Neural resocialization: the manufacture of obedient soldiers

Neural resocialization was a process devised by the Terran Confederacy to treat criminals suffering from mental disorders, or failing that to stop them offending and turn them into loyal soldiers instead. It worked by reshaping memory and enforcing obedience, and for most of the Confederacy's history the majority of its marines had been through it. The Terran Dominion inherited the technology along with everything else and pushed it further, applying the same techniques to ghosts and spectres to secure their loyalty. Terrans called it resoc, or brain panning, and the men who came out of it were recognisable to anyone who had served alongside them. The program was formally abolished after Valerian Mengsk took the throne, though few soldiers believed the machines had been switched off for good.

A Confederate answer to a manpower problem#

The Confederacy built resocialization to solve two problems at once. It had criminals it could not house and a military it could not fill, and the process turned the first into the second. Officially it was a treatment for mental disorder, or at minimum a way to stop a man committing crimes again. In practice it produced soldiers.

The technology was already in common use by 2478 and its existence was sometimes disclosed publicly, yet around 2480 it was still considered new and unproved. Understanding of it spread slowly even inside the institution that relied on it. As late as 2488 it was not common knowledge within the Confederate military, and rival powers wanted the details badly enough to torture captured Confederate soldiers for them. During the Guild Wars, Cole Hickson and Jim Raynor were thrown into a prisoner camp on Turaxis II and worked over by captors who wanted to know how resocialization was done.

The early results were crude. Confederate resocs of that period were little better than robots, marching blindly into enemy fire and taking chances no ordinary soldier would take, walking into the meat grinder because nothing in them objected. The science improved over the following decades and had produced new forms by 2499. Under the Dominion, the resocialization specialist Dr. Stanley Burgess pushed the frontier further still.

What the process did#

Several distinct types of neural resocialization existed, and all of them shared two properties. They reshaped the subject's memories, layering new ones over the old, and they enforced obedience to a degree that varied with the method used.

The memory work was described by its practitioners as programming. Technicians sought out particular memories, usually the emotionally charged violent ones belonging to a criminal past, suppressed them, and covered them over with more pleasant filler. Cataloguing and reprogramming required the subject to relive each memory as it was processed. What came out the other side had a blissful look about it that observers found hard to miss.

The same mechanism could be run in reverse to add rather than subtract. Technical and combat skills were installed as altered or new memories, which meant fresh personnel could be trained in a fraction of the usual time. The shortcut had a tell. Certain implanted memories recurred among resocs, and regular marines learned to recognise the process by hearing the same stories twice. Telepaths needed no such clues; a resocialized mind registered as fuzzy to psychic senses.

Obedience was the other half. Some forms left the subject incapable of even pointing a weapon at another marine. Resocialized soldiers could also shift loyalties wholesale if their commanders did, which made entire units transferable property.

Methods and degrees#

By the opening of the Great War the Confederacy was using non-invasive forms that left little outward trace, at most a divot behind the ear. These modified behaviour so that the subject would obey a strongly given order even from someone outside the chain of command. Combined with stimulants, a resocialized marine could be ordered to shoot civilians and relatives, and explicit orders were needed to make him hold fire on possible friendlies. Other invasive methods were less discreet and left scars above the neckline.

Resocialization tanks offered a milder route. A subject endured multiple sessions in the tanks and was programmed with the knowledge and skills required for a chosen occupation, emerging disoriented for some time afterwards but with fewer behavioural restrictions. A tank subject could evaluate a situation, disobey an order, even attack allies if he judged it right.

At the other end sat the intensive methods, which were reckoned extremely painful. Burgess used such techniques in Dominion service, sometimes with full-body restraints built into the procedure. By 2502 a subconscious form had been developed out of tank technology, one that caused behavioural problems but left the personality largely intact until a programmed trigger fired. It could be resisted by willpower alone.

Scale and policy#

Under the Confederacy most marines were resocialized, though near the end the government claimed the figure had fallen to half, sometimes less. The Great War ended any pretence that the process was reserved for criminals; forced resocialization was used to conscript civilians into the military outright. After the Brood War the intake of resocialized marines fell slightly, but volunteer numbers stayed low and the process continued.

The Dominion maintained that its program took criminals and redeemed them, giving them hope and a new beginning. Resocialization was never limited to the enlisted ranks. Lieutenant Emily Swallow of Alpha Squadron had undergone the process, while obvious candidates such as Major Esmerelda Ndoci had not.

Where it broke#

Resocialized soldiers possessed little or no initiative. They reacted poorly to changing battlefield conditions and lacked the depth of personality of an ordinary human, and the process wiped away unique talents and expertise along with the criminal past. That loss was expensive enough that the Dominion created units such as the War Pigs to recover capabilities resoc had destroyed. Some handlers still preferred obedient troops to improvisational ones. Resocs also reacted badly to being antagonised, and pranks or the exploitation of their willingness to accept hazardous duty had ended in deaths.

The conditioning could shatter. Emily Swallow needed a stimpack to relieve the stress of questioning a Sons of Korhal agitator, and when zerg attacked her later, her old criminal instincts surfaced. Trauma weakened the hold on suppressed memories generally, which is why the Confederate Marine Corps kept seriously wounded resocs heavily sedated during treatment rather than risk them sliding back into who they had been.

A small percentage of terrans proved resistant altogether. Criminals, the occasional political dissident and marines who stayed uncontrollable after treatment were conscripted into the Reaper Corps. Outside forces could undo the work as well. Protoss psionics reversed resocialization, terran psychics managed it to a degree, and infestation peeled back the memories of an infested terran to reveal the implanted layer for what it was.

Ghosts, spectres and an unexpected defence#

Resocialization bore a close resemblance to the technology normally used to control ghosts, and the two converged. The same methods were applied to spectres, and memory modification was used on ghost agents to guarantee their loyalty. False memories of that kind were hard to work through, though a memory wipe could strip them out.

One effect nobody had designed for emerged during the wars against Amon. Resocialization, particularly when the process had been repeated, granted resistance to the psychic domination of the hybrid. The Confederacy had built a cage for its criminals and accidentally built armour against a far older enemy.

Abolition#

After Valerian Mengsk ascended, the Dominion announced that the resocialization program was fully abolished and put reforms in place for the better treatment of those who had been through it. The soldiers were not entirely convinced. Some suspected the program would be reactivated the moment casualties mounted and recruitment fell short. Others assumed it had simply been scaled back rather than ended, and that somewhere the tanks were still warm.