Made to Order

by Jonathan Strahan

  After a few rounds of cards, Alejandra set up the slideshow. She moved unhurriedly, projecting an aura of quiet he was reluctant to disturb. He wondered again what she thought of him. It alarmed him how desperately he wanted her to like him.

  At the break after the first twenty-minute round of slides, she asked, “Have you scheduled a therapist yet?” It had been a month since they began the experiential phase.

  He felt heat in his cheeks. So she still thought of him as a patient. “No, there’s a waiting list. The VA says they’ll call me.”

  “So you haven’t gotten any meds either?”

  “No.”

  “Damn it,” she said, almost under her breath. He’d never seen her express annoyance—or else he’d missed it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll ask Leo to call again.”

  “It’s not you. This should be part of the treatment. I told him—” She stopped herself. Him—Dr. Subramanian. The past several appointments, he’d not made an appearance. Alejandra had said that he was traveling. “I’ll make some calls,” she said.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Your brother said you’re not sleeping.”

  Leo talked to her? Behind his back?

  “It’s okay,” Alejandra said. She was watching him with those dark eyes. She didn’t need a tablet to read him. “He’s worried about you.”

  “I’m fine.” This was a lie. Sometimes he burst into tears for no reason. His body had developed strange aches. A sharp noise could make him jump out of his skin.

  “Are you having suicidal thoughts?”

  “No.” Another lie. Had he taken too long to answer? He wasn’t sure she believed him. What had Leo told her?

  “It wouldn’t be unusual if those thoughts came back,” she said. “You haven’t been able to feel them for some time. If you want, I can turn down the signals from the DBI. Ease you back down.”

  “You can do that?” Then: “I don’t want to be like before.”

  “Not all the way off, just less... volume. Until you have a therapist. It would give you space to deal with what happened to you in India.”

  So. She had read his file. Shame tightened his chest.

  “I don’t know everything that happened there,” she said. “But I do know that they put you in a position where you had little choice about what to do. They trained you to fight, then put you in the line of fire. Then they gave you tools that made it easy for you to do what they wanted you to do.”

  “You’re just describing how the military works.” His throat was tight.

  “I’m saying you’re not completely responsible. Your options, your degrees of freedom, were restricted by so many things—the rules of engagement, the environment, the ATLAS targeting system—”

  “No. I’m responsible.” He was surprised at how harsh he sounded. “I’m the man in the loop. The SHEP is just another weapon, like a rifle.” He was processing so much information. She knew about ATLAS too? Did she have security clearance? Who had she talked to?

  “ATLAS is much more than a rifle,” she said. “It was designed to make it easy to pull the trigger. It’s called automation bias. They wanted a system where it would be easier for a soldier to follow a suggestion rather than—”

  “I’m not a soldier,” Rashad said. “I’m a Marine.”

  Alejandra stopped, blinked. She was embarrassed, he realized. Maybe the DBI was making it easier for him to read expressions, too.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you’re not Army. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “I’m not offended,” he said. “But a Marine—making hard choices while under fire is what we’re trained for. A machine can’t do that. Robots make bad Marines.” That was something his instructor at special operations school liked to say.

  Alejandra thought for a moment. “If you could go back in time, knowing what you know now, would you stop yourself from doing what you did?”

  “You mean, take away my free will?”

  Her face froze. He’d intended to make her smile, but somehow he’d said it wrong.

  “Here’s what I would do,” Rashad said. “I’d go back in time and take away the sniper’s free will to shoot at me. I’d kill him before he entered that house full of people and climbed to the roof.”

  “That would be the right thing to do? You have no doubt?” It was almost as if she were asking permission.

  “No doubt.” They both seemed surprised by his certainty. Decisiveness had crept back into this thinking.

  They resumed the slides. Blue square. Puppy. Yellow X. Pistol. Yellow X. Sailboat. Once it had been almost relaxing to sit through the cascade of images, but now he felt as if he were riding the bow of a SURC in heavy surf. By the end of the final series he was sweating, nauseated. He turned away from her, flipped up his eye patch, rubbed away the sweat. He didn’t want her to see the wound.

  She brought him water. They chatted about the recent heatwave. And then she said, “I have something to tell you.”

  He could hear the edge in her voice.

  “Dr. Subramanian’s taken a position back east,” she said. “Cornell’s opening a new neuroscience lab and he’ll head it.”

  Rashad couldn’t speak for a long moment. “And you? You’re going with him?”

  “In a few weeks. I need to finish my work with him, to get my Ph.D.”

  The room seemed to shift. It was the strongest, most piercing emotion he’d felt since the bullet. Had the DBI’s neural network strengthened the signal as it passed through? Or shit, weakened it?

  Finally, he said, “So you have no choice.” Another failed attempt at a joke.

  “There are good neurologists here,” she said. “They’ll continue to see you, and they know the protocols. You’re not being abandoned.”

  It didn’t feel that way. “Don’t let them turn down the volume,” he said. “Please. The implant’s working.”

