“And as long as you remain within a twenty-mile radius of this installation,” Marsh cut in. “This is the designated zone, Mr. Raines, and you don’t stray from it without getting approval from me first. If a trainee goes outside the designated zone, we assume the Russo-Chinese alliance is involved, and we go to DEFCON-2.”
“DEFCON-2?” Tom said, stunned.
“That’s right. Losing a trainee is a national emergency. We mobilize the traditionals for a hostile retrieval. It’s happened recently, and that young man who snuck off to see his girlfriend was not happy with the consequences after we found him. He no longer has liberty of movement. He’s lucky to still be here at all, considering how much work it took to keep that story off the internet.”
They emerged into a vast circular area with sleek black tables.
“This is Patton Hall,” Olivia told him. “It’s the mess hall for young trainees and the officers who live at this installation.” She steered Tom toward the banks of elevators. “This brings us to”—she pointed to a glass door at the end of the hallway beyond the elevators—“my office, Tom.”
Tom squinted, and saw the print: OLIVIA OSSARE, LCSW-C.
“As I said, I’m not military. I’m a licensed social worker, and I’m here for you kids. You can speak to me in confidence if any issues arise. I am here to be your advocate, even if your problem is with your military custodians.”
General Marsh took over the tour. He showed Tom the Hart Medical Wing and the Lafayette Room. The latter was a massive chamber with rows of benches and a raised stage between a US flag and a flag of the six Indo-American corporate allies on the Coalition of Multinationals: Wyndham Harks; Dominion Agra; Nobridis, Inc.; Obsidian Corp.; Matchett-Reddy; and Epicenter Manufacturing.
Marsh gestured around them. “The trainees have core classes here in the Lafayette Room with civilian instructors. You’ll get to know this room quite well. As a first-level recruit—a plebe—your classes are divided between this room and MacArthur Hall on the fifteenth floor.”
They took the elevator to the sixth floor and stepped out into a sleek, windowless room with a plush arrangement of couches in rows, gaming consoles, an air hockey table, a Ping-Pong table, a pool table, and towering bookshelves. Around the room were sliding doors. One had a giant ax painted across the door and the words GENGHIS DIVISION. The next had a feather and the words MACHIAVELLI DIVISION. The next one had a catapult and the words HANNIBAL DIVISION. There was a musket and the words NAPOLEON DIVISION, and then a sword and the words ALEXANDER DIVISION.
“This is the common area for plebes,” Marsh informed him. “Those signs? Those are the doors to the five living quarters for trainees, the ‘divisions,’ all named after prominent figures in military history—generals and a strategist. Five sides to a pentagon, five divisions.” He studierd Tom a moment. “Now, it’s time you saw the training rooms, Mr. Raines. I think he’s ready, if you concur, Ms. Ossare?”
Olivia’s face froze. “I concur, General,” she said shortly. “Now’s the time.” She strode past Tom and pressed the button for the elevator.
They rode up to the training simulation rooms on floor thirteen. Marsh glanced at the information dockets by a door, and pressed a finger to his lips. “Come in here.”
He opened the door to reveal a vast, dark chamber. Tom’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, and then he saw them: a group of a dozen or so teenagers stretched out on cots in a ring, eyes closed.
Tom was thrown by their zombielike silence, by their stillness, by the EKG monitors with jagged lines registering their heart rhythms. What were they even doing? Marsh called it a simulation, but he didn’t see any VR visors or gloves or even one of the old-fashioned sensor bars. No one was gesturing or waving. No one was moving at all, in fact. They looked more like they were patients in some coma ward.
General Marsh gestured for him to come back out of the room. “Those are plebes,” he told Tom in the hallway. “They’re running a group scrimmage. Before they get into advanced tactical training, plebes are drilled in teamwork exercises. They’re also acclimated to the neural processors in their brains interfacing with something other than their own bodies.”
It took Tom a few seconds to comprehend the words: neural processors … in their brains …
He stopped walking. “Wait, what?” He swung around to look at the two adults. “What do you mean, processors in their brains?”
Neither Marsh nor Olivia reacted. It was as if they’d both expected this.
Marsh said, “To become a trainee here, Mr. Raines, you have to have a neural processor installed in your head. It’s a very sophisticated computer that interacts directly with your brain. You’re still human afterward, just something extra as well.”
Olivia’s hand squeezed his shoulder. Tom pulled away from it. “You didn’t say anything about—” he began.
“What did you think, son?” General Marsh raised his thin eyebrows. “Our Combatants control machines, and they fight machines. You’ve got quick synapses yourself. But your brain isn’t machine fast. Not yet. Those kids in there? Their brains are.”
Tom understood the zombielike stillness of those kids: the computers were inside their heads. The simulation they were using to train was running inside the computers that were inside their brains.
“All the trainees undergo the procedure, Tom. It’s safe.” Marsh’s eyes riveted to Tom’s forehead. “What you teenagers have in great supply—and we adults do not—is neural elasticity. Your brain’s adaptable. Adults and neural processors don’t go together. We tried it, and it turned ugly. Adult brains couldn’t adjust to the new hardware. So we use teenagers. By virtue of your youth, your brains are primed for enhancement. The fact is, you can’t control Indo-American combat machines in space if you can’t interface with them. To become a Combatant, you need to cross some of that distance between human and computer yourself.”
Tom gaped at him. “So all of the trainees here, and those combatants on the news, have all got these neural processors? Even Elliot Ramirez has a computer in his brain?”
“That’s right. Even Elliot has one.”
“What about the Russo-Chinese Combatants?”
“They have them, too. This is top secret information. The public doesn’t know this, but it’s the key to everything. This is how the war’s fought. Combatants use the neural processors to interface with the unmanned drones in space, to control them, and wage battle against the drones controlled by the neural processors of Russo-Chinese Combatants.”
Tom looked back and forth between the general and the social worker. He remembered that expression on Olivia’s face a few minutes ago when Marsh talked about showing him the training room, and his thoughts dwelled upon it. She’d expected his reaction. They’d both expected it. This was the catch. And they’d just decided to ambush him with it.
He found himself thinking of Neil and the way he said Elliot Ramirez wasn’t a real human. His dad had been right. Elliot was part computer.
Tom regarded them warily. “Does it change people?”
“No,” General Marsh said.