Recency Bias
content warnings for descriptions of violence, gore, executions, and allusions to suicide
Every time they kill me, I have to rate the pain on a scale of 1-10.
It always feels like a 10, but they don't like it when I rate everything the same. "Be subjective," they say. "Treat every death like it's your last."
So I try my best to give them the data they want.
The last one was bisection (8.9). Next one scheduled is bludgeoning (last time they tested this one it was a 7- they like to retest every few months.) but that won't be for a few hours- they give me breaks to regenerate, thankfully. It's difficult to write in my current semi-state, but I know I'll be too dizzy to log anything down after the beating I'll be getting at noon.
And there’s no way they won’t have noticed the internet being active on my logbook laptop by evening, I can only hope I'm doing this right.
So I’m sharing my story now, in between shifts of agony.
It all started 55 years ago, during the war. I was 19 when I got drafted, twinkle in my eye and spring in my step both ripped from me just a few weeks in. When I wasn’t watching and narrowly avoiding genuine honest-to-god torture beyond my imagination (at the time) being inflicted on other members of my platoon, I was watching and narrowly avoiding torture being inflicted on the members of the opposing side, or worse- the locals.
Agony was the currency we traded, the only chips we dealt in.
Agony was the stale bread and butter in my M.R.E.
Agony is the only thing I've known since then.
With a single exception.
Stuart Dobson was the only person keeping me relatively sane in those few weeks I spent on the battlefield, ironic as it is now. We went to high school together and he was always the class clown- an attitude he managed to carry with him into the trenches as well. Even if we were going through hell, he’d find a way to bring our spirits up in the hottest circles.. A well placed firecracker or stolen ration went a long way. And whenever he was about to get reamed by our commanding officer, he would always blush a cherry shade of red, blue eyes panicked but mouth still stuck in a smirk- even as the spit was flying in his face you could see him still barely stifling a laugh. Somehow, nothing ever seemed to break Dobson, even up to his final moments.
Our final mission together (and final mission period) was a suicide mission. It was a foggy, humid morning the day they sent us out to die. I'd taken half of the blame for one of his schemes, and either since our C.O was in a bad mood or there just weren’t any other expendable soldiers left before new recruits shipped in later that day, he sent us both to be tunnel rats. If you don’t know what a tunnel rat is; be lucky you can look it up, because neither did I. All we were told was to get scurrying as far into the trenches as we could before returning, I assume now that he was going to use our corpses as markers for sightlines. I hope that he could make do with one- we only made it a minute or two into the maze before Dobson accidentally kicked a rock onto a landmine and had his leg blown off. I was behind him, so I missed most of the shrapnel, but I was thrown back by the suddenness of the explosion- seeming to shake the dirt walls of our enclosure as gravel and blood flew over me in a spectacle of destruction. Ears ringing, I could barely hear his cries of pain- but he still bore a grin, even if this one was born out of a sort of adrenaline numbing agent. Through curses and chuckles and a wheezing cough, he beckoned me over- and though I was frozen in fear, I eventually made my way closer to his pale form. He unhooked his bronze locket from around his neck, pressing it into my hands, letting stunted words escape his lips;
“This… Is an heirloom. This locket.. Is the only reason I've made it this far. The only reason I didn’t flunk high school and get sent to die here two years earlier.” He coughed again loudly, now hacking up some blood.
“Dobbs, Dobbs. Stay with me, stay with me.. I can get aid. I can get help...”
He just chuckled, shaking his head sadly.
“My luck’s run dry, Smith. I’m not getting thrown back into the fray with you after this, I’m not even making it to the pasture.. Just let me pass the heirloom on. What do you want to take with you?”
“I don’t want to take anything, I just don’t want to die out there.”
Dobson nodded solemnly, using the last of his strength to squeeze my hands with the locket still tucked in my palms. I felt his life drain from his fingertips into mine, before he finally went limp… collapsing into the dirt fully with a sigh of dead air.
