SUPER SOLDIER was not well received initially, the main issue being we were Marines and proud of that fact. Soldier was a pejorative; anyone calling us soldiers was either clueless as to the distinctions between the Marine Corps (small, lethal, aggressive) and the Army (large, bloated, soft), or messing with us. So when a huge cardboard box labeled SUPER SOLDIER arrived at FOB Williamette, our first thought was to burn it.
“It might be a prank,” we reasoned. “By the Army guys back at Dwyer. Basically if we open it we’re admitting we want a SUPER SOLDIER.”
But we got a radio call from Higher asking us to confirm receipt of the SUPER SOLDIER, and the Lieutenant confirmed receipt of the SUPER SOLDIER, so we couldn’t burn it.
Burn him, actually. When we slit the package open with our kabars, we found a man. A naked, fucking jacked one; his muscles had muscles, like pips on a domino. We all tried to avert our eyes, but he had what you might call an absolute hammer, a third arm, the biggest cock any of us had ever seen, to include those weird sidebar ads on porn sites.
“Like a veiny stack of tuna cans,” someone muttered.
There was a little baggie around SUPER SOLDIER’s neck with a bunch of papers. They included a limited warranty, basic trouble shooting instructions, and a message from DARPA, which stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Dear Marines,
This is a message from DARPA, which stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. We are the entity responsible for SUPER SOLDIER’s design and manufacture. We are extremely proud of this fine weapon system we are providing for you. Some of this weapon system’s key capabilities include:
-Reinforced blister-proof feet
-Semi-autonomous THINKQUIKtm AI thought-processing
-TRU-DAYtm night vision
-Pre-programmed MAXSOCIALtm personality and memory set for unit integration
-Full human language abilities, plus limited animal communication
-Expert proficiency with all weapon systems organic to a Marine infantry battalion, from M4s to M240Bs to M203s to M27s to M38s to M67s to LAAWs to AT-4s to Javelins to TOWs to M2A1s to Mk-19s to M9s, plus enemy weapon systems to include the AK-47, DShK, RPK, RPG, PKM, and others
-Aggression/empathy balance optimized for counterinsurgency
-Extra-large pecker for intimidation
We hope SUPER SOLDIER helps in the accomplishment of your mission, and ultimately, victory against the Taliban. To activate this weapon system, simply insert a chaw of the included special purpose BIG JUMBO chewing tobacco.
SUPER SOLDIER will remain in Afghanistan indefinitely. Your assistance in preserving and maintaining this invaluable weapon system is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely yours,
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
“I wonder how much that thing costs,” Hawthorne said. “Fraud, waste, and abuse.”
“Shut the fuck up, Hawthorne,” we said. He could never let cool things be cool.
The Lieutenant stepped forward and gingerly pinched a moist plug of chewing tobacco. The brown juice dribbled down SUPER SOLDIER’s hairless chin. His eyes snapped open.
“I came here to kill Taliban and chew bubblegum,” SUPER SOLDIER announced in a resonant bass, “and chewing bubblegum would foul my jaw circuits.”
SUPER SOLDIER was a good dude. That night, in the open gravel area between the platform tents where all forty of us lived, he regaled us with stories of his childhood.
“I am from a town in Texas that might remind you of Friday Night Lights. I have fond memories of fingerbanging Susie Crotchen in the backseat of my dad’s truck. I have fond memories of playing high school football. I was a middle linebacker and I liked to hit people. One time I hit a scrawny kid from Waco so hard they carried him off on a neck board. My team then proceeded to win the state championship. That season was my first taste of being part of a tight-knit all-male social group that engages in violent and dangerous activities together. That season and nightly screenings of the boot camp scene from Full Metal Jacket inspired me to join the United States Marine Corps.”
SUPER SOLDIER insisted on sleeping outside, under the cold Helmand stars. Back in our tents, we whispered about what this might mean. What he might mean. We’d been in Afghanistan for two months, and all we’d done was sit around on this big dumb FOB and eat shitty steak and lobster on Fridays and drive in circles in our MaxxPros, bouncing around late at night to be sure no one was going to creep up and kill us while we slept. The letter from DARPA had mentioned a mission, but there wasn’t one, not as far as we could tell. Did SUPER SOLDIER’s arrival mean change?
