Story:
The biggest worry of a soldier on the battle field is of course the enemy. But when a soldier has been fighting for several days without any time to rest, then his biggest enemy is not a guy with a loaded rifle pointed to his head. But, it is his own body. Sleep, fatigue and pain may not kill you, but it will dull your senses and make you a easy target and a worthless soldier.
The military once tried to address this problem by commissioning a group of scientist to conduct an illegal experiment to develop a stimulant that could make such problems irreverent. These researchers kept 5 people alive for 15 days using an experimental gas based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake so that the gas didn’t kill them, since the gas was toxic in high concentrations. This was before closed circuit cameras so they had only microphones and 5 inch thick glass porthole sized window into the chamber to monitor them. The chamber contained books, cots to sleep on but no bedding, running water and a toilet, and enough dried food to last them for over a month.
The test subjects were Pakistani prisoners. Each of them had spent at least 5 years in the Indian jails. And, in all this time no one had come to claim them. So it was safe to say that no one would miss them if anything went wrong in the experiment.
Everything was fine for the first 5 days, the subjects hardly complained having been promised (falsely) that they would be freed if they submitted to the test and did not sleep for 30 days. Their conversations and activities were monitored and it was noted that they continued to talk about increasingly traumatic incidents of the past, and the general tone of their conversations took on a darker aspect after the 4 day mark.
After 5 days they started to complain about the circumstances and events that led them to where they were and started to demonstrate severe paranoia. They stopped talking to each other and began alternately whispering to the microphones and one way mirrored port holes. Oddly they all seemed to think that they could win the trust of the experimenters by turning over their comrades, the other subjects in the captivity with them. At first the researchers suspected that this was an effect of the gas itself…
After 9 days the first of them started screaming. He ran the length of the chamber repeatedly screaming at the top of his lungs for 3 hours straight, he continued attempting to scream but was only able to produce occasional squeaks. The researchers postulated that he had physically torn his vocal cords. The most surprising thing about this behavior is how the other captives reacted to it… or rather didn’t react to it. They continued whispering to the microphones until the second of the captives started to scream. The 2 non screaming captives took the books apart, smeared page after page with their own feces and pasted them calmly over the portholes. The screaming promptly stopped.
So did the whispering into the microphones.
After 3 more days passed, the researchers checked the microphones hourly to make sure they were working. Since they thought that it was impossible that no sound could be coming with 5 people inside. The oxygen consumption in the chamber indicated that all 5 must still be alive. In fact it was the amount of oxygen 5 people would consume at a very heavy level of exercise. On the morning of the 14th the researchers did something they said they would not do to get a reaction from the captives, they used the intercom inside the chamber, hoping to provoke any response from the captives they were afraid were either dead of unconscious.
They announced: “We are opening the chamber to test the microphones. Step away from the door and lie flat on the floor or you will be shot. Compliance will earn one of you your immediate freedom.
To their surprise, they heard a single line in a calm voice response: “We no longer want to be freed.”
Debate broke out among the researchers and the military forces funding the research. Unable to provoke any response using the intercom, it was finally decided to open the chamber at midnight on the 15th day.
The chamber was flushed of the stimulant gas and filled with fresh air and immediately voices from the microphone began to object. 3 different voices began begging, as if pleading for the life of loved ones to turn the gas back on. The chamber was opened and soldiers sent in to retrieve the test subjects. They began to scream louder than ever, and so did the soldiers when they saw what was inside. 4 of the 5 subjects’ were still alive, although no one could rightly call the state that they were in as ‘life’.
The food rations past day 5 had not been so much as touched. There were chunks of meat from the dead test subject’s thighs and chest stuffed into the drain at the centre of the chamber, blocking the drain and allowing 4 inches of water to accumulate on the floor. Precisely how much of the water on the floor was actually blood was never determined. All 4 ‘surviving’ test subjects had large portions of muscles and skin thrown away from their bodies. The destruction of flesh and the exposed bone on their finger tips indicate that the wounds were inflected by hand, not with teeth as the researchers initially thought. Closer examination of the positions’ and the angles of the wounds indicated that most if not all of them were self-inflicted.
The abdominal organs below the rib cage of all test subjects had been removed. While the heart, lung and diaphragm remained in place, the skin and most of the muscles attached to the ribs had been ripped off exposing the lungs through the rib cage. All blood vessels and organs remained intact, they had just been taken out and laid on the floor, fanning out around the still living bodies of the subjects. The digestive systems of all four could be seen to be working digesting food. It quickly became apparent what they were digesting was their own flesh that they had ripped off and eaten over the course of days.
Most of the soldiers were Indian special operatives at the facility, but still many refused to return to the chamber to remove the test subjects. They continued to scream to be left in the chamber and alternatively begged and demanded that the gas be turned back on least they fall asleep…
