It was a beautiful and sunny day, when the soldiers came. Roy Smith was on vacation with his parents. They didn’t expect to get caught up in a foreign deployment of the US military, but that didn’t matter when the bullets hit.
All Roy could remember of this day, years later, were the screams. The blood. The smell of the blood. The heavy weight of his father’s body, who had thrown himself over Roy, to shield him from death. The dead eyes of his mother, staring from right next to him on the floor.
The attack had been short and it hadn’t taken too long for officials to start taking away the bodies and finding Roy. When they realized that the traumatized child was a citizen of the United States, they handed him over to the military. They took him home and placed him in foster care, as no living relatives could be located. They forgot him.
He didn’t forget about them.
Some years later, when Roy turned 18, he joined the military.
“What is your motivation to join us?” asked the recruiter.
“I want to be a positive influence in the armed forces”, Roy answered.
The recruiter nodded and offered his hand.
“Well then, welcome to the US Army!”
Time passed. Roy finished his training with flying colors and proceeded to climb up in rank. His goal was to get access to the files which contained information about the operation that killed his parents. He had tried to find out what happened before joining the military, but the information was classified.
The day he got his security clearance was the best day in his life.
Roy’s eyes flew across the paragraphs, as he skimmed the text that included some information on terroristic activity in the Middle East, technical details about the operation and finally, a list of casualties.
Only one sentence described the fate of his parents. And they didn’t even feel like it was necessary, to include him in the report.
Two civilian deaths, probably caused by delusions triggered by the abuse of dextroamphetamines.
“Dextroamphetamines?” Mumbled Roy. “Aren’t those drugs? Why were these soldiers on drugs?”
“Because they all are”, declared a voice in his back. Roy winced because of the sudden noise and turned around.
His superior was standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing here?” He wanted to know.
“I wanted to collect information about operations that killed civilians, to assess if there are common circumstances that could be avoided in the future”, recited Roy the lie he had prepared earlier, in case someone caught him. He hadn’t expected to need it.
“Well”, said the other man, “Drugs are probably the main reason. People need to stay alert to work at peak efficiency, but that is not always easy. So they take drugs. It’s a well-known secret. We aren’t happy about it, but we tolerate it because it’s an advantage. The drug you just mentioned is probably better known as Speed. Very popular in the Air Force, but soldiers from other branches of the Armed Forces use it too.”
“I don’t understand, how do those drugs cause the death of civilians?” Inquired Roy. “If they’re just a way to stay alert, they shouldn’t do that.”
“Sadly, everything has side effects. Dextroamphetamines generally increase the aggression of an individual and can cause confusion, auditory hallucinations, delusions and psychotic behavior. Other drugs aren’t much safer. Dimethylamine, commonly refered to as DMAA, seem to cause cardiac failure when the person who takes them is put under too much physical stress. Stranozolol, a steroid, is also known to cause aggression and delusions. The side effects of cocaine and LSD are surely known to you, and some people even take hallucinogenic mushrooms. None of these things are safe.”
“But people still take them? And it is tolerated by the military?”
His superior nodded.
“Why doesn’t anyone make a better drug?” Asked Roy, now increasingly agitated. “It can’t be the optimal way to just let soldiers take drugs that make them highly aggressive. It shouldn’t be too hard for scientists to create some sort of drug that makes soldiers better at killing the enemy, while still following their orders to the word!”
“I thought you had been in the military for long enough to know that this isn’t possible. There will always be soldiers who disobey their orders and do stupid stuff. That’s always been the case. Because otherwise, we would just have a platoon of mindless zombies.”
“Zombies…” Roy echoed.
After this conversation, Roy resigned from the Army as soon as he could and started college, to earn a degree in microbiology, genetic engineering, biochemistry and virology. He soon became an expert in all these fields and was given a place to lecture at an established university.
But it still took decades until Professor Smith was able to synthesize a drug which would increase a soldier’s fighting potential while keeping him completely obedient at the same time.
Disclaimer: While the drugs mentioned exist and are/have been used, there has been some artistic liberty concerning the time frame and place of use. For accurate information, please check the sources below.
Sources:
http://www.army-technology.com/features/featurecreating-supermen-battlefield-performance-enhancing-drugs/
https://newrepublic.com/article/112269/112269
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kwxdby/drugs-have-been-used-in-pretty-much-every-war-ever-shooting-up
Picture taken from pixabay.com
Story requested by @mobbs. If you have your own story request, write it in the comments and if it's interesting to me, I will add it to the list.