In this rockpile, what the troops call the suck when they're outside the wire, evil has spawned and multiplied.
Little girls get shot to death, sometimes they get blown up; that’s not my idea of the road to Paradise. Not paradise for the children either, not that the Mullahs cared.
Girls don’t matter to the true-believers. That’s the major difference between them and us as far as I'm concerned, that and which corrupt politician rules. If, when, the Taliban regain power, the barbaric practices will be reinstated. At least, while we’re here, women aren’t being stoned to death.
Other abuses still happen, even if less often; young girls still get shot for going to school. Madness, pure madness. It’s insanity codified.
I’d thought that I, we, might change things. It hadn’t been a well-formed thought, just a vague feeling that there must be a reason for being here. But the Taliban are mostly gone now, hiding in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan, yet we’re still here. Nothing had changed; I soon came to understand that nothing would change.
New soldiers arrive, some go home, some get shipped home in a metal box.
But not me. I’m still here.
#
I untangled myself from the sheets and dressed. The room smelled of fear, despair, helplessness, sweat; I needed to get out.
There was only one place I could go. I wouldn't be exactly welcome there, but maybe no one would be around to complain; anyway, what were they going to do, send me to Afghanistan?
I almost felt like chuckling.
The craziness bubbled there, just beneath my consciousness. I almost embraced it. Almost, but not yet, not this time; still, I'd have another opportunity later, many opportunities. All I would need to do is sink into that enticing place where reality went away, where I could laugh at the things that haunted me, never grieve at all for the humanity I'd lost over here.
Madness, PTSD, how different are they, really?
The mad ones find a way of coping, they seldom take their own lives.
For the sane ones, the soldiers with PTSD, it happens all too often. Think about it; you guarantee your sanity by killing yourself. Even in sanity, there’s madness.
The casualties continue, even after the Americans have gone home.
This war, like all the others, won't end when the shooting stops.
Chapter Two
It was called, informally, the Colonel's Club. I doubt it had a real name.
I'd been there before, but only during the early-morning hours before the sun came up. This time the nightmare woke me early. The club was only a few hundred meters away, over near the admin headquarters, and besides, I had no place else to go and I needed to get out of my CHU.
There was an opened bottle of good single-malt scotch on the table in back. I put money in the kitty, dropped a couple of ice cubes in a glass, poured, then sat down at an empty table near the back.
A few officers were sitting near the door, others might come into the Club while I was there, but they wouldn't sit at my table. For that matter, they would probably change tables, move away from the one I chose. The patrons were almost always field-grade officers and none of them were interested in chatting with a lowly warrant.
I was an outcast, even here. I’d also been a disappointment at the School; they wanted communicators who couldn’t be intercepted, they got me.
#
I completed the course, after a fashion; I had a small amount of the Talent they were trying to develop, telepathy, called TP by us, but it never got past the rudimentary stage. Meanwhile, I had gained a different ability, psychokinetics.
The administration kept waiting for my TP to get stronger, but that never happened so finally they gave up. They dismissed me from the course as a 'graduate', then tried to find someplace I could be useful.
"What to do with him; all that money, wasted. He surely must be good for something, mustn’t he?"
The School's administrators sent me to the Army; they thought my PK might be useful in combat. If I worked out, the School could start a branch to develop PK’s deliberately instead of by accident, and even if I failed the data would be useful. The Army, or at least an officer of that service who was senior enough to decide, agreed to use me as a tactical-intelligence technician.
#
The School had final instructions for me and I was still naive enough to go along with them. Hadn't they developed this marvelous Talent for me? I listened, and agreed.
"Keep your abilities secret, we don’t want other nations to find out what we’re doing."
That was understandable. It probably wouldn't be all that difficult, considering the poor strength of my Talent.
A TP, telepath, can hide his abilities, but a PK will sooner or later be noticed. As soon as the secret gets out, rival nations will then try to develop their own School, maybe even come up with an improved version of our methods once they realize it’s possible. Meanwhile, the technique the School used was still new, and who could tell what might eventually come of it?
Secrecy buys time; I could understand why they wanted my ability to remain undiscovered, so I readily agreed to what they asked.
"Besides, PK’s can’t lift very much and they don’t have good control, either; it’s really only a minor talent, not very useful, but maybe you can help soldiers. The Army wants you, my boy. Make us proud; go be all that you can be."
So I went.
My first stop found me enrolled in the Infantry School for a concentrated course in patrolling, infantry operations, and intelligence gathering; that was all the preparation I was expected to need.
"It’s as much as we give new recruits to the agency, right? It should be enough." Or so their thinking went.
I wore no insignia and no name-tag while going through the course, just nondescript BDU’s; I was a class of one.