The answer was yes. Our mission came through the next day, a simple blip over the radio that the Lieutenant shared with us, huddled together in a platform tent that smelled like wet socks and dust.
“On 12 FEB 2019, First Platoon works with local Afghan partners to secure the Nad Ali government complex in order to allow a delegation of Congressmen to meet with provincial officials. Gents, that gives us six days to prep. The expectation for this mission is that we will be mobile, agile, and hostile.”
The Lieutenant loved talking like he was in a movie. All officers do. It’s what makes them officers: Do you want to talk like you’re in a movie? Have you been to college? Are you tall and weirdly good at running? Congratulations, you’re an infantry officer.
We were not infantry officers. We were just grunts. From towns like the town SUPER SOLDIER thought he was from, and from towns where you have to drive an hour to get to towns like the town SUPER SOLDIER thought he was from. Towns that aren’t even towns. Towns that are cities: Q with the big Yankees tattoo on his triceps, Weaver with the Golden Gate Bridge on his calf, Yadi with 213 on the inside of his lip (the Lieutenant didn’t know about that one). All different shades of America, united in our desire to shoot people in the fucking face. Even those who said they didn’t want to, those who said they were just here because it was the only way out of their hometown, or the only way to pay for college, or the only way to get their then-girlfriend now-wife out of her abusive dad’s house and onto health insurance, which had to happen ASAP, because she was pregnant; we knew they were full of shit. If they just wanted the benefits, there was the Air Force or the Navy. There were non-combat jobs in supply and logistics and aircraft maintenance and administration. To wind up in the Marine Corps infantry, there had to be at least a little kernel in you somewhere that wanted to shoot someone in the fucking face.
Before we could have the chance, we had to get a special injection: Microchips so SUPER SOLDIER could communicate directly into our brains. Another DARPA invention. There were also endless rehearsals: Getting on and off helicopters, in and out of vehicles, responding to contact left right front and rear, casualty evacuation, and security on-site. We had to count and recount our weapons and ammunition twice a day, rat fuck and field strip enough MREs to last a week, and memorize pages-long operations orders covering everything we’d do from leaving the FOB to arriving in Nad Ali to linking up with the Afghan Police to securing the government complex to leaving Nad Ali to returning to the FOB. By the time the morning of February 12 dawned we were exhausted, ready to bust a nut after so much foreplay.
It was still dark when we landed. Dark and cold in the biting desert wind, way out from the outer coil of farms. It was the first clear day after a week of rain. We felt lucky. The difference felt important. And maybe it was, though it wasn’t like we could do anything about an omen either way. So we snaked along the tops of berms between irrigation ditches, single file, heel to toe, silent save for our breathing, hands going numb in our gloves, murder on our minds, fondling our weapons, too excited to feel tired, too tired to make sense, rising sun washing out the shadows in which we half-hoped to hide.
The IED tore Lorenzo’s legs off like squares from a Hershey’s bar. Like there had been clean dotted lines there all along. Clear dotted lines waiting for the rusty landmine on the berm where we were walking. We’d gotten dropped off in the middle of nowhere. The whole point was to avoid the IED threat. Obviously one of the fucking Afghan police in their shitty gray and blue uniforms had sold us out.
“It was you,” SUPER SOLDIER said. He said it in Dari, pointing at a guy with rotten teeth and a rusty M16. Doc worked on Lorenzo. The dust was mucky with blood.
We didn’t know what SUPER SOLDIER had said; we figured it out when he took two quick steps towards the Afghan with the rotten teeth and crushed the guy’s skull like that video where someone wraps a million rubber bands around a watermelon. The millionth rubber band does to the watermelon what SUPER SOLDIER did to that man’s head.
Shouting, shoving, gunshots in the air. Doc sprinting from Lorenzo’s almost dead body to the Afghan’s already dead body and back, by which time Lorenzo had died, momentarily alone in the furor.
The Lieutenant and the terp tried to calm things down. The Afghans wanted to kill SUPER SOLDIER but he shot himself through the stomach to show them it would be impossible. He healed instantly.
