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"Status?"
"Well, the project looks promising, but we're still a few years off." "Damn it, man, don't you realize we're losing the war here?" "I can't make them grow up any faster." "But they've showed no signs of the Bee Stinger Syndrome?" "Oh, they're completely infected with the Talionis-L Empathy Pathogen. At this point there's probably nobody left on Earth that isn't under TLEP's influence." "What? I thought that was the aim of your project -- we need our army. How are we supposed to defend ourselves?" "I'm sure whoever's working on a cure for Talionis is doing a fine job, but that's not the charter for our division. Our responsibility is to approach warfare from a different angle, as it were - just in case there is no cure, or incase they only develop a blocker and have to wait for a whole new generation." "But aren't you using children as well?" "Similar, but their children will have to be much older. As you know, the TLEP instills a suicide meme in the victim's consciousness - any act of mortal violence triggers the meme. Even the memory of a murder could trigger it, hence the explosive depopulation when TLEP first vectored into the general population. Death by guilt, as it were." "You don't have to tell me... we're fighting a war one moment, and the next our army's gone. We couldn't do much more than fall back." "That's the truly insidious part of the infection. Even those immune to the increased empathy brought about by TLEP still fear killing themselves the moment they take a life. It's a strong negative force multiplier." "Certainly hasn't stopped the enemy." "Well, it has actually -- for the most part. Anyone fanatic enough on either side can always trade their life for a large number of the enemy... provided they are unhindered by the empathic side effects of TLEP. Any perceived advantage they might have in numbers has clearly been matched by our technological superiority. More bullets versus bigger bullets, as it were." "So what are you doing?" "Well, as you know, conventional brainwashing and hypnosis have had almost no effect in countering the pathogen's meme. We've even experienced some deaths as soon as we put the subjects into the "killer" mindset. So instead we're hoping to mentally re-phrase the act of killing in hopes of bypassing the TLEP's conditioning." "Re-phrase? As what?" "Well, our experiments with adults has been rather poor, and with not a few fatalities... so instead we're hoping to condition the next batch from birth. If we can get them to develop without the knowledge of murder, then with luck we can get them to crew remotes into the battlefield." "You're going to have children pilot tanks?" "Remotely, yes." "And you have high hopes?" "Well, there is the problem that the same time they're developing any significant strategic insights they'll also be at risk of realizing what they are doing. We can shelter them by masking their actions -- having them believe they're just playing a game -- like that kid in that science fiction story. With luck at least one in twenty will remain effective into their teens." "Only one in twenty?" "That is our projection -- still, better than none in twenty. We have encountered a few problems though, but nothing we can't work through." "Problems with the children?" "Oh no, the subjects are fine. The only concern is that we immediately isolate any subject that fully realizes the concept of murder before self terminating. Even though the risk is rather high and could impact the entire creche, the window of opportunity is rather small." "If it's not with the children, then where is the problem?" "It's my team... we've had quite a few succumb to TLEP just working on the project. The closer we get to success, the more the empathic members of the group experience detrimental guilt. We're combating it with hypnotic suggestion and by weeding out the more vulnerable members of the development team. Still, we expect a rather large casualty rate among the staff when live testing starts." "Hmmm, still, if it looks promising you should get extended funding, and staffing." "Indeed. Best to keep hope sanguine." "Sanguine. How appropriate. I wish I had your optimism. The largest army in the world, reduce to standing around and waiting for children to carry on the war. " "They also serve who only stand and wait and all that." |