Arthur felt a lot better for all the screaming. If you couldn't do anything else, at least if you could scream, you felt relatively effective, even in some dreams. Being called a soldier rather pissed Arthur off. Military always did that when they wanted you to do things you didn't really want to do, as if being a soldier somehow made everything easier. They even had him build it into the dream programming.
Arthur found a thread of sanity through the pain, obeyed the goddamn commands, and, with what felt like his whole fucking life behind it, rolled out from under the beam.