Dustoff came with two body bags and took away Lorenzo and the Afghan. A sniper took potshots at us and SUPER SOLDIER sprinted through the wall of a mud hut to rip the guy’s spinal cord out. The Lieutenant made us bury it, and we were digging the hole when we got word about the weather in Tajikistan. It was bad. No flights, no Congressmen. We flew back to the FOB.
Turned out the Afghan guy did it. Did us. Aziz Khan’s Roshan phone was found with five calls to and from a known Taliban commander the night before we left. Apparently they came to Aziz’s house when he was home on leave. Simple shit: Tell us when the next mission will be or we’ll rape your wife and kill your kids. So Lorenzo was dead and Aziz, too.
Higher was pissed at SUPER SOLDIER. The Afghan police chief said his guys wouldn’t go on missions with Americans anymore, and we couldn’t go on missions without partner force integration. So we were stuck on the FOB. Shitty Helmand rain up to the platform tent’s cinderblock risers. Nothing to do but clean weapons, play spades, and jerk off.
Most of us bought lotion from the mobile PX trailer but some guys just used bodywash in the shower. One psycho used hand soap and came straight into the sink; he rubbed one out next to someone brushing their teeth. We beat off to videos when the WiFi was good enough and pictures when it wasn’t. We beat off too much and ten minutes later it didn’t feel like too much anymore. We won’t name names but two guys claimed they jerked off on post: The lookout looked back towards the FOB, watching for the Lieutenant, while the other guy faced out across the flood plains that separated us from the cluster of mud huts a kilometer distant. One hand on the .50 cal and one hand cranking shaft. We didn’t believe them, but there was no denying the splotchy crotch-height stain on Post Six.
We beat ourselves up over the girls we beat off to, haunted by the ghosts of their memories and the uncertainty we would ever feel their hands on us again, squeezing our balls a bit too hard because we told them we liked it one time and now we’d never have the chance to gently correct them. One of us thought about guys when he beat off, but back then we were the only ones he told and we didn’t tell anyone else.
SUPER SOLDIER didn’t jerk off. He could cum on command, just by thinking, or whatever his version of thinking was. Flexed real hard and wham fat rope of cum arcing through the air.
He showed us at the smoke pit one night. Just casually dropped his pants and jizzed without taking the Black and Mild out of his mouth. We offered him $20 to go cum on Hawthorne, who had gone to bed early because he had pneumonia. Or at least he said he did; we thought he just wanted to avoid filling sandbags and rearranging guard posts.
SUPER SOLDIER said money meant nothing to him but he’d do it “as a contribution to the social group” and you really should’ve seen the look on Hawthorne’s sweaty feverish face when SUPER SOLDIER sprayed him with what must’ve been a full liter of robot cum.
Turned out Hawthorne was actually sick, and actually a snitch. He wrote his Congressman, his Congressman wrote a General, the General called a Colonel, the Colonel called the Lieutenant, and the Lieutenant made SUPER SOLDIER sign some paperwork promising not to cum on anyone ever again.
SUPER SOLDIER used his mind-to-mind communication technology to apologize to us all at once, which was a bit weird at first. Then it was just like listening to a podcast on the world’s best headphones.
“I acted out of a desire to be accepted,” SUPER SOLDIER explained. “I wanted to recapture the feeling of my high school football team carrying me off the field after I paralyzed an opponent, causing him to cough up the game-sealing fumble in overtime of the state championship game. I now understand my actions were wrong, much as I am slowly coming to feel sympathy for the kid I paralyzed. I wish nothing but the best for him, and nothing but the best for our friend Hawthorne.”
It was a sincere apology, heart-wrenching like a kid who’s disappointed his parents. None of us could bring ourselves to tell SUPER SOLDIER he never even played high school football.
We thought it was a prank at first, when we woke one morning to find SUPER SOLDIER’s patch of dirt empty. That was his idea of a prank; his sense of humor was programmed like Borat’s. I was sleeping here . . . not! No one even bothered to say anything to the Lieutenant until SUPER SOLDIER didn’t show up for his afternoon shift in the guard towers. And the Lieutenant didn’t tell Higher until after SUPER SOLDIER missed evening accountability.
“Yes, sir,” the Lieutenant said on the phone. “Gone, sir.”
