by Tom Germann
An older female voice sounded in the room. “Yes, Two, I am. Would you like me to assist Eight with discovering the functionality of the systems?”
“Yes, Jane, I would appreciate it if you could do that sooner rather than later.”
Two tilted her head and made a sour face. “Eight, your skills were garbage until you moved into the dome. Rounds fired, hits, actions on, all poor. You were about as effective as a normal human soldier in one of the national armies after training.” She stretched and continued. “When you entered the dome, it was like you changed. Your scores improved just a bit. You were not in any way, shape, or form at the standard for a Corporate Marine. You were also not at the standard to be out here on the front lines in a small boat looking for bad guys.”
I heard the capitals in those words. I felt about two feet tall and like I had crapped myself in front of her.
She continued. “Be aware that the rest are aware of your performance. They are not happy and will only put up with this for so long.”
She leaned forward now and looked me directly in the face. “You also need to be aware that in a first big sim like that, most newbies don’t do that well. That’s why we run them. You need to adapt to the real-world operations. You are in a tight-knit section that just lost someone, and people are feeling guilt. They’ll get past that soon enough and learn to accept you, but you need to put a hundred percent in and, more importantly, you need to accept that it will take a while to fit in. I know you have some past issues. Everyone does. You need to learn to get past it and not let it affect you. Do you have any questions?”
That was it. Short, abrupt, and to-the-point. This was what I expected from the training on Earth.
“I have two questions for you, Two.”
She nodded and I continued. “Why does One seem to have it in for me?”
Two breathed out and the fingers on her right hand were tapping on the tabletop. “Eight. One was friends with our previous Eight. They got along really well, and now with his death, One feels like you are trying to replace his friend. He’s right; you are. Literally. He may never like you. I don’t care about that. I need you both able to work together effectively. What was your other question?”
My mouth felt dry and then I just spit it out. “Training on Earth wasn’t like this. The rule was no attachments. Yet the entire section is tight and everyone laughs, jokes, and seems like good friends. I’m having a hard time relating to that. Why are you all like this?”
Two stood up and smiled while she pushed the chair back into position. I noticed that the base, while secured to the floor, was actually a moveable piece that could move chairs around in the room. It was like a track that I hadn’t seen before. The chair went back into position and the floor froze, looking immovable again.
“That’s an easy question, Eight. Really, I was hoping for something difficult. But here’s your answer. We’re all insane. It comes from training to elite status and always staying there with no downtime. You either go insane or end up dead.”
She turned and walked out the door. The lights dimmed down a little but they stayed on.
Great I was on a ship in the depths of space, and everyone was insane and admitted it.
I stood up and walked out the door, closing it behind me. As it closed, I could see the lights go off inside.
I headed for the small common room. Dinner followed by a light workout would help me sleep.
After Action Drill And Therapy
We had finished the training mission and worked the armour back up to factory condition. While we were doing that, our ship had left the system and, after careful processing, jumped into star drive. We weren’t going that far, really.
A week or a month would pass fast, given the schedule we had. I thought we were busy before, but Two had decided that my time in the sims had shown a number of weaknesses not only in myself but also in the section and its ability to work as a team. We spent an hour in the low-level sim training missions every day. All the training was basic, like clearing a structure or defensive actions against an enemy that was well equipped.
I didn’t want to ask anyone in the section the stupid questions that were coming up so I fell back on our subject-matter experts and asked my nut doctor at my next interview.
I was sitting on my bed, which I had reprogrammed to take the shape of a couch for this interview. I had also dimmed the lights to half their brightness. I found that whenever I talked to the nut doctor, everything seemed too bright after.
I had a half-hour interview with enough time left after for a nap to recover from whatever mental tortures he put me through this time.
The screen came alive on the wall and there was his face. The shot pulled back almost immediately, showing Steven sitting in a chair with his pipe and a thoughtful look on his face. “Hello, Eight, how are you doing this morning? Before you answer that, I must say, you appear to have adjusted to our mandatory meetings quite well. I mean, look how you set the room up. I’m feeling glad that you were able to adjust so quickly to what you called . . . ‘A shit way to treat you’ is what I believe you had called it.”
I sat back and shrugged. This made me feel a bit uncomfortable but I might as well be honest. Maybe it would help me keep my sanity. “You said that these meetings were mandatory. I have to come to them and we need to discuss whatever is going on. Past missions, current issues, or if I have concerns. The whole reason for this is to keep me sane. I don’t get why deep space affects so many humans so badly and I really don’t care. I need to stay sane; I have long-term plans. So I might as well just do what I need to, to get through this and carry on.”
Steven nodded in agreement. “You have come to terms with this much faster than most others would. I see, though, that your acceptance is partly just overload. Everything has been too much for you, hasn’t it?”
It was damn hard to even try to fool a therapist, let alone one that was an AI that could tie into every sensor in your room to evaluate how you were doing—pulse, heart rate, perspiration. Oh, and he could access past mission logs to review what you did and how that would make you feel later.
