by LAURIE NEIDERGAARDEN, Alternate Reality News Service Medical Writer
It's the knock on the door that no parent of anybody in the military wants to answer with a message they don't want to hear: "I'm sorry to have to inform you that three eights of your child was killed in the line of duty."
After years of secrecy, details of the middle to lower secret operation, Codename: Golem, have finally emerged. The 10 year pilot programme, run by Dr. Galvanic Gleneem of Ghoulish University (Deerborn, Michigan Campus), takes body parts from soldiers injured in the line of duty and - URGH! - injured soldiers and - ACCCCCHK! - and puts them -
* FOOTSTEPS RUNNING TO THE BATHROOM, RETCHING SOUNDS AND A TOILET FLUSHING *
Sorry about that.
Medics take parts from soldiers wounded in battle and...put them together to create new "composite soldiers."
"It's a brilliant advance in medical militarism!" enthused General Hyperborean Laffer. "I mean, on the one hand, recruitment is trending downwards, but, on the other hand, advances in medical technology allow us to keep more and more wounded soldiers alive. Parts of them, anyway. If you can call that living. Well! This plan kills two birds with one stone. Erm, that may be an inappropriate metaphor under the circumstances. Let us say it maims two birds with one predator drone strike, then stitches them back together again! Brilliant!"
Mechanical parts are - URK! - no, I'm okay. I - just give me a moment to catch my breath. Mechanical parts are used to stitch the human tissue together, making them cyborgs. "Hey, don't look at me," said movie director Paul Verhoeven. "When I made Robocop, I didn't think it would turn out to be a documentary!"
When a composite soldier is finally killed, are the parts given back to each family for burial, forcing them to relive the soldier's death a second time? "That would be cruel," General Laffer stated. "No, we cremate the remains and spread them over the battlefield. Then, we send a postcard to the family telling them which part of their loved one has been laid to rest. It's, uhh, a very tasteful postcard. Lots of flowers and shit like that."
There are other practical problems with Codename: Golem, of course. Many others. For instance, when you're in the field, what do you call a composite soldier? Do you hyphenate the names? "Private Kowalski-Mitterand-Wilson-Hidecki-Pelonniam, front and centre!" And, what if the soldier is more machine than human?
"Oh, pshaw," Dr. Gleneem, in an exclusive interview with the Alternate Reality News Service and 20 other news outlets, pshawed. "This problem can easily be solved with the application of a little common sense. We could, for instance, use the name of whoever supplied the head. Or, if more than 50 per cent of the composite soldier came from one person, you would use that person's name. Piece of cake. And, if the soldier is more machine than human being, it gets a machine designation. I'm partial to digit-digit-digit-greek letter-digit-digit-digit-digit-capital letter-small letter, myself."
Oh, yeah? What happens when the parts of soldiers of different ranks are combined? Do you use the higher rank for identification purposes? But, what if the only part of the higher ranking soldier in the composite is the pituitary gland?
"Tsk, tsk," Dr. Gleneem tsked. "You really are reaching, aren't you? I'm sure the army can come up with suitable hybrids - generivates, for example, or sergeanols. Oh sure, the chain of command will have to be reworked slightly, but that is surely a small price to pay to increase troop efficiency."
Okay. Okay. What about...when a composite soldier is made up of different genders, when, say, the head of a male soldier is grafted onto the body of a female soldier? Or, when the body of either gender is given a cyborg...umm...uhh...you know...mid-section with no genitalia at all? What about that, eh? Eh?
"Bah," Dr. Gleneem made with the dismissive sheep noises. "You're not even trying to make this challenging, are you? There is an ‘Involuntary Gender Reassignment' clause in every soldier's contract - they know what could happen when they enlist. But, we're not monsters. We have recruited dozens of sex therapists to help our enlisted men and women...and hybrids deal with just such issues."
But, is it...moral?
"Shrug," Dr. Gleneem shrugged. "This is not about morality - this is about science!" When pressed, he added: "It's as moral as letting wounded vets come home, denying them VA privileges and watching them drift into homeless, alcoholic madness or kill themselves. More moral, some people would say."
"Oh, much more moral than that," General Laffer stated.
"See?"