"What to do with him after he completes the course? Let’s make him a chief warrant officer, senior enough to be left alone, junior enough not to be noticed."
Such was the agency's thinking. I’m sure someone thought it was funny, combat wizardry officer, the code name the agency assigned me, or chief warrant officer, CWO. Yes indeed, funny.
"Report to the personnel office after finishing the course, Chief. You'll need to swear the oath of appointment and sign the forms they'll give you, then just pin the bars on and get ready to catch the first available plane to Afghanistan. One of the forms is a non-disclosure form; you know all about those, right?"
I agreed that I knew about them.
An almost-instant CWO; the Army routinely makes instant warrants, commissioned officers too for that matter, I was just one more. But it would take time for the necessary records to be completed,
waivers to be granted where necessary (there are rules regarding who can be appointed, and to what duties) and a 201 personnel file created. A slot on a transport plane would also need to be found.
But the Army finds work for idle hands. Someone suggested I attend jump school while I was waiting for the paperwork and the necessary movement orders cut.
Airborne School normally takes three weeks, but I would need to leave on PCS, permanent change of station, before that. Perhaps, if I formed another class of one, the Airborne School could accelerate my training as the Infantry School had done? They thought they could, and I accepted.
I was still horribly naive, but accepting the assignment turned out lucky; I discovered the most useful Talent of all during the night jump. I discovered the bubble, my personal protective field, a side effect of my TP. Sheer fucking terror makes you do things you never knew you could.
Three days of lectures, nearly endless conditioning drills to develop my upper body strength (they had almost no effect on me because of my PK ability, but I was in good physical shape anyway), then jump from a mockup of an airplane fuselage and land in a sand pit.
More classes followed that and the next afternoon I dropped from the 250-foot free tower. My parachute landing fall was sloppy, but then no one expected me to be a parachutist so the landing was considered acceptable. The Airborne School knew I was some sort of spook, just not exactly what kind; still, they'd seen all sorts come through and I was nothing special in their eyes.
"That's good enough, Chief; you probably won't kill yourself when you land. Anyway, you’ll jump from a C-130 tomorrow morning, then a Chinook helicopter in the afternoon. You'll have another jump from the C-130 Friday morning, a fourth jump Friday morning, followed by a night jump Friday night. All you'll need to do after that is settle your personal affairs and catch the flight to be-yootiful scenic Afghanistan on Monday. Jumping's fun, man, you're gonna love it!"
I joined a stick of regular parachutists as last-man-out for each jump. Nothing to it, really, I just hooked up the static line and shuffled out the door behind the others. It was a matter of waiting for the jerk when the chute opened, then ride the canopy to the ground. Just do the best parachute landing fall I could, stuff the chute into the jump bag and turn it in for repacking as soon as we got back from the drop zone.
It was all very routine, and yes, I did like it...until I looked up during the night jump.
A cigarette roll, maybe it was a streamer, is not what you want to see when you look for your canopy. I couldn’t decide which it was because the skinny shape was silhouetted against the dark sky; I only knew I didn’t have a proper canopy and I was falling too fast. I could see another full canopy above and to my right, and it was already far above me and receding fast.
Time for emergency procedures; try to shake the tangle loose, while bicycling frantically with my legs. Nothing worked. Okay, try the reserve chute next. Clutch the chute with my free hand, control the bag's opening with the other hand, then throw the chute away as hard as possible.
That one tangled too; the two chutes were now spiraling around each other above me. Maybe I was twisting in the air. Just possibly, if I’d had more instruction during my one-week session regarding what to do if a chute malfunctions--it was only a brief thought, all I had time for.
Panic; I looked up, then tried to see the dark ground below, and suddenly there was a red flash all around me. The harness straps snapped with a loud pop and fluttered away somewhere, dragged away with the two failed chutes. I was still a hundred meters or so in the air, legs still churning frantically. I remembered that from the lectures, bicycle with my legs, grab the control lines, and shake them. But I had no control lines, they’d gone with the chutes and harness. I hit the ground, back first…
And bounced. I tumbled slowly across the landing zone, head-over-heels, trying to figure out what had just happened, why I was still alive. I giggled hysterically; no blood on the risers, guys, no risers at all, see?
I was in a slow roll, still in the bubble, tumbling across the drop zone. The rest of the stick had drifted in the faint breeze, landing farther down the DZ. Just as well; it took several moments before I managed to collapse the bubble. Finally, it disappeared as fast as it had formed and I fell on my face, leaving me with a bloody nose and a long scratch on my arm from the bush I’d rolled into.
I searched and soon found the tangled chutes and ruined harness. The thick straps had been ripped apart. I couldn’t tell the instructors what had happened. For that matter, I didn’t know myself, but I suspected it had something to do with my Talent. I couldn’t turn this in; questions would be asked and I had no answers.