  “I can’t promise you. Your brother wants to end treatment.”

  Another blow. They were coming too fast now, getting past his guard. He said, “Leo can’t do that.”

  “He’s your legal guardian. He has medical power of attorney. If he wants to end treatment, I can’t stop him.” She touched his hand. She’d never done that before. “But I’ll try to convince him to keep you in treatment.”

  “The DBI stays on,” he said. “My choice.”

  THE NIGHT AFTER Pierce and Conseco died, Rashad kept his shit together by staying busy and focusing on the next day’s mission. He did not break down when he was ordered to visit the family of the people who’d been in Building 31. He made his apology and the company captain paid the survivors 100,000 rupees, which came out to about $1,100 US per victim. One old man, four women, and three children. The surviving brother claimed they weren’t secessionists and didn’t know the sniper. Through the translator he said, “When they tell you they’re coming into your home, you have no choice but to let them in.”

  Rashad projected calm when the squad rotated out of Tartuk, said he was happy to spend the next four weeks in the relative safety of Srinagar while they waited to return to Camp Pendleton.

  The SHEP never left Tartuk; it was passed to another squad staying in the village. But the robot had already taught him what he needed to understand, just as the Rifleman’s Creed had promised. My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. Once they reached stateside there’d be no more open carry; his sidearm and rifle would stay in the armory when he wasn’t on the shooting range.

  So. It would have to be here, in the barracks in Srinagar.

  He’d heard about jumpers from the Golden Gate, who changed their minds between the bridge and the water. He wasn’t that kind of person. His mind was made up.

  His body, however, betrayed him. When he awoke in the hospital, he realized that his hand must have shifted, or his head pulled back. Some subconscious reflex. The bullet entered at an oblique angle and exited without ki
lling him. By then, however, the failure didn’t bother him.

  LEO AND MARISA were arguing. Rashad could hear them from his bedroom. For the past few weeks he’d chosen to spend most of his time here. He was no longer interested in watching Leo and Marisa’s TV shows, eating the meals they prepared. He came out to microwave his own food and take a shit and sometimes, when they were asleep, pace the circle of the living room, kitchen, and dining room. He left the house only for his regular appointments with Alejandra. He’d refused to visit the therapist she’d found for him. He needed isolation and quiet for the work he was doing.

  The arguing stopped and then they knocked at his door. Kept knocking. He let them in. They stood over him as he sat on the bed, hands on knees. He hated himself for putting them through all this. They were good people.

  “Dude,” Leo said. “This isn’t working. You can see it’s not working, right?” He described Rashad’s various behaviors over the past few weeks, as if Rashad wasn’t aware of them.

  “I can leave,” he said.

  “That’s not what we’re saying!” Marisa said.

  Leo said, “We just have to talk to Alejandra before she bails on you. There’s something wrong with the implant. The way you’re feeling, this isn’t you.”

  “You’re wrong,” Rashad said. “This is finally me.” He could feel the DBI working, like a cave tunnel widening day by day, letting through more and more water. “I can’t go back to what I was before.”

  “That’s the implant telling you that,” Leo said.

  And Rashad thought, What part of your subconscious is making you say that? Whether the subsystem was mechanical or biological made no difference.

  “When we go in tomorrow,” Leo said, “I’m going to tell them to turn that thing off.”

  “That’s not what I agreed to,” Marisa said hotly.

  Rashad was surprised they weren’t on the same page. He’d thought they’d been arguing about how to confront him, not what to say.

  Marisa said, “Numbness isn’t the answer.”

  “Thank you,” Rashad said. “I have to—” His voice broke. How could he explain that he wanted this pain? That he believed in it. He’d turned the bedroom into a kind of arena—Rashad Before Bullet versus Rashad After—and he didn’t want to shrink from those blows. It would be immoral to not feel that pain. What kind of coward would he be if now, after finally regaining the ability to regret what he’d done, he refused to face it? “I have to take responsibility.”

  “You did what you had to do,” Leo said.

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t take responsibility,” Marisa said. She knelt so that she and Rashad were eye to eye. “I’m saying you don’t have to keep beating yourself up about it.”

  “Yeah, I do,” Rashad answered. “That’s the point.”

  “You can ask God for forgiveness.”

  Leo groaned. “Can we keep this on track?”

  “Why would I do that?” Rashad said to her. “So I can feel better?” He shook his head. “I’m not going to shrug this off. I’m not going to move on, now that I have a second chance.” The bullet that had meant to be his punishment had robbed him of it.

  “Please,” Marisa said. “It’s not so hard. You can ask Jesus to come into your heart.”

  “Definitely not.” No more intercessors, strengthening some signals of forgiveness, dampening remorse. “My heart,” he said, “is crowded enough.”

  “PICK A CARD,” Alejandra said. “Any card.”

  Yellow X. Red circle. Green triangle.

  “Why are we doing this?”

  “Humor me. One final exam.”

  “More data for your dissertation.” It was a mean thing to say. He tapped the green triangle.

