A veteran describes his first combat mission in Iraq in 2007, when hearing a Nine-Line call triggered a dissociative state he calls "God mode," where time seemed to slow like the Matrix. In that heightened awareness, he felt calm and deep empathy for ground troops, recognizing their shared humanity and desire to go home.
The first time I was in combat was in Iraq in 2007, and I can remember the first time I heard a Nine Line being read over the radio. I could actually feel the back of my brain light up, and I went into this superconscious state that I'd never felt before. And it was almost like being in a God mode, like I could watch myself typing in the coordinates from like a third-person point of view or a witnessing point of view, and everything was moving in slow motion, just like The Matrix. As the bomb released from the wing of the aircraft, I had this feeling of calm, but I also felt this deep feeling of empathy and kind of had this moment of recognizing that the guys on the ground were just trying to get home to their family the same way that I was, and that we'd kind of been placed in this situation by our governments and events outside of our control. And really this kind of sense that in many ways that we had a lot more in common than not. It was just an incredibly profound experience.
