“And now welcome our new Cadets!” the General announces. The parents in the front rows bring their preschoolers to the stage, lining them up to have Future Courage medallions pinned to their chests, and I feel sick. I’ve told my son this whole event is one huge marketing scam—the medals are from China, the General just a costumed representative from VirtuCube who’s recruiting online soldiers—but Eli doesn’t care; he loves the games which promise him a social life.

High school wasn’t an easy transition for Eli. He’s small for his age and not good at sports; his only real interests are comics and video games. Whenever I picked him up from school, he was always standing alone by the curb, far from the groups of older boys whose conversations were peppered with war terminology.

After I saw that, I called my ex and asked whether we ought to reconsider Purple Heart. “He’s being left out at school,” I told her.

“Okay, that sucks, but the game is completely fucked. I’m not letting Eli kill real people in other countries.”

“Apparently there’s a non-combat mode. No droids, just avatars and simulation.”

“No,” she said, and I thought that was the end of it, but Eli must’ve overheard me. He worked on Colleen’s family for the next three months, and that Christmas her parents bought the game for him. Colleen took it away immediately, but it was like returning a puppy on Christmas morning.

“I fucking hate the game,” she finally said, “but if he’s going to play, it’ll be at your house.”

So we agreed I’d take him to the upcoming convention, and afterward he could have Purple Heart as long as he played non-combat mode only.

And that’s how our son’s military training began.

“Non-combat,” I tell Eli when we drive home from the convention.

“What about duty calls, skins, and hacker drones?” he asks.

“Are they available in non-combat?”

“No, but the game sucks without them. Next call starts Friday. I need to get enough valor points to even compete for a droid.”

“You’re not playing Combat Mode and you’re not controlling droids. Ever. Do you understand?”

“Dad, avatars suck, they’re just like stupid CGI with no real-world interface. The whole point is to see who gets picked for droid operation. Seriously, there were like literally over five hundred thousand civilian casualties in the last war. Guess how many since Purple Heart?” He looks at me, ready to parrot the statistics from their website.

“I don’t care.”

“One hundred and eight.”

“You’re fourteen years old. I’m not letting you kill people. Non-combat or you don’t get to play.”

“That sucks,” Eli says, but he agrees. I give him the download code when we get home and he logs on.