I sat there cowering over him, holding his cold hand for what felt like decades, though it was probably only a minute or two. I let the locket slip through my fingers to rest on his chest before rising to my feet and stupidly peering over the wall to check my surroundings..
..Before promptly getting shot in the head. I thought that it must have been partially caught by the helmet- because everything was numb for a moment, but only for a moment, before every nerve in my brain was flooded with searing white hot pain and confusion. Every synapse was working overtime to fire off signals of distress, sheer utter panic overwhelming me as I dropped to the ground like a rock. It felt like I had a distinct, separate migraine in every lobe of my brain, but it couldn’t be that bad- I was still alive, after all. I was snapped back into reality when I looked up to see my commanding officer staring at me from the corner of the tunnel, evidently scared shitless and blue in the face. I touched my cheek to feel the blood draining down my temples, gushing like a sickly, sticky water fountain.. So I ran. My flight response kicked in and I was soaring past him despite Dobb’s death and my need for medical attention.. I heard him barking breathless orders at me, fighting his own cowardice for some sense of control, but they went in one ear and out the other, my body running on pure instinct to escape at this point. I ran through the trenches back towards base and into a new tunnel- crawling like my life depended on it. This time, I was the one running on adrenaline, wading through what felt like a mile of dirt and mud while oozing blood behind me like a slugged up snail. The tunnel spat me out by a familiar shaded field by a riverbank, water stretching far out into the fog. Swim away or run into the woods? The boats would be in soon.. Deciding to assess my own condition before planning my next steps, I sprinted over to duck behind a tree on the edge of the water so I could wash the blood off of my face. I took my helmet off to use as a makeshift bucket, drawing water from the stream- but felt queasy as I noticed the two mirrored holes on either side of the brim spewing out water. I stared deeply into the blue, into my reflection, only to feel nauseous to the point of throwing up when I could now clearly see where the holes lined up. One small red hole the size of a dime behind my right ear, and a flowering exit wound the size of a bottlecap along the tip of my left cheekbone.
After that, I got pretty woozy. The adrenaline had been completely burnt and spent so all I was left with was a dwindling supply of cortisol and the faint sound of a foghorn in the distance. All I could bring myself to do was stumble back over to the base of the tree and crumple against the bark.
The next few hours after the ship arrived were blurry. Once the troops that were being brought to my garrison had all disembarked the boat, I was spotted pretty fast. After the also pretty fast discovery of my somehow-survived injuries, they loaded me onto the ship for testing and eventual return to the USA. I still remember my beating hope for honorable discharge– or even a dishonorable discharge, any kind of dismissal. I probably would have made it home by Christmas if the exit wound hadn’t started healing before nightfall.
The crew were baffled, understandably so. The wound on my left cheek, the blossom- had already begun to close up before they could fully bandage and treat it- by morning, it had fully closed, only leaving behind a patch of slightly off color skin (that corrected itself a few nights later.) By the time I made it back to the US, I take it that phone calls had already been made, because as soon as I disembarked from the ship some suits were ready to escort me to a black sedan parked on the road just past the docks. I was practically thrown in without much say in the matter, and before long was administered with some pretty heavy sedatives that knocked me out for the rest of the trip.
I awoke sitting strapped into a chair in a sterile white room the size of a gymnasium, divided in the middle by a thick pane of protective glass a few yards in front of me, with a speaker sitting just in front of that pane. Three men in lab coats and one in a black suit stood on the other side behind a long counter, the three researchers looking rather nervous and the suited man looking at me with an expectant, piercing stare.
When he saw that I had awoken, he walked closer to the glass, closer towards my chair, and spoke into a microphone wired to the speaker.
Smith? I’m pleased to inform you that you have been relieved of your duties as a soldier for the U.S Army, and have been promoted from tunnel rat to lab rat. After witnessing the events that took place at your former outpost, we have decided that we have found new use for you here- not as a rifleman, but a target.
