Why did I join the army? Why does anybody?[edit]
I guess some want to protect and serve their country. Others see the associated benefits as a means to access college or start a business. And more than a few just want to shoot guns and make shit explode. For me, it was an opportunity to get the hell out of the dead town I lived in — Sewell, West Virginia.
Born in Jan 21st 2031, I lived in a forgotten and mostly defunct coal town with a population of barely 300, kept alive by the reclamation of the nearby coal mine declared vital by the newly formed UCAS government. Despite the proclamation, the government didn’t actually pay much attention and the mining company didn’t care to spend a lot on the cleanup, so the project dragged along for decades. Don’t ask me which company it was; I swear, every year they traded hands every between various AA-rated megacorps. It was probably one of the few times corporate malfeasance did anyone any good — it kept the town on life support.
My father worked as a part of the reclamation project, running heavy machinery and keeping it up and running. Everyone called him Big Jim, which was always funny to me as his actual name was Randal. His skills were in high demand — the equipment was old, crochety, and prone to breakdown. Despite it all the money would have been enough for a decent lifestyle if the town itself was more than barely functioning. My mom had been out of the picture a while. Dad said she passed on, but my older brother and sister used to say she skipped town instead. They did the same when they hit eighteen; I probably wouldn’t recognize them if I saw them today.
It was just me and my old man from about when I was ten or so. Honestly wasn’t so bad growing up, rarely went to bed hungry and had a roof that didn’t leak, which was more than most in the area could say. My old man would all but disappear most of the week for long shifts at the mine. I spent my childhood at what passed for the local school. There were only 5 or 6 other kids and all of us at different grade levels but it was something. Sometimes the company would have cut work for weeks at a time due to lack of budget. When this would happen my old man would come home, dig out his hutting rifles, fishing poles, and camping gear. Then we would disappear into the hills of Appalachia till it was over. He would refer to the furloughs as “vacations”. As with everything, good times rarely last.
As I got older, I began to notice how depressed the area was. You either worked the reclamation or you facilitated those that did and there was nothing in between. It also didn’t help that the project was nearing completion; you could almost see the hand that would yank the plug on the town. Nothing to do but work, drink, watch the town rot away. More than a few folk just cut their losses and left town with whatever they could afford to carry.
In the summer of 2049, while tooling with an earth mover my dad had a massive heart attack and died instantly. To say I was a bit dismayed would be an understatement. He was just gone. Took a couple days to grieve, and me and a bunch of his buddies hiked up to his favorite spot in the mountains and spread his ashes on the wind. I decided then and there, it was time to get the hell out. With my dad’s last paycheck in my pocket, I got on a bus to the city and promptly found the first US Army recruitment office.
I don’t think anyone would say joining the military was easy, but I actually enjoyed it, even the parts that sucked (the parts that sucked were also most of the military experience). Basic training when about what you would expect, they break you down then build you back up. It was during my infantry MOS training when things took a shift. My instructors noticed that my rifle scores were noticeably higher than most. The instructors were so impressed they suggested I change my MOS from infantry to sniper. Once in sniper school I was further suggested to try out for the Rangers.
Now, Ranger training, that was rough. To this day I still don’t remember half of it. Had a few good years in the Rangers. It’s where I met and kept running into Bill. I swear whenever they were shipping us out, he was flying us there.
It was after a couple years I got tapped for Special Operations. Went all sorts of places when I was with REDACTED. Spent time in REDACTED, got stuck in at REDACTED, and even got lost in REDACTED. I even... this is just going to be redacted, so why am I even trying to talk about it?!
Now when you are in Special Operations, you get uh, special cyberware operations. For some time now the UCAS has contracted Ares to provide some of the best doctors and cyber surgeons in the business. In special operations we get the best of the best among them, Dr. Isadora Sterling. I still remember the day we met. She was walking me through a fresh cyberware package, going into the details of the advantages, the surgical details, recovery and I was just head over heels. Didn’t understand half of what she was telling me, she could have been reading a dictionary — I just wanted to hear her voice more. To this day, I still don’t know why she went out with me, but one date led to two, two to more, more to dating and then a ring. We got married.
Time moves forward, we had a son together, and my tenure was getting close to the end. Like a certain town nearing the end of reclamation, I was preparing for the end of active duty and was pushing for a desk job. Everything was starting to align when Chicago happened. Now that was a hot mess, can’t say how many missions in and out of the bug hole. Finally the last hurrah, our mission was to pull as much of the hive out and away so the nuke team could get in as easily as possible. Once we got confirmation the ball was in play, we exfil'd as fast as possible. What should have happened once we were airborne; we get out unmolested and the hive would go up in a mushroom cloud. Neither occurred.
Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes after exfil, AA warning went off in our T-bird. The bugs shouldn’t even known was anti-aircraft fire was, much less have access to SAMs, but there was a live unidentified missile bearing down on us. To the pilots’ credit he manage to minimize the hit and we kept going, the crew compartment however...
On October 2nd at 1:32 AM I was pronounced dead. Cause determined to be severe trauma cause by shrapnel to the brain. At least that was what they tell me anyways. My wife on the other hand, bruteforced her way into the surgical room and took charge. She restarted my heart and with a mix of mad genius and a contempt for God, she brought me back from the brink. Pulled what she could of the shrapnel out and a bit of my brain too, but she couldn’t get all of them.
My recovery was okay at first. Months in bed followed by physical therapy seem like a miracle. Then one night I passed out and nearly swallowed my tongue. Before long many odd and uncontrollable episodes became my new normal. Loss of balance, loss of feeling in my extremities, loss of bowel control, you name it. There was also the strange one-off issues, and of course the seizures. Those were the worst. My outlook was, not great. I was told I could have another 15 years, but that only assumes one of my episodes didn’t kill me first. Sleep in those days was not something I got a lot off, with the fear of waking up dead. Same for Isadora. She denies it, but I know she would be up half the night making sure I was still breathing.
Then I got a call. Seems I matched the criteria for an experimental treatment. Our contacts at Ares told me about a clinical trial for some experimental cyberware that would not only solve most of my neurological problems, I would make me faster than ever — Move-by-Wire. It all but replaces your central nervous system and essentially weaponizes seizures into controlled near instant movement. Of course, it has side effects: in all known cases, it eventually kills the user via adverse reactions and complications due to the very seizures it uses. Now they were very up front about this, said I could live nearly normally but I would have 3 to 5 years max, but with minimum side effects (excluding death). I weighed my options and a short term with guarantees seem like a better bet than a maybe decade of constant fear. My wife disagreed.
We spent the next month arguing like about it, she tried to convince me that another treatment was just around a corner that could fix my issues without slowly killing me. I countered by pointing out half these studies never go anywhere and that maybe later wasn’t going to do me good next time my body decides to forget how to breathe. We came to a compromise, I could take cyberware, she would be the one to install it, and I would sign the divorce papers. Ironically it wasn’t entirely the wire she had an issue with. I had been so close to getting out of the shit, only for it to have nearly killed me and now I would be diving back in, head first. She had to be done with it. It pained me but I understood. It was probably for the best, if you love someone set them free and all. All I know for certain is that we both sleep better now.
The project decided they wanted me to go play in the shadows as "non-orthogonal field combat testing". Said it would be a different paradigm for me and a good way to shake the rust off. I would be able to provide active use data for the move-by-wire, act as a forward observer in the Seatle shadow community, and act as a deniable asset in the area when called upon. So here I am, playing the shadows until the mission changes, or the wire eventually burns out my brain.