Around me, bodies upon bodies lay decapitated, the daggers still in my blood-soaked hands, my body riddled with bullet wounds—everything was starting to fail. Suddenly, a blackout—everything turned to darkness.
I always woke up on that same jump ramp, inside that same damned cargo aircraft. The door still closed, everyone lined up, waiting for our turn to leap.
I always followed the same protocol: check the rifle, the pistols, the extra ammo, the grenades, and the mortars. Finally, the daggers—weapons of last resort.
But there were no parachutes to check; they weren't necessary. Here I was no longer human, I was a combat droid, surviving a free fall from over fifteen hundred feet would be simple.
My real body was still rotting somewhere, but my mind was trapped in a simulation. All of this existed for one purpose: to train an artificial intelligence.
Did everyone here know it was a simulation? They never explained—just shoved me in. But I think so. You could see it in the desperation in the other droids' eyes.
It was bizarre how they'd been designed to mimic human expressions. What did they want? For the machine to show empathy before killing?
This was hell, but I had my favorite moment: when the doors opened, and we finally jumped. Those seven or eight seconds of free-fall were the only peace I ever got. Because when we hit the ground, a blood-soaked battlefield awaited us.
Sometimes, the enemies started shooting before we even landed. A big mistake. It only pissed me off even more, made me even more aggressive. I wasn't like this before. I can't even remember when I changed.
Once on the ground, there was no time to think. Find a target, aim, pull the trigger, advance. Find another target, aim, pull the trigger, advance. Body after body, no thought, no remorse, no empathy.
Was this intentional? Was this simulation designed to strip away whatever traces of empathy we had left?
The battle scenarios didn't vary much. There were only seven or eight options.
Sometimes, we fought somewhere in South Asia. Our enemies were a Hollywood´s stereotype revolutionary, modeled after the VietCong
Other times, we were dropped into a fictional Brazilian favela, fighting drug dealers—AK-47s in hand, wearing soccer jerseys.
Or else we were thrown into Eastern Europe, fighting an anachronistic version of some imaginary Soviet army.
This time, we dropped somewhere in the Middle East. Our enemies were the clichéd Arab rebels—white turbans and robes included.
What's interesting is that there was no scenario where we dismantled a neo-Nazi cell in Germany. Or a white supremacist group in rural America.
I guess that made it clear who the enemies and allies were for the bastards keeping me trapped in this nightmare. I looked like their enemy.
No doubt, if I weren't trapped here, I'd probably be hunted by the same androids I was helping train.
You'd ask: Then why not resist? Why play along with this simulation's nightmare? Trust me, I've tried—and it wasn't pleasant.
In the real world, where my body withered in some filthy basement, I had no rights. They could use any torture method they wanted to force me.
They felt no remorse torturing us. The irony was that this whole project existed because of "white guilt." The androids didn't need to learn how to aim and shoot—they mastered that in months.
What they needed to learn was when not to pull the trigger. And that exact situation was unfolding before me.
A civilian was running toward me. That was my real purpose: to teach those damned machines whether or not to blow that guy's brains out.
Not that the people keeping me here had any qualms about killing whoever stood in their way. But the headline "Androids Kill Innocent Civilians" always tanked their stocks and gave them headaches.
People have no problem enjoying the privileges that dead innocents bring them—but being reminded of it over morning coffee? That's a different story.
At first, I didn't know how to handle that dilemma. Yes, I had military training, but I'd never seen combat before this hell.
The first few times I hesitated, analyzing every detail before deciding. But now? I just shot them in the legs—didn't even stop to think.
After all, "Android cripples Innocent Civilian" wasn't shocking enough to make headlines. They wouldn't feel guilty about what they didn't know.
This fucking place was really changing me. I wonder if the same was happening to the others trapped here like me. If so, how was it affecting these machines?
But I didn't have time to think about that. Today, the guy really was a suicide bomber, not an innocent civilian, and he blew up right in front of me.
For an android's body, the shrapnel from a blast like that meant nothing. But for me? That's another story.
This was an extremely realistic simulation. If I didn't know it was fake, I might've struggled to tell it apart from reality.
But no computer in the world could simulate something this perfectly. That's not how it worked.
I don't even know how to explain it, but they used some kind of hypnosis—or something like it—to trick my mind into believing it was real.
That's why, even though the androids felt no pain, I did. The shrapnel that didn't pierce my body clung to my skin, still burning.
At least, that's how my mind processed it. I don't know if it was the same for everyone else.
The pain was unbearable. But I couldn't stop. If I did and disrupted the simulation, my fate would be even worse.
I had to keep going: find a target, aim, pull the trigger, advance, and do it all over again. Even after running out of ammo, we drew our daggers and pushed forward.
That's when this hell reached its gruesome climax. We abandoned cover and charged, chests exposed, daggers in hand. Our enemies emptied their magazines into us.
The most efficient way for an android to kill a human with a dagger was to slit the throat. A cut anywhere else rarely caused instant death.
Stabbing any other part of the body required two movements: thrust in, then pull out. The most efficient method was to take the head off in one swing.
The androids had the strength and precision to do it. When that moment came, the battlefield became a festival of severed heads flying through the air.
I watched it all while enduring the pain of bullets from enemies still standing.
No matter how grotesque the scene, it didn't faze me anymore. I'd seen it too many times to care.
The only thing I never got used to was the pain. Probably by design. After all, what kept me obedient, cooperating with the simulation, was the memory of the torture sessions I endured when I didn't comply.
If they let me learn to endure pain the same way they let me shed all empathy, maybe those torture sessions would stop working.
The pain was really unbearable. At least the android's body would eventually take too much damage and shut down.
Then everything would go dark, and I always woke up on that same jump ramp, inside that same damned cargo aircraft.