Maybe the chutes provided partial lift while I was falling, Major? They wouldn’t believe me, even though I was standing there bloody and scratched. I needed an alternate plan, fast.
I stuffed the two chutes into the jump bag and dragged it into the woods just off the drop zone. Scooping out a shallow hole, I buried the bag, part of the reserve chute bulging out the opening. Hopefully, no one would find it before I left for Afghanistan. By then, the instructors would have other things on their mind and they might have forgotten about the missing chutes.
I climbed in the truck with the others for the ride back. I had time to think; finally I came up with a story, even if it sounded weak.
"I don’t know what happened to the bag, Sergeant. Maybe it fell off the truck? Anyway, here I am."
"Crap. Supply is gonna shit a brick. Okay, no ceremony for you, here are your jump wings and qualifying orders so you will be authorized to wear them; you won't be around for the parade anyway and I guess I'll figure out something to tell supply to explain the missing chutes. Report to personnel, they’re waiting for you. Good luck on your tour, paratrooper!"
I put the wings in my right pocket, folded the orders into my left, and headed for the personnel office.
#
I practiced the new skill and the bubble soon became a part of me. I could call it up on command, it would form almost instantly, and I could then expand it to several meters in diameter. What I’d done instinctively, I now did consciously. And sometimes subconsciously.
Even if some of my other Talents were marginal, I had the PK and the bubble. It was all marvelous stuff, just great fun at the time.
There is no magic, no wizardry, just physics and limits. The bubble covers me completely, so I can’t walk while it’s around me. There’s nothing to push against, because my feet aren’t touching the ground.
There's another drawback too; if I hold the bubble long enough, in tight so it’s at full strength, I’ll pass out. It’s due to the lack of oxygen and poisoning from the carbon dioxide buildup. When I extend the field out as far as I can, there’s more air inside and anyway fresh air leaks through because the bubble gets weaker. Carbon dioxide percolates out, oxygen gets in, but because the field is weaker, something else might also get through.
I practiced a lot while learning the limits of the bubble field and how to control it; if I kept it in tight, nothing solid could get through, but then I would have only a few seconds of air before I passed out. Anyway, it takes a lot more concentration to hold it at full strength. If I expand it out to the maximum diameter I can control, I can breathe normally and hold the field for much longer, but a bullet or piece of shrapnel might get through. Choices, choices…
I also couldn’t use my PK while I was inside the bubble. The bubble is somehow a part of the PK, so that I can do one or the other but not both.
Regarding my other abilities, the PK isn’t very strong and the PreCog is not reliable. As for TelePathy, I have to spend a lot of time around a norm before I can pick up more than emotion, and since everybody can read emotions that’s not much of a Talent. I can read people just a little more reliably, with a little more sensitivity than most, but I’m no empath. The telepathy is more useful if I’m communicating with someone like Surfer. He’s another School grad and a lot stronger than I am, probably the strongest
TP the School has produced.
#
I would have more time to think about that last patrol now; time to think, to remember, and to have nightmares. I was off the roster “temporarily”, so the office clerk said. I had no duties, no orders to rotate home, not even a movement alert notification.
Such was my situation when I tried to catch up on my sleep. I woke up after another nightmare, I had no other place to go, so I headed for the Club.
The Club stayed open 24/7 because the normal visitors, senior officers and an occasional transient VIP, might want in at any hour. Anyway, there was no attendant, just a small sign on the door reading Officers Only.
I had never come here during daylight; instead, I stopped in only during the post-midnight hours when I couldn’t sleep and when the Club was deserted or had one or two patrons at most. If they ever noticed me, none of them said anything. But it was just past 1900 now, there were probably others already there.
Why go to a club where I'm not wanted, when the alcohol barely affects me anyway? It's complicated.
There’s a constant low-level sensitivity, a kind of silent buzz. It flows up and down my nerves, a side effect of the TP, where I can almost hear people thinking. I know they're there, I know they're awake, but I can't tell what their thoughts are. There’s just that annoying jumpy buzzing. Alcohol takes a little of it off. It helps me get to sleep, maybe even suppresses the nightmares. The drinks wouldn't make me drunk, but they would suppress that buzzing.
But that’s all it does. This was a Talent that I’d rather not have, but my mind and the computer it was connected to had made the decision without asking my opinion. My brain changed; the one I left the School with wasn’t at all the same as the one I'd had when I arrived.
Now, whatever my conscious mind desires, the alcohol effect quickly fades. After three drinks, I’ve reached the limit of what will affect me and even then it doesn't last long.
Unfortunately, aspirin also stops working after a while. I’ve had headaches since starting the School. There have been times I really wished I didn’t have this body-control Talent.