As I was walking back to my starting point, I thought I heard a high pitched humming or buzzing. In the Midwest, I would be thinking ‘mosquito,’ but that was impossible in the middle of the desert. I stopped and looked up into the sky, but much like the search for this mysterious body, I saw nothing. I finally decided that my imagination was getting the best of me, so I returned to the point where I first came upon the gulch, executed a right turn, sighted a landmark in the distance, and started walking. I came to the Operations Center in about 20 minutes without further incident.

  When I entered the Operations Room, Drew greeted me with, “And here he is, the star of that sensational new snuff film from JACC productions, Doc Price.” Troy had returned during my absence and was standing in the background, shrugging his shoulders with a ‘what can I say look.’ I was just puzzled; I had no idea what Drew was talking about. “Shall we take a look at the movie trailer, that I’m sure will go viral the moment it hits the web.”

  With that, Drew started a video clip on his computer. It was a shot of the desert, taken from altitude. It looked like the edge of the gulch I had walked just a half hour ago, although I doubted if I could tell one desert gulch from another. At first, there was nothing but sand, rocks, the occasional bush, and the gulch, but in a few moments, a person entered the screen from the lower right corner. There was no mistaking who it was. I was perhaps one-third of the way across the screen when I suddenly stopped and stood motionless for perhaps two seconds.

  The display changed, with the rectangular video being replaced with a circle. I was in the center. The image was somewhat magnified from before, and two small counters were placed in the lower left corner. One said 1,321 and the other, 3,652; I guessed altitude and distance to target. A date and time of day stamp appeared in the lower right. There were no actual cross hairs, but there were four lines, one each at the top, bottom, right, and left, that started at the edge of the circle and extended about three-fourths of the way to the center. I was at the exact point where these lines would intersect, if they were extended.

  Then, I looked up, directly at the camera. As soon as I did, my image started expanding rapidly, as if the camera was zooming in…or as if it was a camera on a missile that was rapidly approaching its target. In an instant, my body filled the circle and then disappeared in a bright red flash of light, followed by the electronic snow of static. Drew was shouting, “encore, encore” and laughing. My face turned red as my temper flared, my hands unconsciously forming fists.

  Tuesday, January 5, 8:04 AM

  Troy immediately stepped between Drew and me, and literally dragged me out of the room, saying, “Make Doc a copy. I’m sure he’ll want a memento of his stay.” He did not stop pulling me along until we got all the way to the galley. I knew I owed him. I had a history of fistfights until I was about 15 or 16 years old, but had always controlled the impulse since. But for Drew, I was on the verge of making an exception. While a confrontation had been adverted, my anger had not yet subsided. Not even close. I literally spit out, “That was the most asinine display I’ve ever seen. Who in their right mind uses a real, multi-million dollar weapon system and an actual person in a simulated murder for their personal entertainment?”

  “I know… I know. I’m supposed to be the prankster around here, but I cringe every time he does this.”

  “Every time? You mean this is not a one time, total lapse in judgment?”

  Troy looked desperate and hesitated several seconds before responding. “No, unfortunately not. At first, he only simulated his attacks at Deadman’s Gulch with his close friends or long-time coworkers. But over time, he has come to love the shocked look on people’s faces so much that he has opened it up to almost anyone who is not in authority. But I have to admit, I don’t think he has faked killing anyone else he has known as little as you. Maybe you can think of it as an honor – he must think you’re an OK guy.”

  Immediately, that ‘you-got-to-be-kidding’ look came over my face. But Troy’s banter was working, a little. My blood pressure was starting to return to normal.

  “The thing that’s so infuriating to me is that he didn’t act like there was anything wrong with firing at me. It just seemed like a huge joke to him. That’s not normal behavior.”

  The last statement slipped past my lips before I could stop it. One common misperception about psychologists, I knew, was that we were all experts on psychoses and neuroses. In fact, I had never even taken a single class in abnormal psychology, having focused on cognitive psychology and statistics instead. A statement about normalcy, coming from a psychologist, seemed always to be taken as expert judgment, whether it was or not. And Troy seemed to be taking my comment as gospel.

  “Easy Doc. Drew is a bit…different. He doesn’t have many friends, and his sense of humor, I agree, is unusual. But I can’t imagine that he’s dangerous. I’ve talked to him about things like this, and using JACC in his mock executions in particular. He seems to take it to heart, but then slips back. You aren’t going to report him, are you? He would be fired in a second if this got out, and that would be a huge waste. He’s one of the most talented pilots I’ve ever met. He can out-fly anyone on JACC.”

  I drew in a deep breath and let out a long sigh, as the adrenalin level in my bloodstream was continuing to drop. Could I, should I ignore this? I thought not. If Drew was, say, a police officer who liked to point his empty firearm at passers-by as a form of entertainment, would I look the other way? And wasn’t Drew in a similar position – entrusted to handle a deadly weapon safely in the presence of unarmed civilians?

  “I’m not sure I can just ignore it. This is a dangerous lack of judgment.”