DARPA called the next morning. Their tracker said SUPER SOLDIER was in Sangin, the most dangerous, Taliban-infested town in Helmand. Our tasking for the rescue mission came through an hour later.
It wasn’t until we were all staged in the FOB’s LZ, sitting on gravel, waiting for the CH-47s to fly us north that SUPER SOLDIER reached out.
“Help me,” he said to us telepathically via our microchips. “I’m in a bad situation, like when those guys from Waco Western caught up to me and Chuckie in the Bucc-ee’s parking lot. This was the week after I paralyzed their teammate; they wanted revenge. I was small then, unable to defend myself, much less scrawny Chuckie (the punter) too. That is truly the fundamental human fear: Stomps and fists raining down, smothering us, as I cried out for my mom and dad to save me. And right now is maybe even worse. Quick, come to the abandoned compound next to the bombed-out mosque. Grid Papa Romeo 417 460. Hurry. Please.”
The problems started as soon as we hit the deck. Because we didn’t have any Afghans with us, our only way to talk to any of the locals was our interpreter, but there was only one of him and people were swarming us on all sides, asking what we were doing here. It had been years since they’d seen Americans. They wanted to know if there would be fighting. Our interpreter yelled at them to go hide in their houses while the Lieutenant led us in the direction his GPS arrow pointed, towards SUPER SOLDIER. Despite our terp’s shouts, crowds gathered in alleys around us, kids darting out with hands open for candy no one brought.
We’d seen Blackhawk Down and we’d seen Saving Private Ryan. We knew rescue missions always went to shit. And a klick from the mosque, the crowds vanished. Storefront shuttered. Stray dogs sniffed twice and ran. We all knew what was coming.
The funniest thing about our first firefight was how familiar it felt. Like of course this was the ditch where we took cover. Of course there was sewage sludge up to our ankles. Of course a pair of PKM machine guns chattered at us from what was left of the mosque’s roof, and of course a round cut through the loose sleeve of Stevenson’s cammies, leaving him a souvenir bullet hole. Of course the Lieutenant overreacted and freaked out a bit (we all did but he was the only one with a radio) and of course he lasered the wrong building, and of course the Hellfire missiles leveled the school next door, killing little kids whose severed fingers would poke our dream brains for years afterwards. And of course SUPER SOLDIER broke free in the commotion, killing the machine gun teams and emerging with their severed heads as trophies before the Lieutenant snapped at him to toss them in the ditch. Their pale lips disappeared beneath the shit.
On the helo ride back to the FOB, SUPER SOLDIER apologized via neural uplink.
“I’m sorry I did a bad job on my mission and I’m sorry you guys had to come rescue me. While nothing I am going to say is an attempt to escape responsibility or excuse my actions, I would still like to explain what occurred.
“I left the FOB at approximately 2300 on the night of March 3rd. I had received top-secret intelligence on the Taliban operatives responsible for Lorenzo’s death. Aziz’s death, too. I ran for miles on dirt roads, maintaining my top cruising speed of 25 miles per hour. My internal GPS guided me to the seemingly-abandoned compound next to the bombed out mosque. There, I discovered an arms cache consisting of approximately 8x AK-47s, 3x RPGs, an old Lee-Enfield, 2x PKMs, and assorted IED-making materials, to include but not limited to excessive amounts of fertilizer, empty and full gasoline jugs, automatic garage door openers, and cell phones. Inside I detected nearly a dozen Taliban fighters.
“However, as I initiated the assault, my strength suddenly left me. My arms and legs became useless noodles attached to a flabby torso. I was mentally transported back to the Buc-ee’s parking lot, trying and failing to protect Chuckie. Trying and failing to protect myself. The Taliban beat me senseless with the butts of their rifles, and I cried. Not from the pain I don’t feel. I cried because the Buc-ee’s beating is what inspired me to become SUPER SOLDIER. So I could always protect my friends. But there I was, being beaten again. It reminded me of a song I listened to on the bus to school every day of seventh grade, on the bus where my chubby twelve year-old self suffered an endless stream of titty twisters from the bigger, leaner eighth graders. The song goes: I tried so hard and got so far / But in the end, it doesn’t even matter.”
