'The Last Warrior' - by Adam Carlton

I volunteered.

“You were volunteered,” they jeered, my sons.

I did it for you, I thought, thrown into that hellscape so you didn't have to. Buying time, time for the land-drones to get perfected, go into mass production.

I remember the briefing officer: “It's not that we can't build robotic soldiers, we can. But we can't give them the brains. They don't yet know how to be soldiers.”

To be fair, our training was excellent. Suitably adjusted of course: we were all in our forties and fifties. By the end we had excellent tactical skills, honed by countless exercises both in the dank woods and sodden trenches of the rainswept training camps and in their clinical combat simulations.

All that meant was that we were roughly on par with the robots. They  trained alongside us; to be fair, they were much better than us: faster, stronger, more agile.

Real combat is not exactly like the sims. It's the littlest things that differ in quotidian reality: that trace in the mud - their mistake! - revealing their ambush; the coughing of a bored guard; the momentary glint of moonlight on metal.

That instinct, in the dark, to tell a soldier from a villager.

I said goodbye to Michèle, my wife of twenty-two years, not knowing if or when I would see her again. In theatre we'd be instrumented to within an inch of our lives, gathering data for immense learning engines; close-quarter combat caught in high resolution for as long as it takes.

Things did not go badly for quite a while; I saw why my sons thought it a gig. They didn't want us to die - we were too precious and expensive, too useful and too hard to replace.

So they chose our operations carefully, did not strive officiously to place us in harm's way. 

So much useful data.

The months sped by and memories faded of our little house in the woods, next to the glistening lake where the birds ducked and dived. Rustic memories replaced by high-tech noise: whirring mosquito-like blades, the crack of supersonic ordnance, the turbine scream of attack munitions. 

There were no birds.

Why didn't I figure it out? Obviously they weren't going to start with high-risk, last-ditch missions - basically unsurvivable stuff. Equally obviously, that would be just the data they needed. At the very end. For completion.

I have no idea how I got back. Back home.

We were tasked with a deep reconnaissance mission, an overlook on an enemy forward operating base. They detected us of course.

Our orders were not to be captured. Not a suicide mission though. They told us very vehemently: “We have secret stealth capability - just hold on and we'll get you out.”

All I remember is the loudest noise: a noise which pulverised the small lean-to we'd hunkered into, a noise which crushed the body, which smashed the eyes with fake light.

I’m walking north now towards the lake. Our house is just to the left. The bright sun, hot on my back, shines upon a vision of quiet tranquility. The lake is fenced here from when the boys were young. I see Michèle leaning against a post. She's calm, as beautiful as ever, enjoying the sun, peaceful, her eyes screwed up against the sunshine. That must be why she can't see me.

Why can't she see me?