I sit down by Isaac in the arena. Sweat pours down my face. What is going on?
The NCO’s come to us and they inject another syringe into our arms.
“That is NT, they almost look the same as DT when abbreviated on the vile, but they do very different things. It works like DT in controlling your emotions, but instead, it returns you back to a sober state. Kind of like a systems detoxer.”
In seconds, we are really back to our normal selves with our original dispositions and morals. Calm down, calm down Peter—no! What the fuck! He actually made me hate someone. He actually made me fucking hate another person. Something I have never experienced in my life so intensely before. And my head, god, it hurts, my thoughts all mushy. The whole fight felt like an out of body experience.
“I see you look at little sour about it Private,” says the Instructor at me with a smirk. He looks back at the rest of our platoon, “This is how you will all be fighting for now on. See, I said I could turn a pacifist into a warrior. The rest of you, get in two lines and prepare to fight!”
We lie exhausted on the field after Buzz training. Blake, our unit Sergeant stands before us. He has a crooked nose that leans to the right, or his left I mean. Isaac told me it was from when he was a police officer, from a guy who resisted arrest. Blake grabs our attention, “Up and ready! Our Platoon Commissar is coming!”
“Nut to butt!” says Captain Tarnus. “Don’t be queer about, or do.”
We get into two neat compacted lines. I can feel the breath of the man behind me against my neck. The rest of Love is organized by their Sergeants, and Captain Tarnus inspects us unit by unit. His large bushy eyebrows flounder about above his beady eyes while reviewing us—somebody please cut that shit. He moves on to the next unit, we passed.
I stand limp and sweaty. I mutter to Isaac, “They couldn’t have done this another time?”
Isaac loosens his neck to lean back and reply, but instantly tightens up into strict order. I lean over to see why, and quickly do the same. A man with a dark overcoat and white shoulder armor caps walks towards us. His beret also white—like all Party Reps—with NFFP smack red bold on the center stares at us. A large revolver dangles overtly from his hip where the overcoat parts—clearly intentional—and his right hand rests comfortably atop the handle while he walks up and down our line. The sunlight dances off the revolve handle and blue gold trimmed stars that adorn his chest pockets and beret top.
He pauses facing the middle line, his legs stretched out, his face sharp and lean and handsome. “Hello Love Platoon. I am Commissar Herus. Your embedded Party Representative.” His voice is cool and smooth; he must have practiced this speech multiple times before the sink mirror. “I am here to make sure all Party Morals and Ideals are followed on the battlefield. I am also your medium for any concerns you may need to tell me, such as of traitors or unParty like activities that could compromise the cause we are embarking on. Ultimately though, I am just your brother, like you all are to each other, like we all are as members of the Party, as citizens of America. I will be there to aid and assist you morally when things get hard, to give an outstretched hand to raise your spirits when the fighting turns to its darkest hour. To remind you of what you are fighting for and why. I am excited and eager to participate on this great mission to aid our fellow humans, with you brothers. To spread the good of the Party to new worlds. Thank you for receiving me, you are dismissed.”
Blake confirms we can be at ease, we all walk back sore and tired to our barracks. I collapse onto my bunk, and take a shit load of painkillers to remove this headache. Whatever those drugs are, they really fucked with me. Every time it was my turn to fight again, every time it was my turn to receive the Buzz dose, I tried holding on to my convictions as hard as I could… but it didn’t matter.
Every time the cold needle enters my skin, I lose the desire to fight for my beliefs, to want to even hold on to them. I just become something new, different. I am still the same person, but my mind is replaced with new opinions and beliefs. It’s as if I am listening to someone with the exact same morals and ideals as myself when I am sober, but I disagree with them vehemently while under Buzz. I shake them off as silly or ignorant like I once did to the warmongers and others that held different views than me. But the weirdest part though, is that it’s not a different person I am disagreeing with, but I.
I can argue and believe convincingly two contradictory opinions and morals, but still be the same person. How absolute or assured am I really of my beliefs if someone can just come into my mind and change it to the complete opposite? They can change it entirely, that I am astounded I ever believed something contrary to what the military wants. Then when I am sober, I remain just as astounded that I ever believed what the military wants. God, am I really myself anymore? And if not, what am I?
VI
Later that night is lecture about the field drugs we have been exposed to, and how much they would affect us. We sit in curved rows inside an auditorium with a few other platoons as an Instructor—a different one than that fucker earlier—goes over the field drugs and their purpose. “It comes down primarily to economics and time men,” he says. An empty rectangular bar being slowly colored in appears behind him on the screen. “This bar is the time we have left till you are shipped out. Eight weeks. Do you know how long it took the Spartans to train a warrior back in the day?”
Isaac whispers to me, “Does it matter? They still lost.”
The Instructor answers his own question, “It took a lifetime. The three hundred Spartans at the hot gates were trained and brutalized their entire lives in ritualistic activities daily to reach their military power and perfection. They reached this through the society they lived in. One entirely wrapped around war. Ours is not. But our society still demands and expects the same level of excellence and fighting prowess of a Spartan, especially since we are up against the Herculeans. And if I haven’t made it obvious, we don’t have lifetimes to turn you into equivalents.”
The screen changes to show the different types of field drugs we’ve been operating with. “Technology however, will bridge this gap. Stimulants, psyche performance drugs have become our answer. They give us the most bang for our buck here at the Defense Department. We’re still trying to pass our budget for this year, and we are already four hundred percent over. We never had to freight eight hundred thousand soldiers across space before.” He chuckles even though the classroom is silent. He regains his matter-of-fact demeanor and goes on, “You are greenhorns, fresh with barely over a month of combat training and most of it useless when it came to fighting an alien military. These drugs will fix that. Buzz, as you all have had extensive time with today, removes any fear and hesitation, it increases attentiveness, and it makes you act as war hardened veterans with unbreakable morals. No battle fatigue, no second guessing or disobeying orders.”
The screen changes once more showing a diagram of an object I’ve never seen before. “This is the new way you’ll all receive your field drugs on Nova Terra. Upper neck distributors. You will undergo the surgery tomorrow. Under Geneva Convention laws, only commanding officers are allowed to administer the field drugs. This way we make sure you don’t shoot up at the wrong time, or too much, or because of addiction, etcetera, etcetera, and etcetera.” He pauses for a moment as the display rotates showing us the ins and outs of the device. “The neck distributors will be installed right above your highest vertebra. A tiny cord from the distributor will pierce and connect into your spine where the drugs will be administered into. The neck distributors will have a tube that goes from the external part of the implant to a chemsack onto your back. The sack is integrated with your ACU.”