I wondered if he knew that I had bad breath after lunch.
“You pretty much have it, Steven. I mean, if I can’t hide anything from you, I might as well just accept it and move on. Maybe then we can get down to whatever we are really supposed to be doing. Right?”
“Hmmm. Yes, Eight, I can see what you are saying. Your reasoning isn’t quite accurate, but the end result should be the same. So I believe you have some questions now that you’ve undergone training with the rest of the section. I’ll try to answer if I can.”
I felt uncomfortable with this, but knew that if I didn’t ask, then I was going to always be the odd man out. “Okay. I know you said you don’t report to anyone other than HQ on my mental health.”
Steven’s image nodded. “Unless you are a threat to yourself or the section in the immediate here and now. Otherwise, you do have patient/doctor confidentiality here. Ask anything you want, Eight. After all, you need to adjust to a completely different world. I’m here to help with that.”
I felt myself nodding. He was so damned calm and I felt like he was looking out for my best interests. But of course, I had to feel that way. “Well, one of my questions is about sim addiction. All I ever heard about it was that people got addicted to sims easily. We use sims all the time. How long do I have until I’m addicted, and how hard is it to get off the addiction after? I mean, is it fatal? Can you even tell me anything about it, or are you not allowed to?”
Steven smiled on the screen. “Yes, Eight, I can answer all your questions about this. Simulation addiction is becoming more common everywhere as sims are used for training. Now the Corporation has already set you up so that you are less likely to become addicted. Have you seen the different level of sim used in training?”
I no
dded yes.
Steven disappeared and in his place, two trees appeared side by side. I was guessing that they were identical but they didn’t really look that similar. The one on the right was a bright green leafy tree that was moving in a breeze. It looked like footage of a real tree. It was sitting in some grass and it looked about as real as could be on a screen. I could almost smell it. The one on the left was flat and two-dimensional. It was moving back and forth, so I guessed that there was some sort of breeze behind it. That one looked like someone had drawn it with one green crayon.
Steven’s voice asked, “Which one do you think is better, Eight?”
“Easy question—the one on the right. Before you ask, it’s because it looks like a real tree and I can imagine other trees around it like in a nice park. I can almost smell the outdoors when I look at that one.”
“Thank you, Eight. Now I want you to watch two sets of footage, okay? Pay attention to what is going on in the scenario, please.”
The trees faded and I was watching combat footage. It was of my run through that first sim. Really the aliens didn’t look that well developed, and since I was watching instead of reacting, I even caught some glitches in the program. I hadn’t seen it at the time because I was fighting for my “life.”
The screen faded and a second later, different combat footage came up. It was the last big operation we had just run. I was back in the armour. That damned Kah-Choo mechanic hitting me with that huge tool. I didn’t have much feeling in my leg and I remembered all the little pains and glitches that were starting to shut my suit down. I was smashing it against the wall and then the body just seemed to rupture and there was blood flying everywhere.
The images faded. There had only been maybe ten seconds of footage and I was drenched in a cold sweat. I had died at the end of that mission. I could feel faint pain as I remembered the whole mission. I could hear my pulse thundering in my ears and there was a tightness across my chest. I felt the urge to check my weapons over. But I didn’t have any.
Steven’s calm voice came through the speakers. “Eight, I noticed that you were calm for the first clip, but the second one increased your heart rate and blood pressure almost immediately. My sensors are also reading that you are suffering some mild distress from the footage. Please take a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. I want you to do this every four seconds until I tell you to stop.”
I shut my brain off and ignored the images while I carried out the breathing exercise. The image on the screen faded and Steven was back watching me. Okay, really, the sensors in the room were watching me as Steven wasn’t a real person.
After a few breaths I started to relax and I could feel my pulse slowing. After a few more, Steven held up a hand. “Very good, Eight, you can stop now. Thank you.”
I allowed myself to flop back and relaxed all my muscles.
I closed my eyes and kept breathing slowly until I felt at peace. When I opened my eyes, Steven was watching me from the screen.
“You understand now about sim addiction, don’t you, Eight?”
I glared at the screen. I could feel my face getting red but I wasn’t going to lose control. “So we get put into realistic training like that and I’m going to want to stay in there? Really? Dying time after time? Slaughtering the enemy—male, female, child, other? What the fuck, man!”
I hadn’t wanted to lose it but I was close. I started breathing again slowly while Steven watched me. He nodded, as if to himself. “I understand what you are saying and feeling. Here is what you are missing, because you have only been in that level of immersive sim a few times and only for training in combat with a clear end point.”
He paused and looked at me, speaking slowly and carefully. “Consider if you were doing something you enjoy. What if you were on a holiday with sandy beaches, surrounded by attractive young ladies? Or doing an extreme sport that you enjoy? Did you know that it is now possible, with some work, to insert yourself into most of the entertainment shows? You take the perspective of the camera but the program characters will interact with you. How would it be to run through that show you like, Schlock the Mercenary, as part of it?”
