Jared was uncomfortable with this line of reasoning. “We don’t see it that way. We’re proud to serve.”
“Of course you are,” Cainen said. “That’s how they’ve conditioned you since you were born, when your brain was turned on and your BrainPal thought for you and chose particular branches on the decision tree instead of others. By the time your brain was able to think on its own, the pathways that turn against choice were already laid down.”
“I make choices all the time,” Jared countered.
“Not big ones,” Cainen said. “Through conditioning and a military life, choices were made for you all your short life, Private. Someone else chose to create you—no different than anyone else, that. But then they chose to imprint someone else’s consciousness on your brain. They chose to make you a warrior. They chose the battles you would face. They chose to hand you over to us when it was convenient for them. And they would choose to have you become someone else by cracking your brain like an egg and letting Charles Boutin’s consciousness run out all over yours. But I am choosing to have you choose.”
“Why?” Jared asked.
“Because I can,” Cainen said. “And because you should. And because apparently no one else will let you. This is your life, Private. If you choose to proceed, we’ll suggest to you the ways we think will unlock more of Boutin’s memories and personality.”
“And if I don’t?” Jared said. “What happens then?”
“Then we tell Military Research that we refuse to do anything to you,” Wilson said.
“They could find someone else to do it,” Jared said.
“They almost certainly will,” Cainen said. “But you’ll have made your choice, and we’ll have made ours too.”
Jared realized that Cainen had a point: In his life, all of the major choices that affected him had been decided by others. His decision-making had been limited to inconsequential things or to military situations where not choosing something would have meant he was dead. He didn’t consider himself a slave, but he was forced to admit that he’d never considered not being in Special Forces. Gabriel Brahe had told his training squad that after their ten-year term of service they could colonize, and no one ever questioned why they were made to serve the ten years at all. All the Special Forces training and development subsumed individual choice to the needs of the squad or platoon; even integration—the Special Forces’ great military advantage—smeared the sense of self outside of the individual and toward the group.
(At the thought of integration, Jared felt an intense pang of loneliness. When his new orders came through, Jared’s integration with the 2nd Platoon was switched off. The constant low-level hum of thought and emotion from his platoon mates was cavernous in its absence. If he had not been able to draw on his first isolated experiences of consciousness, he might have gone a little mad the moment he realized he could not sense his platoon anymore. As it was, Jared had spent most of the intervening day in a solid depression. It was an amputation, bloody and raw, and only the knowledge it was likely only temporary made it bearable.)
Jared realized with a growing sense of unease just how much of his life had been dictated, chosen, ordered and commanded. He realized how ill-prepared he was to make the choice Cainen had offered him. His immediate inclination was to say yes, that he wanted to go on: to learn more about Charles Boutin, the man he was supposed to be, and to become him, in some way. But he didn’t know if it was something he really wanted, or merely something that was expected of him. Jared felt resentment, not at the Colonial Union or the Special Forces, but at Cainen—for putting him in a position to question himself and his choices, or lack thereof.
“What would you do?” Jared asked Cainen.
“I’m not you,” Cainen said, and refused to speak any more about it. Wilson was likewise notably unhelpful. Both went about their work in the lab while Jared thought, staring into the three representations of consciousness that were all him, in one way or another.
“I’ve made a choice,” Jared said, more than two hours later. “I want to go on.”
“Can you tell me why?” Cainen said.
“Because I want to know more about all of this,” Jared said. He motioned to the image of the third consciousness. “You tell me that I’m changing. I’m becoming someone else. I believe that. But I still feel like me. I think I’ll still be me, no matter what happens. And I want to know.”
Jared pointed to Cainen. “You say we Special Forces are slaves. You’re right. I can’t argue that. But we were also told that we are the only humans born with a purpose: To keep other humans safe. I wasn’t given a choice for that purpose before, but I choose it now. I choose this.”
“You choose to be a slave,” Cainen said.
“No,” Jared said. “I stopped being a slave when I made this choice.”