There were numbers everywhere Nic looked.
Numbers floating in the air over the holotable, their light a deep, pacifying shade of blue. Logical black numbers against a clinical white screen on the self-report tablet in front of him. Numbers on the holoclock hanging from the wall: 02:24. He could even see numbers on the exceedingly official, exceedingly rare notebook that the psychiatrist brought. It was paper, and she wrote on it with ink. It wasn’t something he saw every day.
He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be able to see what she was writing. Maybe it was some kind of test, a temptation for him to peek. Maybe she was just careless. Maybe it meant nothing.
He’d been in this psych eval for almost three hours, so it was hard to fight the urge to psychoanalyze the psychoanalyst.
She cleared her throat. “I’m going to recite a phrase, and I’d like you to summarize the meaning or theme of that phrase using just one word. And I want you to use a word that doesn’t appear in the phrase itself. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” His eyelids were getting heavy.
“The phrase is: ‘People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.’ What do you think that means, if you had to use only one word?” The psychiatrist pressed a button on her holowatch; Nic watched a stopwatch timer counting upward. 0:01, 0:02, 0:03...
He’d heard the expression before, though he couldn’t remember the context. He didn’t often encounter glass or stones, either, outside of leisure sims or shore leaves. Throwing stones, he thought, has a Biblical connotation. The Bible. Death by stoning. ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ I remember Maqsud recited that verse once... Morality. Judgment.
A glass house is fragile. Maybe that’s it. Being careful, waiting to reserve judgment. Caution. Or maybe it’s talking about reprisal. Revenge. If you throw stones, someone could throw stones back at your house and break it... Something like that.
“There are no wrong answers,” the psychiatrist lied. 0:11, 0:12, 0:13...
Nic knew she was lying. There was a right answer and a plethora of wrong answers. But he guessed that this question was supposed to give her some kind of insight into his mind, his way of looking at the world.
Glass is transparent. If you lived in a glass house, people could see inside it. People could see everything you were doing. Your actions. They could judge you. Judgment—maybe that’s it. If you throw stones at someone for doing something wrong... People will watch you in your glass house to wait for you to make the same mistake.
“We can move on, too, if you’d like.” 0:21, 0:22, 0:23...
“Hypocrisy,” Nic answered finally. “Hypocrisy.”
The psychiatrist smirked in a perfectly neutral way, neither congratulating him for getting it right nor chiding him for taking so long. It was the kind of smirk someone made when watering a plant or looking at an animal in a virtual zoo. She wrote on her paper notebook: 24s-p10,20-1. “Tell me about your upbringing, Nic.”
“My upbringing,” he repeated. “Like...”
She shrugged and nodded. “Whatever you want to say. Whatever you remember. Whatever resonates with you.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve seen my file. I was raised at Paradigm Prep—sorry, Paradigm Military Academy.”
“Why are you sorry?”
He shrugged back. “I misspoke. I forgot they changed the name since I graduated.”
“Would you say that being correct is important to you?” She leaned forward a centimeter, positioned her pen over the page.
“I... I don’t know. I guess. Not sure why it wouldn’t be. But I was wrong just now, so I just wanted to correct myself. It’s not a big deal.”
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She nodded. “Would you say that perfection is important to you?”
He remembered reading his own student profile when Team Scarlet was first assembled. The phrase maladaptive perfectionism resurfaced. “I guess so. It definitely was in the past.”
More nodding, more scribbling. “Would you say that winning is important to you?”
King of the Hill. Shoving his peers. Blood—his own. Red on white. King of the Hill. Blasting the heads off monsters. Blood—theirs. Blue. His friend’s. Red. Blood—theirs. Blue, all over a factory floor. Monsters and humans alike screaming in terror. “It was. Now... Now I’m just trying to survive, I guess. Trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
She wrote down some more numbers: RC-3, Axial-4.1.8. “Well, that’s good. That means the future can be hopeful, right? And what does that light at the end of the tunnel look like for you, Nic?”
