One Single Moment

How had it come to this? That was always his thought when he was covered in blood and gore. How had it happened?

As he well knew it all came down to one decision. One negative.

There had been potential. He always knew he was smart and had successfully survived orphanage and foster homes without either attracting a loving family or any great problems other than the odd (probably deserved) beating.

The army had seemed like such as sensible choice. It was, in the end, simply an easy, natural, extension of the homes he had lived in. He completely understood discipline - both fair and unfair, too little and too much - and so the discipline of the army suited him completely. An environment based on following orders was comfortable and simple - things that, year on year, he had searched for. He took comfort from the safety of the army and thrived.

Basic training was easy. He knew how to get on without the need to make friends. Friends never stayed around in his experience and this was no different. After twelve or so weeks of basic training, they would be posted to different regiments in different countries and the chances of meeting were slim. He kept his head down.

He was noticed, however. His obedience wasn’t mindless, swift as it was. Those who looked out for those sorts of things noticed that - within the confines of the orders given - he would think and adapt to make success more sure. His status as a natural loaner was noticed too.

An orphan and a loaner, with the brain to improve orders but a willingness to follow those orders. Armies and governments have a place for people like that. The last pieces fell into place in the last weeks of basic training when the recruits got their hands on proper firearms. Never having held a pistol or rifle before, he listened absolutely to the instructions given to him and followed them. In an age of action films that was unusual. A natural ability was useful of course, but the most interesting thing to those watching came during the first part of their final exercise.

The exercise was multi-part and the first part used what the army thought was the latest word in virtual reality. Clamped into a headset and with a realistically heavy automatic assault rifle in hands, the recruits made their way through a virtual maze of streets occupied by equally virtual terrorists - and to spice things up there were innocents and hostages scattered throughout.

Forty minutes in, he had become separated from what was left of his patrol, some of whom had succumbed to sniper fire. He turned a corner to find himself faced by a crowd of people - angry, shouting people, some of whom were armed with guns, some with knives, and some with stones. All were facing him, shouting at him. He turned to run - to find a similar sized crowd had managed to surround him.

With one last glance around him, he made his mind up - and opened fire at the section of the crowd in front of what he was sure was his exit. As he fired, he ran at the hole he was making and with a final jump over some bodies, he made it through a door way and towards safety. As he was making a second turn, the virtual world dissolved and he heard the order to end the exercise.

“You killed a number of innocent civilians, lad”. After two hours cooling his heels outside the commander’s office, this was the first things that had been said to him since he had been escorted from the exercise area by two MPs.

“Yes sir”. You can rarely go wrong with that response as a new recruit.

“Why?”

“I was in danger, sir. The crowd was armed and angry and obviously intent on - at least - hurting me. I wasn’t going to wait for them to get me on the ground - so I got myself out of there as quickly as possible. I figured that was the best thing to do - I probably didn’t kill that many people - I was aiming low. Sir”.

After that there was more waiting.

There are sections of the army and of other services that are often fed by the army, who look for what they call ‘moral flexibility” - of exactly the sort demonstrated in that exercise. And so he found himself moved to a new posting with more training.

Training followed training - weapons, explosives, languages, cultural habits, self-defence, hand to hand combat, all over and over again. Day and night. Tired and more tired until blindfolded and exhausted he could assemble, fire and disassemble a rifle in the rain in under ninety seconds before fighting his way out of a guarded building.

It was the final test that he failed.

At night on top of a dark building in the rain is never a pleasant experience, but he found that looking at an unknown target though a sniping lens was much more uncomfortable. He knew he had live ammunition in the rifle he held - his training meant that he would have been able to tell from the weight of the assembled rifle if he hadn’t been told. He had asked the trainer lying beside him who the target was and what he had done - but the answer had simply been “none of your business, son”.

Lined up and ready, he had heard the kill order on his ear-piece - and had hesitated. A second order came through and still he hesitated. “Take the fucking shot, son!” shouted his trainer - and he did. Nearly six hundred meters away a life ended.

The hesitation was enough, however. Enough to mean that while he was put on active duty, he was deemed unfit for assassination work, or work that was likely to lead to it. He was never sure whether that was a good thing or not.

That was what had led him to this place.

A single moment of hesitation.

He didn’t hesitate now. It had been some years since walking in to a room with blood, guts and death had stopped him in his tracks. Now his actions were automatic and he immediately began the work to clean the area. That was what he did. The moral flexibility he had demonstrated was good enough to be able to clean up the work of someone with fewer scruples and no hesitation.

The smell stays with you, he had discovered. The stench of death was a difficult one to remove. It crept into his pores to escape at night, especially when he was alone in bed. And the proximity of death meant that most of his nights were lonely. Having a job you can’t talk about which regularly involves cleaning up death and disposing of dead bodies is one that leads to a solitary life.

So every time that he asked himself that question - how did it come to this - he knew the answer. It was that one moment of hesitation. That one moral thought. Ultimately he was not a man who had refused to kill - but he had thought long enough to make himself a liability in a world of split second decisions and no second thoughts.

For a brief second he had been a member of the human race.