My heartrate quickened. I fought against the restraints to no avail, ropes only tensing against my skin.
After some initial confirmation tests to judge the extent to your regeneration abilities, how long it takes, any weaknesses, et cetera, we hope to have you on a consistent schedule of two experiments per day, but that number may change depending on how the initials go.
Trembling in fear and confusion, I shouted at him. “Experiments? Tests? Target? What are you going to do to me??” Part of me already knew, but I needed to hear it aloud.
We’re going to test methods of execution on you, Mr. Smith. You should consider yourself lucky, most deserters aren’t offered a promotion, let alone a position as special as this. For your continued compliance in these experiments, we will send your family stipends on your behalf- as life insurance for a fallen soldier of course. Officially, you died on that battlefield, even if in actuality it wasn’t for long.
My ears wouldn’t stop ringing after that. As he continued on explaining what they would be doing, what sickened me the most was how he tried to frame it as a positive. “Your pain means less pain for someone else down the line.” “Think of it from a utilitarian stance: the total amount of suffering in the world will have decreased thanks to your contributions.”
After that, a pair of researchers I never saw brought in the rest of the rope and got started setting up a noose from behind. This ended up being the one and only time I was given the typical treatment they do for capital punishment- I guess it was easy enough to analyze and verify, and already deemed effective enough for use on the general public, no further research needed. As they looped the rough wire around my neck, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself- in such an insane situation, what else could I do but laugh? I kept chuckling as they finished the knots and fastened it to an unseen pole above my head, hoisted me up out of the chair onto my feet, then onto the chair, then kicked the chair out from under me. I felt a crack, but thankfully was too numbed by the poor airflow and blood circulation to properly register it as more than a vibration and strange sensation below my chin. As it tightened around my throat, drying my mouth and making my head feel fuzzy, I laughed until I ran out of air to laugh with. Hanging there like an idiot and feeling like my eyes were about to bulge out of my skull, I blinked out S.O.S and wiggled my fingers as if I were showing off a magic trick, to which the main suit only responded “Remarkable.” After that, they didn’t waste any more time dragging their feet with the tried and true- I think the second execution they tried was immolation.
Since that day, I've been stabbed, drowned, mauled, electrocuted, even had my entire body crushed and flattened into a pile of viscera and sinew by a hydraulic press. New methods crop up every couple of months; I don’t bother keeping track at this point. I’ve tried escaping, but this facility is well guarded, and whenever I get caught I just get demeaning and further stressful rules and restrictions tacked onto my usual daily rounds of agony.
“The total amount of suffering in the world will have decreased thanks to your contributions”. What a load of shit. I doubt I'm decreasing anything, being kept here. Every now and then they’ll bring groups in to watch from that space behind the glass- though I doubt they’ve managed to figure out how to replicate my immortality, I don’t doubt they’ve told the troublemakers that have come to watch my fates otherwise. I’ve seen it hundreds of times- they get marched in, sit down to watch me whilst rolling their eyes and denying to themselves that this experience will do anything to break their rebellious streak, then I’m killed, but not quite. Though they’re bad at following orders, they’re still soldiers, and they’ve become accustomed to watching the light fade from someone’s eyes, used to watching life get snuffed out. But me, the trick candle? That lingering not quite is enough to instill some fear to put out the fire in their eyes. I writhe and I twitch and if my mouth is intact, I scream- if not, I blink rapidly in pain assuming my eyes and lids are still intact enough. They’ve taught me how to put on a good show in order for them to cart me out of the chamber with some speck of dignity left, instead of leaving me to slowly regenerate my wounds on the cold floor of the testing chamber. No, if anything, my unending existence here as the cautionary tale to get generations of the government’s killing machines to fall in line and follow orders without question has increased the amount of suffering in the world exponentially, agony begetting agony. I can only wish I died for good in those tunnels decades ago, because when I'm not half dead I feel just as young and spry as I did that day.