10
December 6th.
Matt Burke:
My eyes burn pretty much nonstop.
The TGs and gameheads call it “sim-sear.” Some people get it after too much time in VR (and I’ve been doing twenty-hour stretches in this special kind of hell they insist is “training”). No matter how real they make the sims, they’re still made of light, and they glow and shimmer in a way that plain old matter doesn’t.
What it means is migraine-grade headaches and that sand-in-the-eyes feeling that gets you after you’ve looked into really bright light, like a flare or an arc welder. At least they don’t give me any crap about wearing my sunglasses inside.
It ‘raqs my aim, though. But I can blame a lot of that on the “gun” they gave me: the plastic remote-controlled POS they call an “Interface Combat Weapon,” which I can’t hit the broad side of a bus with despite all the impressive ad-copy selling it. Score one for the toaster-illiterate.
The “gun” and the eyeball-fry are just a few special details about this experience.
“Simulation Immersion Training” sucks in ways a real live “Hell Week” never touched. If I had to explain what the difference is—and I expect I’ll get asked frequently as they start putting more fresh faces through this ‘raqing like they say they plan to—I’d have to tell the ones that have already been through a Special Operations Basic like BUDS or Ranger School Assessment and Eval to imagine doing it while continuously whacked on a cocktail of bad party drugs. That, and they’ve replaced the endless hours of mindless PT designed to break your body and mind with endless hours of mindless deep-shit combat. Put the two together, and you’ve got a whole new level of fun.
Over the last five days (assuming I haven’t lost count) they’ve run me through eight decades worth of hot gunfights. The gamer crowd would wet themselves over this shit: full emersion with all senses running—you can smell the sweat and blood and smoke and powder, feel the air whip as shells fly past your head, get kicked around by artillery that hits too close… even the terrain under foot feels real. And the bullets, of course: they took special care with the simulated wounds to give you all the joys of getting shot. They even pump chemicals into you that dip you into shock.
My most persistent impression every time I get shot in here (which is a lot, given the sims they throw) is that the pain of the wounds is actually their main selling point for this new sim training. Combined with whatever it is that they keep pumping into you IV, the fear of getting shot is pretty damn close to the real deal. And it doesn’t get any easier with repetition. At least, not until they let it.
Their strategy is pretty transparent once you get through the early “games”: First they drop you into over-the-top shit like D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, the Chosin Reservoir, Hamburger Hill, Tet, Mogadishu. In each battle you’re wearing simmed gear that’s period-accurate, and you pay for it. Repeatedly. You get yourself shot or shredded with shrapnel, and they either make you start the whole battle over or they just “respawn” you at random as some other grunt deep in the shit. I figure my record for getting killed in one battle was somewhere around eighteen times—that was Omaha Beach. (Fuck “Private Ryan”.)
But then, after you’re beat half-to-death and loopy-punchy from getting shot a bazillion times and dreading the next run almost as bad as a real war, you restart the same set of sims, but this time in one of their super-suits with the AI weapons and their Hal coolly helping you along. You still get shot, but the hits feel more like getting kicked (which is a massive improvement over the prior evolution), and you don’t have to suffer sim-death.
Comparatively, it’s a walk in the park, like a reward for suffering through the History Channel version. All I have to do is hump in the weight of the gear (which really isn’t worse than a full third-line field ruck), point my space gun where Hal says I’ve got a shot (even if I don’t see it) and watch the enemy get shredded. And if the hump is any significant distance, there’s this rush of big VTOL fans whipping up a hurricane around me and the next thing I know I’m getting hauled up by the back of my neck and then fast-dropped on top of my next target.
Bottom line: it’s too good to be true. I feel like I’m in a commercial—an immersion product demo carefully gauged to sell.
But I dream the fucking sims when I’m sleeping (what little that is). And moving through my day in the real world (what little that is) just doesn’t feel right. And my eyes are killing me.
And I can’t aim for shit.
They have a brand new humongous tactical firing range down here. Lanes with moving and pop-up targets, a VR-enhanced kill house, and a “free-fire” chamber as big as a hangar—big enough to practice team IADs and God knows what else. The expense barely makes sense, given all the existing quality military facilities. Unless you want to be able to practice something you don’t want anyone else to see.
Right now that suits me fine, because I really can’t hit jack with this supposedly self-aiming weapon, no matter how much prompting and sight-graphics Hal gives me on my visor.
First problem: the “gun” has no sights. The whole top of the thing is just a flat slab of plastic, most of which being the 100-round magazine. Not that you can easily line the thing up with your eye anyway: the big helmet and collar of the suit won’t let you. You have to rely on the heads-up aiming.
“It helps if you pretend you’re playing an FPS, Major,” I get a lazy drawl from the lane next to me as I struggle—I hadn’t even realized someone else had come in. I click my weapon down into the carry-rack on the front right of my armor. The target graphics on my visor automatically power down, letting me see who’s talking. It’s another suit, helmet off to show me a chopped dirty-blonde head of hair and an easy grin. He looks like one of those hot-shit boy-soldiers that never grew up, just grew lines—he’s probably at least my age. And he’s got Captain’s bars on his armored collar.
“Captain David Manning, Sir,” he introduces himself, not bothering to salute (but then, his arms are full of helmet and ICW). “US Army Rangers, Zone Three.”
“’FPS’?” I’ve lost him already.
“First-Person Shooter. Like in a game,” he offers, not sounding condescending. “You aim with your controller, target reticule lights up when it’s on. Bang. It can actually be easier than acquiring a sight-picture with optical or iron sights…”
He racks his weapon into its “holster,” gets his helmet on, and steps into his lane. Then he draws and raises the gun up to plant the square stock into his shoulder to show me how it’s done. But even he seems to struggle. His shots are slow. He really isn’t doing much better than I am.
“My problem is I’m used to firing single-shot—no full auto—make every round count. Dee wants you to squeeze and hold.”
“’Dee’?” I feel like I’ve missed a briefing or twelve.
“Datascan. The AI. I’ve heard some of the lab-coats call it ‘Dee.’ Anyway, Dee wants you to squeeze down and hose the target, let it shoot when it gets the target lined up. That’s just too weird. You’re waving the gun and it goes off when it wants to.”
“I know what you mean,” I admit. “I want it to mean something when I squeeze a trigger.”
“You still can, gentlemen.” A new voice pops in on my helmet link: feminine, warm, sexy-smooth.
“Doctor Parry,” she introduces herself. “SENTAR Interface Combat Program. Look up and left…”
She waves from the shielded observation deck. Dark brown bob haircut, big eyes, great smile.
“Just use the reticule for sighting and squeeze like a conventional trigger—you can even tune the action. Takes some practice, but it works for conventional targets. For the hard-to-hit set ups, you’ve got to squeeze and hold: picking out targets in crowds, hitting projectiles in mid-air…”
“Hitting projectiles?” I really must have missed a briefing.
“Incoming mortars and RPGs. If you can align your reticule fast, you should be able to cut
apart the incoming shell.”
“No shit?” I realize my jaw must be halfway to the floor, though it’s got nothing to do with the tech spiel.
“No shit, Major,” she insists, that smile getting even bigger. “And call me Amber. Figure we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other, being I’m here to help make sure your gear works for you.”
I think I’ll needing a lot of help.
Grayman Book One: Acts of War Page 27
