Tag: Childhood trauma

The US government is engaged in a South American war and losing badly. After years of standard and non-standard strategies and tactics failing, the government entertains an often-made suggestion: create supersoldiers. The suggestion is about to be dismissed when (then) Captain James Donaldson adds an outrageous modification: use horribly abused and already traumatized children as the source material. These individuals, Donaldson argues, are already hardened against anything they’ll experience on the battlefield and anything we’ll ask them to do.
Continue reading “The Augmented Man -Synopsis”

What follows is the first chapter of The Augmented Man. Enjoy (and let me know what you think).

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Trailer closed his eyes and sat at the end of the bar where the cigarette-burned, cheap black Formica countertop met the wall. He eased himself onto the last stool, tucking into the corner in the dim light, a spider hiding out of sight at the edge of its web. His fingers hovered over the cigarette burns closest to him as if divining their cause, sensing them like small, unhealed wounds, seeing the people involved, learning if each burn was an accident or intentional.

The door opened and he smelled the cool April evening on his skin. It was followed by the alcoholic breath and sweat of two men and a woman they supported between them.

Trailer brought his attention back into the bar, collating the activity immediately around him. The barkeeper, a heavy smelling man gnawing a toothpick, his face somewhere between needing a shave and growing a beard, walked over to Trailer. “Yeah?”
Continue reading “The Augmented Man – Surface”