In the far future, a nameless, ambiguous prisoner is taken out of cryosleep and given a dosage of a violence-inducing mind control drug, Poison, by a narrator who refers to themselves only as “we.” The prisoner is placed in a battlesuit and shipped out, via spacepod, to an alien planet; while on the interstellar journey, they are administered further doses of Poison which turn their initial complacency first into discomfort, then rage. The prisoner touches down on the foreign planet, full of fury. The narrator muses on how the prisoners are to go on a killing spree as part of a war campaign against the planet’s inhabitants. Looking through a visor full of telemetric data, the prisoner and their fellow war pawns—all under the influence of Poison—carry out the narrator’s directive.  Upon completing their violent mission, the injured prisoners help each other back to their pods. The narrator, surprised, remarks on their altruism—despite the Poison’s influence on their minds and bodies. The prisoner protagonist is then brought to a debriefing session, and, upon asking, “Have I completed my sentence?” The narrator answers “no.” The narrator reveals that they and the prisoner are from the same planet, and that the prisoner acted with pacifism during an alien invasion, resulting in the loss of the planet. As a punishment, all pacifists have been sentenced to a life of medically-induced violence. In a twist, the prisoner, resisting the Poison, teams up with other prisoners to disarm the narrator. As punishment for turning them violent, the prisoners subject the narrator to a life of altruism, remarking, “You will hunger to be helpful.”