SUPER SOLDIER was crying, his choked sobs beamed straight into our brains. It was unsettling. It felt like we were crying. Some of us were.
“They captured me and tied me up in a room with soiled blankets. I waited and waited there, and then when I heard the sound of your rifles, my strength returned and I broke free. I wish my strength had returned earlier. I do not know why it comes and goes like that. Once again, I’m sorry I did a bad job on my mission and I’m sorry you guys had to come rescue me. I promise I’ll do better next time.”
There wouldn’t be a next time. Hawthorne wrote to his Congressman again. He wanted SUPER SOLDIER shut down. It was an impressive letter; Gallagher found a return copy in the burn pit and saved it. In the letter, Hawthorne told all about how SUPER SOLDIER crushed the Afghan’s skull, poisoning relations between supposed allies. Out of control violent, he wrote. He told how SUPER SOLDIER wandered off and almost got us all killed on the rescue mission. Dangerously insane. In a word, Hawthorne claimed, SUPER SOLDIER’s reckless incompetence is endangering us all and prolonging the war.
Hawthorne’s Congressman replied. The letter was partially burnt by the time Gallagher found it, but he could still make out the gist, which was: NO SHIT. SUPER SOLDIER’s job, the Congressman said, was to prolong the war. Humans give up on things eventually; SUPER SOLDIERs don’t. Did Hawthorne know how many jobs in his Congressional district came from the design and manufacture of ball bearings integral for the smooth operation of American vehicles overseas? Did Hawthorne understand the incredible advances in trauma medicine made possible by the volume of trauma only war could provide? Was Hawthorne proud that American women could now serve in combat roles? Could Hawthorne think of any other American institution where people still lived side by side regardless of class, race, and religion? Hell, had Hawthorne ever heard of the stock market? No shit SUPER SOLDIER was prolonging the war.
Hawthorne should be grateful. The Congressman had pulled his file. Dad, a mechanic at Jiffy Lube, later arrested for abusing the daughter of the woman he married after leaving Hawthorne’s mom, a lunch lady, for which Hawthorne was teased as a kid. One half-brother, from Mom’s first marriage, older, in jail. Meth. Hawthorne could be different, though. Was on track to be, with his medals and his GI Bill. He’d written an essay in Social Studies about how he wanted to be President someday, and how the first step was military service. Where would Hawthorne be without the Marine Corps? And where would the Marine Corps be without war?
The signoff said something about appreciating Hawthorne’s discretion on this sensitive matter, and he had. Hawthorne, that is. Denied everything about the letter, even when Gallagher waved around the smoldering fragments.
To settle this, we went to the source.
“Hey SUPER SOLDIER,” we asked over beef stew MREs one night. “What did they tell you before they shipped your ass over here?”
SUPER SOLDIER looked up from the rifle he was cleaning. SUPER SOLDIER didn’t eat.
“My recruiter promised me I’d have the chance to serve my country. To make something of myself. I told him I was fleeing a bad situation, and that was the truth: The boy I’d paralyzed came from a family of extremely powerful Texas oil barons, and they’d put out a notice to all local employers not to hire me. Like many of you, I found my high school classes uninteresting, and my grades weren’t good enough for college. Not like my parents could’ve afforded it, anyways. After a brief and intensive training period identical to the one you all underwent, I found myself here, ready to kill Taliban and chew bubblegum, except I can’t chew bubblegum. Now, I am eagerly counting down the days until we return to the United States of America. I have big social and sexual plans for post-deployment leave.”
A snicker trickled through the tent. We weren’t fucking with SUPER SOLDIER, exactly. But, well, it was tough to take him seriously. This thing from a box with crazy ideas about himself. It went beyond the normal realm of bullshitting we all did: The self-administered promotions from JV to varsity, from virgin to fucklord, from shitting in fear to putting one square between the enemy’s eyes. SUPER SOLDIER was living a dream, except the stuff most of us lied about (incapable of feeling fear, capable of deadlifting 1500 pounds, biggest cock we’d ever seen) was the only true part. He was undeniably one of us, in that he inhabited our fantasies, and undeniably not one of us, in that he would never share our reality.
