All this makes little sense to Maxim, since his own society is free from war, hostility, crime and material shortages. Still confused about the official ideology, Kammerer gets enlisted in the military, to serve and protect the state and its people. He is ordered to execute some captured degens, one of them a woman. When he refuses, he is shot multiple times, survives, and joins the underground which consists of the degens who suffer great headaches twice daily. Degens believe that the ABM towers are responsible for that.