I stopped and considered it. What if I could do anything and it would be as if I really was there? The sense of touch and smell? My brain would even believe I was eating and could taste things even though I was in a simulated world.
I shivered. Why come out of the sim, then? The real world could be so fucked up that there must be a lot of people out there that would run to it. I couldn’t even lie to myself and say I wouldn’t. It would be so easy.
Steven’s voice brought me back. “I see you understand. Most of the training that you and the rest of the section does is in a simulated environment that is sufficient for the task. Yet a great deal of detail is missing. In combat you do not have the adrenaline rush and the understanding that this is ‘real,’ or at least as real as your mind can tell you it is. If you were in multiple sims at the highest level for anything—training or pleasure—your body would become used to it. You would no longer want to deal with the normal, boring, mundane world. Worse, in combat you would ‘know’ as your mind and body would be trained to accept that you could die, but you can always come back. Therefore, the decision was made that the highest level of sim training is only used at the section level. You do not do this on your own, or even very often.”
“Stop.”
Steven watched me.
“So that is for those of us who work for the Corporation. What about all those people back on Earth that have access to this technology? Is the problem bigger than I was told? Why aren’t there reports of hundreds of people staying home and playing, never leaving the house?” I could imagine thousands of people that hadn’t been seen for weeks sitting on the couch, stuck in simulated worlds.
Steven smiled. “Most of the general public do not have access to the higher levels of simulations.”
I was watching closely and I would have sworn that his avatar’s face went sort of sad for just a second. Then he continued. “Unfortunately, the human race does have a tendency to addiction. There are cases of individuals playing the lower-level sims for a very long time. When the Corporation releases the technology eventually for the next generation of gaming and pleasure, there are going to be people with personality characteristics that will not come out. Even now the Corporation is working on ways to help people over that. I’m afraid there is no easy solution.”
I still didn’t have an answer to what mattered to me. “So what happens when I get addicted eventually?”
Steven shrugged. “You die.”
I almost flew off the couch. “What! I get killed for playing?” I stared at the screen. I realized that my mouth was hanging open, but it didn’t seem to matter.
I wanted to smash the screen when I saw his smile. That smile vanished. “No, Eight. At the end of the training sims where you are in that deep is the very real chance that you may die in training. Not every time, and not regularly. But with the difficulty of the training, it is not uncommon to take a casualty. That death will feel real for you and everyone else in the section. The training you undergo is not fun or pleasurable. It is painful every time. That does tend to keep the addiction down.”
I sat down on my couch and watched the screen. “If that isn’t enough?”
“The sessions that you go through with me are meant to help ground you. We limit the need for you to go hide in the depths of sims to escape. If you do become addicted, then the root cause is dealt with and you are not allowed back into that level of sim again until you are judged ready.”
“So I would be less of an asset to the section then because I couldn’t participate in the training.”
“No, Eight. You could still do the same sim; you would simply be operating at a much lower level, which would remove the reality factor.”
I thought about that
for a second. I could accept that. I didn’t like thinking about becoming addicted. I had seen some of the losers in the Projects that had disappeared into drug use to hide from the shit world they lived in. My dad used to say that the real world was too big and bad for them.
I still had another question, though. “Okay, Steven, I can accept what you’re saying. I need to be here longer to really get it and that’s okay. But I have another question.”
“Ask away, Eight.”
I rolled back onto the couch so that I was lying down again. “Can you tell me why that last mission was so insanely hard?”
“What do you mean, Eight?”
“Well, there wouldn’t be that many troops on a target. Our intel was completely wrong about defensive levels and most of the section was wiped out pretty quick. If that is reality, then there should be more replacements heading out this way now. Most of the section should have been killed in the last operation that was carried out. Why is the training this way?”
Steven on the screen steepled his hands together and leaned back. “I understand what you are asking, Eight. There is an old saying: ‘Training saves blood.’ Going back through history, humanity has realized that it likes to make war on itself. The best of those will usually spend more time in realistic training that is considered to be ‘harder’ than what others are doing at the time. You did study history during training. Some of the nastiest militaries trained the hardest and were brutal to their own soldiers in their training. The successful countries let their soldiers know they were being brutal because they wanted them to live while soldiers on the other side died instead. That is at least part of the reason here.”
“I get why we train hard. What are the other reasons?”
“Let me say this. Train hard, and also train realistically.” Steven paused and appeared to be looking me over. “Realistic training shows you that things can go wrong. You were told to expect an operation that followed a set path. A leads to B, which would lead to C. Everything was laid out for you very clearly. Then reality came along and took a bite out of your ass. The enemy had a much higher readiness level than anticipated. Extra soldiers and heavy armour had been deployed forward. The defensive setup was much heavier and thicker than anticipated. The outpost was actually a base used by the targeted side.”