  Now, it was Troy’s turn to sigh, after which he said, “Can you at least talk to him before you report this? I thought he had quit this nonsense, but he just seems to find it so funny that he can’t resist. Perhaps if you speak to him, he’ll stop for good.”

  In the candor of my private thoughts, I knew I lacked the clinical intuition and experience to determine whether anything I might say would produce a lasting change in Drew’s behavior. Because while it was possible that Drew was drawn to this game by an unusual sense of humor, the situation might well be more complex. Perhaps this stunt gave him a sense of power. For all I knew, maybe he heard voices telling him to kill people with JACC. I doubted it, but it was possible.

  Finally, I relented. “OK, I’ll talk to Drew. But I’m not sure I can promise anything beyond that. I have a briefing to Dr. Marshall and Col. Dempsey before I leave the test range in about 10 days. I’ll make a final decision before then and let you know.”

  “That’s all I could ask. Thanks. I think you’ll find that Drew is actually completely harmless.”

  I was not sure there was any way I could come to that conclusion, but I let it go for now.

  Procrastination, it turns out, is rarely a good policy.

  Tuesday, January 5, 8:26 AM

  Although I had calmed down considerably during our talk, I suggested to Troy that we take a short break, to which he agreed. I doubted he needed it, as he had only just come in, but the same could not be said for me. I went outside to collect my thoughts, to try to regain the perspective I had a couple of hours ago. Nights in the desert were cold, but the morning sun was starting to warm the earth. It was pleasant… until I heard a faint buzzing again. JACC was still airborne, and while it was most likely only performing area reconnaissance by executing a preprogrammed search route, my mental focus was not going to improve standing outside. I returned to the Operations Center.

  I was determined to start my evaluation of the Operations Coordinator training, so Troy and I met in the conference room, allowing us to work without further distractions from Drew.

  It is often surprising just how much detail one remembers from an event, especially one that is surprising, personally important, and emotionally charged. Having been “killed” by a simulated weapon seemed to meet all these requirements, and my memory of the event seemed unnaturally detailed. The reason, I suspected, was that I had developed what psychologists termed a “flashbulb memory.” Although the phrase implies a highly accurate ‘photograph’ of the incident, research has indicated that the accuracy of the recall may well be flawed. To the person remembering the event, however, flashbulb memories seem extremely vivid and comprehensive. I had that same feeling; I felt I could see the look on my face as the missile flew at me, hear Drew’s laughing in the background, and even read the numbers and time stamp on the display. But a couple of words also held a prominent position in my thoughts. So, I asked.

  “Deadman’s Gulch?”

  “What?”

  “You said that Drew had lured me out to Deadman’s Gulch?”

  “Oh, sure. He showed you an infrared return that looked something like a person lying on the ground, right?”

  “Yes. I assume it’s just an anomaly. There’s no one else involved in this deception, right?”

  “No, of course not. The sensor image is just some sort of fluke. The early morning sun hits something that looks like a human. Drew was the first to notice it, when he flew JACC over the location. JACC reported nothing but sand and rocks, but Drew was sure that it was a person. So he put JACC into an orbit and raced out there to look. He found nothing, of course, and by the time he got back, the infrared ghost was gone. A few days later, he had another early morning flight, so he convinced me to come in early too. When he saw it, he used JACC’s infrared display and a set of walkie-talkies to direct me to the exact spot. When I got there, it was nothing except a bunch of rocks, but we started calling it Deadman’s Gulch. It’s not an official name or anything like that.”

  “You say that Drew was the first to fall prey to this illusion. Was he angry he had been fooled?”

  “No, I don’t think so. He just seemed amazed it was so realistic on the display.”

  “And you say that JACC was actually more accurate than anyone else in recognizing that this return is an illusion. I mean, it looked like a person to me, but I’m not an expert on interpreting infrared images.”

  “Doc, JACC is almost always more accurate than people, especially if they have to make quick decisions. In the case of Deadman’s Gulch, if you pan the infrared sensor over the area, you’ll see other rocks not too far away that are also starting to warm and that show a similar type of return. None of them is shaped like a person, of course. So, if you took your time and looked around a bit, you might come to the conclusion that what you’re seeing is not a person. But at first glance, the impression is very strong. Everyone sees it and everyone except perhaps an expert thinks it’s a body.”

  “So, when JACC fired at me…” I could see a slight grimace cross Troy’s face, so I refined the premise of my statement. “So, when JACC took the simulated shot at me, it would have determined, through its sensors and algorithms, that I was human.”

  “JACC would have determined that you were human. I strongly suspect that it also classified you as a ‘civilian noncombatant,’ but I’m sure the record of your encounter is long gone. Drew doesn’t leave them laying around, for obvious reasons. But you carried nothing that should have been interpreted as a weapon and you weren’t in the immediate vicinity of any structure that it would have considered military.”

  “But wouldn’t it have known that I came from the Operations Center and that it’s a military installation? If the cars in the parking lot are classified as military, because they’re close to this building, then why wouldn’t I have been classified as military because I came from there?”

