Chapter 1

First day of patient #32984 in the "Institute".

DAY ONE

[Carter looks at the camera seriously. He looks healthy. He is an English man, blonde hair, blue eyes, a light beard and his skin slightly “burned”.]

So… um… I don’t really know what to talk about. They said me to register all of what I’ve done with my life, but considering recent facts, I think only the last 3 months are worth somethi- [Unintelligible voice is heard from somewhere] Oh well, they said I should start from when I was born. [Breathes] I was born on England, don’t remember where exactly, in the year… 19-something. F**k, all this years on that Hell made me forget all my personal information. Still, let’s ignore those things. I was poor on that time, my father worked as a worker at a factory of shoes, and my mother stayed at home with us. I don’t remember my Dad, since I barely saw him, but it doesn’t matter, right? [Looks somewhere, out of the camera of focus. A voice says “Yes”. Carter moves his head to indicate acceptation of the voice, and resumes focus onto the camera] 

So, going to what I actually did, I remember that in those times, I was forced to get onto the military force. You probably think it is just doing shitloads of exercise and get yelled at by some guy, right? If you think that, well, you’re right. But somehow, even when I didn’t like exercise or getting yelled because I breathed one more time than what I should, I liked it. No, I loved it. Maybe I was a masochist back then, but I joined the Army for real, and was inside the Army for a good while. Soon enough, people saw my potential and got me ascended on the military scale. 

[Carter takes a deep breath] Ah, those were the good days, not like now, when you just pull the trigger and everything else is done by computer. In those days, we had to learn to quickly aim. Unlike now, when bullets always go for the head, I had to aim to the stomach. Yes, it looks and sounds ridiculous, but then it war was about hurting enemies, so that the enemy team would need to take care of those wounded soldiers, and then they would lose by having too many retards on their hospitals. [Smiles]

For about five years, there was pure training and, sometimes, we would have to take down some crazy son of a b***h because he was threatening to kill or destroy something. Remember the attack that 9^th of September of 2001? Well, we had to prevent events like that. It wasn’t really hard, for if the guy was at plain sight we just called the sniper and with a single bullet, it ended it. However, most of the times, for obvious reasons, they would hide themselves. So we had to get there, and when I wasn’t at charge, they would try to negotiate, using violence just as a desperate measure. 

However, I was the kind of guy who just wanted to end it all, and so I just waited for him or her to let his or her guard down, and before he could blink, there would a bullet right between his eyes, hitting the cerebellum and instantly rendering him paralytic for a couple of seconds, just before he died. Most of my companions thought that maybe I was a little sadistic, and… I was. Actually, I felt something in myself that made me have pleasure in killing people who opposed a threat for my country. I don’t know to what I could compare it, but the closest I have come to that pleasure that most people would be familiar with would be an intense orgasm. Most of my leaders were obviously somewhat against that, because they thinked I shouldn’t be killing them without trying to negotiate, but to be fair, they had never said a s**t about talking. Actually, now that I remember it, my instructor told me that any way I wanted to do it was fine and I shouldn’t worry about the consequences. But all of those things were just small things compared to what we did at my first experience in war.

[Takes a deep breath, and thinks for a moment]My first real war was somewhere on Middle East, when there were some political tensions so high we had to send some soldiers, including me, so that countries like Kuwait would stop whining about them being at risk. I was like, “why do they even need help when they can buy practically anything with all their oil?” Still, England and Kuwait had a deal, where Kuwait would send to England cheap oil, while England would backup them in case of a war with loads of soldiers, weapons, vehicles… you name it. So we got there, and for a couple of months it was boring as f**k: we just stayed at the frontiers and watched for someone to appear. 

Being inside of the city wasn’t better: again, we would stay there and watch for burglars and guys like that. At least in Kuwait they don’t have some stupid rules against killing people in plain criminal act. However, I have to say that Kuwaitis run so freaking fast. Most of the times, were it not because we were various groups and because of our luck, they would have escaped. So basically, they were like moving targets for me, which at least was some shooting practice.

 Anyway, soon the Shah of Iran started to make some pre-military movements, and they looked like they were going to invade all of the Gulf. Actually, we saw it from months ago, when the Shah decided to stop buying as much oil as he was purchasing it before, so we supposed he would attack one place. What we never thought was that he would take forever to do that. We joked about that he would eventually attack with soldiers and camels, since he would run out of oil. What we didn’t see until it was late was that Russia started importing a little more oil than usual, and that extra oil was sended to Iran.

 Soon, Iran used a technique very similar to the ones that Germany used in World War Two: they sended all their units at once. We sorely underestimated their military power. To get you the idea, we had soldier posts every 50 km in the frontier. Iran’s army just plowed through them, because they were only to recon the perimeter. I was lucky to not be there; just 100 km to the east, there it was, the almighty and all-powerful armed forces of Iran. I could hear the jets one hour after the attack supposedly started, and I turned around to see if there was something.

I saw fire.

 A whole city burned, just right in front of my eyes, and there was nothing I could do to help it. I didn’t know if someone survived, how strong was our army versus Iran’s army, what exactly happened.

However, I knew there was one thing for sure:

War had started for real.