Mad World

My first day with the Agency began with a 6 am flight from London to Rome. I sat next to a young woman, faded jeans, backpack, Peace Corps type, who was reading a book by P. W. Singer, called Children at War. On the cover, a young African boy about 10 years old stared out at me. He was wearing a red beret decorated with a silver star, red shorts, a khaki jacket a couple sizes too big for him and a striped tee shirt with an ironic picture of a kid on a BMX bicycle.

The expression in his eyes was hard to read. It’s as if he were putting on brave facade for this photo but was trying to subtly telegraph his hidden fear and vulnerability hoping the photographer would notice and rescue him. The boy posed in a field. In the background, human skulls were displayed on stakes pounded into the earth. He had a Kalashnikov rifle slung around his neck and his hands rested comfortably on the grip and the barrel.

I tried to smile and asked my seatmate how she liked the book and she said. “It’s not the kind of book you read for pleasure; it’s the kind you read to know how mad the world can become when we stop paying attention.”

Her words erased the smile from my face. She could see that I was moved so she read to me from the dustcover. “The very first American soldier killed by hostile fire in the “war on terrorism” was shot by a fourteen-year old Afghan boy.”

“I didn’t know that.” I said

She read “…the book is the first comprehensive examination of an escalating phenomenon: the use of children as soldiers around the globe. It tells how and why the children are recruited, indoctrinated and trained, and then converted to killers”.
Then, as if to give me hope she added, “ The last part of the book is devoted to outlining responses that can end this horrible practice.”

I thanked her and then I pretended to doze. I did not tell her that I was going to Rome to take a job with an agency that trains young girls to be assassins and most likely employs some of the very same techniques and consequences condemned in that book. I did not tell her that today I was to meet my new partner, a 10-year-old girl who was at this moment receiving surgical enhancements and beginning her psychological conditioning.

I didn’t need to see that book. Not today. It seemed like Fate was giving me one last chance to say no to the new job in Rome but I ignored that call. I had promised my brother I’d come and he had pulled strings to get me the security clearances. So I reported for my first assignment with the Social Welfare Agency and got my first glimpse of the girl that would become Henrietta.