  “The Center is consistently classified as military due to the types of emissions, infrastructure, and contents. And in the right mode, JACC can build up a tactical picture from its individual assessments of each structure and person, and where those people have been. But that mode wouldn’t have been in use this morning. When it’s used, it generates terabytes of data that have to be analyzed in detail. We have to make sure that all of the associations that JACC is making are accurate. I know it wasn’t being used this morning, because if it was, then the Deadman’s Gulch scenario would be part of a permanent record.”

  This conversation was making me more uneasy about Drew. He knew what he was doing was wrong – bad enough that he hid all the evidence – but he still did it when he thought he could get away with it. That was quite a risk to take, just for a laugh, and I wondered again if there was more to his impulses than just having a good time.

  My curiosity about Deadman’s Gulch, however, was not specifically related to the Operations Coordinator job, so I was wasting time. I decided we should move on to the most pressing question in my mind – why were there no training topics related to human-machine coordination in the syllabus? And more specifically, was it because JACC was in control, making coordination moot? But when I looked at Troy, it was clear he had been wrestling with an issue and he had just come to a decision.

  “I think I know what you’re asking, and I don’t think I’ve given you a complete answer yet. You keep using the phrase, when JACC took the shot. JACC didn’t take the shot. But JACC can’t stop a human from taking it. Drew undoubtedly overrode the threat assessment on you, and perhaps even the identification of you as human. I don’t know exactly how many warnings he would have had to countermand to fire at you, but I know JACC has no programming that would enable it to fire at a civilian. I guess I just didn’t want to say it this bluntly, but…it was Drew’s finger on the trigger and no one else.”

  I was trying to backtrack mentally as quickly as I could. There were no tasks in the Operations Coordinator training that allowed him to launch a weapon. But that was not because JACC had this responsibility, a human did. Drew fired the simulated missile at me. That, in itself, was a relief, but I had no time to enjoy it. If Troy, who was an Operations Coordinator, was not responsible for employing JACC’s weapons, who was?

  “So, in looking through the training document you gave me, I found no mention of managing the weapons on JACC. If you don’t have the responsibility to weigh JACC’s opinions about who poses a threat and employing a munition, who does?”

  Troy looked confused. “Drew does, of course. Drew is classified as a JACC Pilot. I’m just the Operations Coordinator. I just babysit JACC, so the pilots can do the real work.”

  Tuesday, January 5, 9:02 AM

  My first reaction was that I had been led down the proverbial garden path, thinking I would be among the first to explore training for human-machine collaboration on a task of the complexity of close air support. Clearly, not every bit of ‘labor-saving’ intelligence put into software, computers, and smart equipment from thermostats to door locks proved as helpful as their designers had hoped. One only need walk through any office environment where ‘smart’ software applications were in use and listen to the users denigrate the lineage of everyone from the engineers to the CEOs of the companies who built these aids to know it was true. All too often, these products provided assistance when none was wanted or requested, and then, the recipient spent hours determining how to stop the applications and correct the damage.

  At least some of this frustration was because many people working with smart equipment and intelligent software understood little about the relative roles and responsibilities of man vs. machine. Why did this word processor put my table of contents in this style? Why did this spreadsheet application paste these data in that format? Similarly, they lacked knowledge about how to adjust these roles when they wanted. Then, when you considered that these applications were simple and that JACC involved dozens of electronic inputs and scores of complex algorithms, the potential for confusion and frustration was orders of magnitude higher. That is, at least in part, a training issue.

  When I considered my situation dispassionately, however, I knew the person who had led me down this garden path was…me. No one said that the Operations Coordinator was the one who managed the onslaught of information provided and actions proposed by JACC. I had just assumed it was. And while I was being frank with myself, I also knew that assuming I had this key responsibility was wishful thinking. I was still in my first year of my first job since graduating. I was, in a phrase, highly trained but completely inexperienced. To be placed in such a critical position with my limited background would have been questionable, or more likely, a managerial mistake.

  “So your and Drew’s consoles are not the same? They look exactly the same to me.”

  “On the outside, yes, they do look identical. But inside, the software is quite different. Drew can call up displays and has access to commands that I don’t have. Most of the differences are in the target engagement controls and displays. His console also supports a type of encryption that I don’t have. This encryption identifies his console as a JACC Pilot’s system, and once linked to a specific vehicle, it has full control. An Operations Coordinator console has its own type of encryption. It gives me supervisory control over multiple aircraft. I also get more control over a specific aircraft during emergencies, but I still can’t do everything a pilot can.”

  At least I had the external, physical similarities of the consoles partially to blame for my confusion.

  My self-pity sessions, fortunately, are generally short-lived. Agonizing about what might have been is not productive, and it was time to move on to the tasks at hand. This evaluation was an important task, if not exactly THE important task I had hoped. So, we got to work.

  First, I had Troy step me through each of the major sections of the Operations Coordinator curriculum, describing in his own words, his role. Very quickly, it became clear why he thought of himself as a babysitter. My notes on this session ended up looking like this:

  Take-off and Landing

  What does the Coordinator do?

  Troy: Monitor JACC performing take-offs and landings, watching for system abnormalities that require manual intervention.

 

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