  She put the card away and said, “Okay, pick a card.”

  “You’re not going to replace the card?”

  “No.”

  That annoyed him, this change in the rules. Wouldn’t this mess up her results? He looked at the red circle, then the yellow X. He suspected she wanted him to choose that second card, and he didn’t appreciate being manipulated. He tapped the red circle.

  She removed the circle and dealt a new card. Blue square. He quickly tapped it. She took it away and dealt the circle again.

  “Oh come on,” he said.

  “Pick a card,” she said.

  “You want me to pick the yellow X. Why?”

  “Pick whichever you want.”

  He flicked the red circle towards her and it slid off the table. Immediately, he felt like a dick. She calmly retrieved the card and dealt a new one from the deck.

  A yellow X. Two of them on the table now, side by side.

  “Pick a card,” she said.

  He couldn’t remember a time where there’d been a pair of matching cards on the table. Was this some new requirement phoned in by Dr. S? Or maybe she was going rogue, defying the doctor’s orders. There’d always been a tension between those two, a struggle for power—the grad student chafing under the control of the mentor. In the early appointments, he didn’t have the emotional equipment to figure out their relationship. But now the DBI floodgates were open. Everything his back-brain had noticed and reacted to was available to him now. He could make any decision he wanted—including the decision to not participate.

  “I’m done,” he said.

  “Please, Rashad. Pick a card.”

  “There’s no choice. They’re the same.”

  “Think of them as right and left. Which do you choose?”

  “There’s no point. You’re leaving.”

  “All right,” she said evenly. “Do you want to sit down?”

  He realized that in his anger he’d stood up. He was looming over the table, his heart beating fast.

  “Can you put those away?” he asked. The pair of X’s looked like the eyes of a cartoon corpse.

  “Could you pass them to me?” she replied.

  Fuck you. Immediately, he felt childish—but still didn’t want to give in. “They’re right in front of you.”

  Suddenly, she looked sad. No, sad was too broad a word—there were more fine-grained descriptors for what he saw in her face. Resignation? Regret? Then she swept the cards towards her, and when she looked up at him again she was assessing him. She’d learned something new about him, he realized. By calling a halt to the test, he’d continued the test.

  This unnerved him. He unclenched his hands. Took his seat. He couldn’t look directly at her. He could see that her hand still held the deck of cards.

  “I know you’re going through a rough time,” she said. “But I want you to hold on. You can call me anytime. I’ll do anything in my power to help you.”

  Except stay.

  “There’s something else.” There it was again, the same hesitancy as when she told him she was leaving. He understood now that the assuredness he’d seen in her in those first appointments was a kind of uniform she put on. He’d done that himself, many times. “I need to tell you about a part of the treatment.”

  “Okay…”

  “We had to decide on some images as controls—we hardcoded some to a set value. For example, some images always have an output of a positive value.”

  “Puppies? All those pictures of dogs?”

  “It wasn’t that, but yes, something like that.”

  “Without telling me.” He couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice had gone soft. “It wouldn’t be a control if we told you. And we also chose one to be a negative value. Something’s that’s always aversive. Something you’d avoid at all costs—even if later you had to make up a story for why you chose what you did.”

  Her hand still lay on the deck. And then he understood. His chest tightened. “Yellow X.”

  “You’ve never chosen it. Not once. At first, you couldn’t choose any card. But then we turned on the DBI, and we made it difficult for you to choose that card—and then impossible.”

  “You can’t know that. I
could have chosen it.”

  “Yet you never did.”

  “Deal the cards.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Do it.”

  She shuffled through the deck, chose three, and laid them out. Green rectangle. Red circle. Yellow X.

  She watched him. As soon as he chose, she’d record it in her tablet, and that would be their final interaction. Tomorrow she’d fly across the country to join Dr. Subramanian. They’d make their careers off of his injury, his handicap, his crimes.

  He was tired of being data. He knew which card he’d choose, but that didn’t mean he’d have to share it with her.

  “Sorry, Alejandra.” He stood up. “You don’t get to know.”

  THE GUN SAT inside the open box. He felt queasy looking at the gleaming metal, as if the weight of it bowed the floor, drawing the walls towards him.

  You did what you had to do. Bullshit, of course. Yes, in the final moments he was part of an unstoppable chain reaction. Neurons fired, his fist closed, the palm switch activated, the SHEP’s gun discharged, bullets followed the path decided by physics. But that didn’t mean he could deny the series of choices he’d made to that point. He chose to enlist. He chose to go to systems operation school. He chose to send the SHEP into that home. The women and children in that house were simply the last dominoes to fall in a sequence he had initiated years ago. Maybe Alejandra was right, and ATLAS had been rigged for Yes, designed to take the burden from his shoulders—it was right there in its name, for Christ’s sake. But none of that absolved him.

  He knew what sin was. And he didn’t want to believe in a world where sinners escaped justice.

  He reached into the box. His hand was shaking. Coward, he thought. He grunted and forced his hand around the grip.