Primal Gambit

Chapter 14: Psyche Wipe

The steel doors slid shut – catching as they went. Doerrman took the mask from his face and placed it into the pack – breathing deep the over-purified, metal tasting air. The grated floors were congested with returned soldiers. Masses of muscle stood with resilience on the outside; on the inside pure chaos reigned. No one wanted to be there, the overseer shouting through a megaphone from a floor above them. Incessant chatter and echoing footsteps clapped off the walls of the bustling room. Men were being sanctioned off into separate steel cages – dark dripping vaults – an expanse beneath the city streets.

"If you serve with the 501st Wretch Battalion take the elevator down to Level 3. From there Officer Marques will lead you to the psyche chambers." The overseer bellowed in a monotonous, lifeless tone. Doerrman waited for his regiment to be called, but he knew nothing would clear him of the demons that plagued his mind.

When Squad 326 Shadow Regent was called and Doerrman rode the monstrously creaking elevator down to the murky 5th level he was filled with apprehension. Drips of liquid echoed off the metal halls from dark corners, the dank underground mystifying men whose minds were at war with themselves. The lingering stench of mildew rot would make the average civvie cringe, but the soldiers had grown accustomed to far worse.

A curvy woman in a gray jumpsuit led the group to a cookie cutter room in the deep. Once the expelling gases withered away and the glass doors finally locked shut, each man was assigned a pod. These obese charcoal eggs sat in a circle – the center of which housed a goliath of a computer system. A glass screen and operating keyboard flickered blue as four government-funded employees entered from a side room to prepare each warrior for the wipe.

Doerrman approached the capsule the same way he had in the past, lying down on the starched padding as he had in the past, and awaited the empty soul – held together by gray, to come and reset him as he had in the past.

Wires and needles were injected into his rough skin, a soaked white cloth wrapped around his eyes. The last thing he saw as he gazed upwards in wait was the large tubes that stretched across the ceiling of the room. Arms and legs strapped down, the calming words of the woman muffled as Doerrman felt the oval glass top hiss to a close around him. During this past tour, the warrior at one point was forced to bury himself in the bodies of fallen comrades. Even then he did not feel the claustrophobia that he did now.

The sound of muted footfall echoed around the soldier as the employees shuffled to different computer systems to ensure the fluids being injected into each soldier was set to the right dosage. As Doerrman had been through this routine multiple times in the past, the viscous liquid that entered through a needle in his arm had become of little nuisance. He could make out the feral screams of his squad, in particular the hoarse cries from the grunts. For a moment, the weathered soldier could feel the thick injection coursing through the other soldier's veins, unnerving them.

As Doerrman waited, the soothing voice of a woman untouched by human defile filled the capsule: "You are lying on the beach; the wind gently kisses your cheeks as the calming waves coast into the sand. You are alone with your thoughts – you are thinking of what you have done in past lives and what you will do in the future. Think not of these things, think not of state of mind, think only of the moment. Live in this. Live. In. This."

Soon the recurring nightmares of war would vacate the confines of his mind, painfully ripped out and away and replaced by biological engineers with rolling doldrums of wheat, thriving nature and long walks in untamed wilderness. The marksman never gave in completely – never let the thick goo get the better of him. He knew what they were doing. His brain was being washed should he have been required to return to war. Boosting levels of injected serotonin put his mind at ease, increasing his endorphin release and urging him to forget what had happened throughout his Siberian tour of duty. Doerrman could hear the rapid clicking of fingers against keyboards, as these engineers rewrote his history, rewrote his personality, rewrote him. He would emerge a new man with a fresh mind, unhindered by the violent acts of war.

He wouldn't let them take everything away. Not again. Part of him wanted to remember.

Flickering images of untamed nature glazed across the glass casing. As Doerrman drifted away into what his conscious knew would be but a momentary escape, he could feel the effects of the numbing serum that began to tamper with his mind. Quickly fading, the warrior's head began to sway from side to side – his eyes rolling back. In the moments before he became enveloped in the ruse Doerrman wondered if wild nature still existed, wondered if he would ever be able to find it.