January 11, 2010
Drone Wars: 3-D Crotch Bomber
"The real world never looked that 3-D," Alice Springs gasped as she took her turn in the training module. Of course, it wasn't her real name. She had to leave her old one at the door when she donned the mirrored specs for the final exam. Brightly colored artificial looking figures surrounded her. They were boarding a plane for San Francisco. She needed to stay alert.
Back in the day her uncle had the same job. Eventually he rose in the ranks of the Transportation Security Agency. He pulled himself up from a job in the mailroom to become a section boss. To Alice Springs he was a constant reminder of the diligence required by the job.
All she knew was that she was on the lookout for a nefarious figure called "The Crotch Bomber". John Dillinger's silhouette was still on the targets the Federal Bureau of Investigation used for shooting practice. For the TSA Public Enemy #1 was still "The Crotch Bomber". Training exercise or not it didn't matter. Her future career was on the line. "Find him, or else..."
At one point when the idea popped into her head that she might consider national security as a possible career path she sheepishly asked her uncle if when he wore the mirrored specs he privately got off on the people he screened. "Underwear," he answered. "Not many people know it, but you can change the setting on the glasses a little. Sexy underwear is what really gets me going."
Behind her glasses her eyes were peeled. Halfway around the world in someplace called Quail Haven, Tennessee a simulation of the "Crotch Bomber", much like the original young man, only more intense in virtual 3-D, was about to board a plane with the intent of blowing it up. Alice Springs was on the sharp lookout for a pair of naughty underwear.
"Oh, I should probably mention," anchorman Michael Michaels said. "Alice Springs is schizophrenic. In reality she lives on Skid Row. It's all part of a new experiment that follows on the heels of the highly touted success of last year's nation-wide handout of Blue Tooth earpiece devices to the homeless. The growing population of chemically imbalanced street people that walk around talking to themselves, so the thinking of civic-minded leaders went, might become more socially integrated and generally palatable if it appeared to the public at large that they were actually talking on the phone like everyone else. Today we have with us the criminal psychology professor who spearheaded the drive..."
"Broadly seen as a paradigm shift in the way we think about our insane population," the criminal psychologist was irrepressible in his zeal for the new program, "many people out there want to expand the mandate even further. They believe the mentally challenged lunatics in our country are an underused resource, and in these times of trouble everyone available needs to get recruited for the sake of the cause. We have a huge schizophrenic population, but it's idle," he said. "What we need more than anything else are more security forces on the front lines. Our military is almost entirely reliant on young children to man its drones. No one I admire has ever questioned the policy. It's a major moneymaker, a huge source of revenue for the government and the entertainment industry. The science is there. The economics are sound. It works. A short mental skip-and-jump to integrate the mentally retarded, depressed people, and psychotics into the nation's campaign against terror is all that's required."
"Please turn around and salute the flag," Alice Springs asked the hologram behind her mirrored 3-D lenses. "Like you mean it," she added. She got a thrill from watching the man's butt-cheeks tighten when he made the patriotic gesture.
"Donating a bunch of Blue Tooth earphones to schizophrenics to make them look less conspicuous is one thing," Michael Michaels tried to understand the criminal psychologist. "Putting them to work on the front line of national security is quite another, isn't it?"
"Not now!" Alice Springs yelled out-of-the-blue. She was sitting on a bench in a park under a leafless black Oak. Presumably she was talking to someone or something she saw behind her mirrored glasses. "Not now!" she yelled again and pulled her shoulder back as if to shrug some invisible person's hand off.
"Our nation's enemies are crazy." The criminal psychology professor tried to make it sound simple so Michael Michaels could understand better. "They must be, mustn't they?" he asked. "Because we simply don't understand their motivation. I mean why do the Rebels do the things they do? Who knows? Not me. Why is that? Because I'm sane, that's how come. Ipso facto, so it follows, who better than crazies to pick one of their own out of a line-up?"
"Nothing's as silly as young white girls dancing," Alice Springs responded to an instant message from her friend Goodnight Goodblood. Anyone looking would have thought the homeless bag lady with the oversized mirrored glasses was talking to the pigeons at her feet.
"Except maybe young white boys dancing," her friend texted back.
"Dance me to your lonely violin," the schizophrenic woman in turn sent the lyrics of one of their favorite songs.
On the inside lens of Alice Springs' mirrored 3-D specs Goodnight Goodblood completed the refrain. The words "Dance me with your naked hand, dance me with your glove," scrolled across the bottom of her high-tech glasses.
"In the past the mirrored glasses worn by police were meant to convey the all-seeing eye and concurrent omnipotence of law enforcement," the criminal psychologist tried to explain for Michael Michaels and the television audience the new eyewear handed out to schizophrenics. "The high-way patrolman's psychological interiority was hidden behind the lenses. It was as if he didn't have any interiority at all. Like he was a pure exteriority, a pure reflection of the landscape that surrounded him. In those silver lenses his psychology was an uncontaminated reflection of the outside world. But what today's law enforcement officer sees behind his mirrored lenses is not just the outside world as we see it. He sees a make-believe universe, a virtual world that includes the real world enhanced by a fully realized digital world."
"The Crotch-Bomber," Alice Springs screamed from her perch upon the park bench. Tears streamed from her eyes. "The Crotch Bomber!" She yelled her ass off. She had to alert her proctor before the suspect got aboard the airplane. She was sure it was him. It had to be him. The fellow's underwear she saw through her reflective glasses was provocative, patterned with hearts, and Alice Springs liked hearts.
The first snowflakes fell on her head. "The Crotch Bomber," she yelled again a little less emphatically than she had done the time before and turned her mirrored specs off. The test was over. The virtual terrorist was apprehended by airport security. Snow started to come down more quickly. "Snowmageddon," her voice trailed off to a quiet mumble. "It's a snowmageddon."
"We're losing her," the TSA proctor yelled to his assistant. "Quick. Turn the training module off! She's having some kind of fantasy delusion response to the 3-D lenses. She's talking nonsense -- says she's a bag lady -- keeps repeating the phrase 'Goodnight Goodblood' -- thinks it's snowing something awful in there."
The test grader stood in the frame of the door and scratched his head. "You won't believe this," he said and held out a computer printout to the proctor.
"I'll be darned," the man said. "A perfect score."
"Early results with schizophrenic-test participants are very good," the criminal psychology professor told Michael Michaels. "Much better than expected. If they hold up the way they look like they will there is already talk of a Federal Government Drone War Idol tie-in for Version XVII. Administration officials and game show and video game executives are calling it "Connect The Dots". The thinking is to test it on mental patients and psychotics first, who, like I said before, might very well turn out are the ideal users given their unique state-of-mind. But once the kinks are out it could very well get released to the general consumer audience. Think of the potential profits!" he panted. "It would be the live-action interactive version of 'Find Elmo', only the object of the game would be to find the Crotch Bomber..."
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2010