Even Hawthorne was one of us, though he could best be described as a wart on our collective ass. You can say it was our fault, because Hawthorne was cruel in the way only the bullied could be. Years later, we’d scroll Instagram and find videos of him, tattooed from knuckles to neck, sitting in his truck, ranting about the people eating our country from inside out, red-faced and spitting with rage, running for County Comptroller with the trembling joy of having someone to punch down on.
In the unending past, Hawthorne fished his last bite of plastic pouch potatoes au gratin and told SUPER SOLDIER, “You know you’re a thing, right?”
Hawthorne handed SUPER SOLDIER the letter DARPA sent with him. Showed him a video on his phone of us unboxing SUPER SOLDIER. Read aloud the troubleshooting instructions, telling SUPER SOLDIER his personality could be adjusted with a lug wrench on the backside of his knee.
“You mean I’m not one of the guys?” SUPER SOLDIER asked, PERMATANNEDtm face somehow ashen.
“Nope, you’re not,” Hawthorne answered.
And when the Lieutenant came around to interview us for the investigative paperwork, the only thing we’d tell him was that it had something to do with the edge of triumph in those words. How gleeful Hawthorne was to drag someone down to his level.
Afterwards Hawthorne lay on the ground with a thin line of blood running from his mouth. SUPER SOLDIER blinked at us, wondering, as we were, what had been accomplished. We hadn’t even known we loved SUPER SOLDIER until that moment, the violence surging out of us with the force of a burst dam.
Hawthorne was flown to Kuwait that night. Fractured skull, dislocated shoulder, three chipped teeth, and a concussion. The Lieutenant called DARPA, who said they’d send a tech out immediately to work on SUPER SOLDIER. The plan, apparently, was to ease back on his MAXSOCIALtm settings. Make him stand further apart from the unit, keep him independent. Make sure he wouldn’t be SUPER SOLDIER anymore. Until the tech’s arrival, we were supposed to have a watch posted, to make sure he didn’t run off again.
For legal reasons, we won’t put into writing exactly what happened. Officially, SUPER SOLDIER escaped. Officially, he vanished from under armed guard without a shot fired, scaled HESCO barriers unseen between two guard towers and disappeared into the night.
The only evidence went in the burn pit first thing the next morning: A notebook with a page torn out, and on the page behind that page, faint indentations. Our names and addresses, every one of us. Just in case.
We’re all out now; it’s been that long. Some of us try too hard to hang on, some try too hard to let go. Most of us just want to be normal, whatever that means. Our knees are going and our backs are gone. Guts spill out, breaching denim waist levees. It seems impossible that the lean, hard faces in the photos we keep on our desks, on our walls, in our attics were ours. Are ours. Buried under gristle, stubble, and flab.
Buried deeper, just shy of the cochlear nerve, our microchips still work. We know because SUPER SOLDIER talks to us sometimes. He lets us know when they break down our old FOB, leaving him to seek shelter in the countryside. When the war is lost. When he finds sightless dolphins swimming in the Helmand River. When he links with a resistance group up north and, for the first time in years, kills Taliban. When the others are killed and he has to fight on alone, and fight on alone, and fight on alone. When he wants one of us to go to Waco and check on the kid he thinks he paralyzed. These bulletins invariably come at bad times: Daughters’ school musicals, sons’ piano recitals, the rare nights we’re able to forget. We always stop what we’re doing and listen.
Maybe someday they’ll upgrade our tech so we can talk back to SUPER SOLDIER, tell him about our families. Reassure him the kid he thinks he paralyzed is ok. Ask if he remembers jizzing on Hawthorne. Tell him Hawthorne lost the election for comptroller and spent the next three years crying voter fraud. We’ll say Lorenzo’s name and SUPER SOLDIER will say he went to check on Aziz’s family, finally, and they’re fine.
But for now he’s still the voice inside our heads, the collective conscience of our past, calling out to remind us we once belonged to something greater and lesser than ourselves.
Adam Straus is a Marine veteran. The author of Remedial Action (University of Nevada Press, 2027), his writing has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, HAD, and elsewhere. Adam lives in Philadelphia with his wife.
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UNBELIEVABLE how good this writing is!! The moment we are living in - nailed it
Thank You for your Service, I was a Corpman with Marines, Truly Blessed Your story is Great. Keep Writing ✍️ ✨️