He pictured his perfect future. Married to the love of his life. Taking off his suit of vac-armor for the last time, breathing the open air of a terraformed world. The freedom to go anywhere, do anything. His best friends never more than a road trip away. No more fighting. No need to win anything. No more waiting for it all. “Peace. Contentment. I just want to marry my girlfriend, I want to move somewhere away from... all this. I want to be done.”
“Retirement is a reasonable goal for any person to have when they feel they’ve done all they need to do in life. You’re saying you want to retire after the Contact War?” Nic answered her with another nod, rubbing his sleep-heavy eyes. “I see your contract is up in just five months. What will you do with your life after that? What comes next, once you’ve found this peace, once you’re done?”
He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I... I don’t know. I would figure it out then. As long as I’m there and not here, I’ll be happy.”
“So, this light at the end of the tunnel isn’t so much a goal you’re working toward, or something you want in and of itself... It’s more of an escape for you? It’s an alternative to something you feel is bad?” The question stunned him. He didn’t understand the distinction she was making, not at first, but this new perspective was already forging new neural pathways in his brain. He didn’t say anything; she filled the silence with a small, “Mm,” and jotted another note. “Well, the AI has finished scoring your questionnaire. I think that covers all the questions I had for you. Do you have any questions for me?”
Nic straightened up in his seat, realizing he’d been slouching. He was dead tired, suddenly jolted awake by the prospect of being done, of seeing his squad again. “I’d like to know what all those numbers mean. What you’ve been writing. What you’re going to tell the higher-ups about me. I know this is because of what happened on Copernicus—what Korbin did.”
“Well, of course it is, Nic. That’s no secret. You and all the other non-officers on that mission are being evaluated to determine if you’re a danger to yourself or others. We’re both adults here, and since you’re my patient in this relationship, you have every right to your own medical information.” She deactivated the holotable and collected the tab from him, powering down the screen. “Based on your answers today, I think you have a stable grasp of reality. You’re slightly above the average intelligence. Certain axes of your past mood disorders are elevated compared to your Paradigm profile scores, but nothing that warrants anything beyond routine evals. No new diagnoses—just the depression, anxiety, and PTSD already on file. You’re an RC-3.”
“And that means...”
“Your Risk Category. Three. It means you’re unlikely to pose a catastrophic risk to the GDF, its missions, or the general interests of WorldGov across the galaxy.”
“So, I’m baseline. Normal.”
“It’s out of five categories. You’re somewhere in the middle—again, nothing that can’t be managed by keeping up with your routine evals. I am going to write you a prescription for Psilocybex. Frankly, I think most of the GDF is woefully undermedicated given what you’re exposed to on a regular basis. I think it’ll do you some good.”
He’d taken it once before—swore he’d never touch the stuff again. Not with the side effects it gave him. “I can’t do that. I can’t take...” He felt himself getting worked up, took a breath to steady himself. “Please don’t write me that prescription. I had a really bad reaction to that stuff when they gave it to me right after Nereus.”
“Well, Nic, I can’t force you to take it. Neither can the GDF. But it’s the safest drug on the market and the most appropriate one for your condition. It’s helped literally millions of people across the galaxy.”
“But refusal of treatment is a breach of contract. I can’t do that. I’d be putting my whole squad at risk. There has to be something you can do.”
She shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid my recommendation has already been submitted. Like I said, Nic, no one can compel you to abide by your treatment plan. But I think giving this medication another try would be good for you.” She gave him a sympathetic expression, a look that peeled back a layer of her professionalism to reveal something rawer underneath. “You’re a bright young man, Nic. You have a lot of life ahead of you. And you’ve been through some terrible things. The sooner you come to terms with what’s happened to you, the sooner you can find something to live for, instead of just survive against.”
Nic rolled his eyes, staring at the holoclock on the wall. 02:41. “Korbin had a wife and a kid to live for.”
The psychiatrist gathered her things and stood from the holotable. “Have a good night, Nic.”
Nic sat at the holotable for another half hour. Alone, sleep-deprived, he nodded off. He dreamed of a light at the end of a dark tunnel.
He dreamed of catching the light in his hand, not knowing what to do with it. He dreamed that the light did not want to be held.