[Vfw-times] Story: Logs of a Wanderer 3/6

[Jason]

As If Things Couldn't Get Any Worse...
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Log Entry 0003
Begin Recording

I take it you've heard of a guy named Murphy, and his laws. Remember the
most prominent one? "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the
worst possible time."

That basically could sum up my life to this point. Some might say I'm being
overly pessimistic, but after what happened to me when I regained
consciousness, it seemed to fit.

If you've ever been in a hospital, and the doctors have no idea what is
making you sick, then you might be able to understand exactly what I went
through over the next few weeks. Medical exams, testing every part of my
body. Psychological exams, trying to find out what made me snap. And, most
importantly, at least in the eyes of the medical team studying me, sitting
me down with a shrink for hours on end, watching that damned recording of me
in the holodome, trying to find out what had made me "go off the deep end",
as my squad commander had put it.

I finally got around to telling them about that "coldness" that took over
during the combat drills, and that freaked them out a bit. They finally
decided to put me through some combat drills while I was wired up to all
manner of diagnostic equipment. I looked like a walking sensor array. But
the results, however, were well worth my momentary discomfort.

Somehow, and they never figured out how, as far as I know, when my DNA was
being coded, the scientists had managed to stumble onto a sequence that
would separate my hostility and rage into a separate entity within me.
However, it only half worked. Instead of making me the perfect soldier, calm
and collected under any circumstances, it gave me an inner demon. All my
rage, hatred, anger, every dark aspect of my soul was bound up into
something separate from my conscious mind. Fighting, even during training,
allowed the two parts of me, light and dark, to merge. However, because I'd
never experienced any of these darker emotions until I started my training,
when my dark side merged fully during the combat sim, there was no way I
could control it. And that explained the red haze that clouded my vision. "A
physical manifestation of your emotions taking control of your conscious
mind," my psychologist said. As if I needed a shrink to tell me that.

Well, it took a while, but I eventually learned to control my dark side, or
Ice, as I named him (at least I think it was my idea to call him that). It
takes a great effort, but I can control him, somewhat. And this also
explains why I got my call sign. Yeah, corny, I know, but what else are you
going to call a person able to punch holes in 6" reinforced concrete with a
wild, uncontrollable side, to his face, no less, and expect not to get
pounded? As for the spelling, that happened when some clerk ran the
documents through a spellchecker without changing it back to Earth Standard
English first. I think it was set to Saurian.

And that was the end of my combat career. There was no way, however, that
the CDF would let me become a civilian. I thought I was in for a desk job
somewhere. Yep, you guessed it, no such luck.

If Murphy had been within arms reach of me, I would've made what I did to
the holographic Grunt seem like petting a kitten.

End Recording
Log Entry 0003 closed