Drone Wars: A Jury of Unborn Children

 

            As per usual his wife woke up before he did.  He could smell the percolating coffee when he stepped out of the shower.  Handsomely attired in one of his nicest pinstriped suites he sat down at the kitchen table to the glass of orange juice and bowl of cereal she had waiting for him. 

            Together they watched the morning show, Good Day United States of Money, like they always did during breakfast, silently noting the stories of suicide bombings, drone attacks, and the government response -- always firm but fair.  Despite the dire news accounts of skyrocketing crime, a country in near-total disarray after economic collapse, and ever more brazen attacks by Rebel dissidents, they lived a nearly picture perfect middle-class suburban life. 

On the way out the door his wife told him how handsome she thought he looked in his new double-breasted suit and tastefully conservative necktie.  In a ritual they had repeated a million times before she kissed him at the door and, as he strapped himself into his sporty Blue Oval electric Regina, she waved one last time and wished him a good day at the office. 

            Traffic was worse than usual.  He tried not to think of it as a bad omen for the day ahead, but he couldn't help himself.  By nature he was a fatalist.  He was constantly on the alert for little signs -- "tells" they called them in poker.  A string of green lights, for instance, meant his luck was good.  By the same token, any hold-up, or other annoyance, was seen as a sure harbinger of bad things to come.  A flipped over vehicle that blocked the right lane of the freeway, and caused traffic to slow to a trickle just before his exit sinched it.  "Today," he decided dryly, "is going to be a rough day."

            And, sure enough, as he pulled into work, there was another man standing on his corner. 

            "What's the big idea?" he demanded of the other fellow and put down his briefcase in a huff.  "I've been working this side of the street for years."  He was practically livid, but his tone softened somewhat when he realized the interloper was just a kid.  After closer inspection he saw the young man's suit was poorly fitted and lacked any distinction.  He had survived hostile takeover attempts before, attempts by competing pharmaceutical companies to force an unwanted merger or leveraged buy-out, but this wasn't anything like that.  The boy stood stock-still, clearly frightened.  After further assessment he asked the young man if he was lost.  "You got to move along, son," he explained it to the kid, "this here corner is mine.  Go on," he waved, "scoot."

            After drugs were legalized legitimate businessmen took the place of dealers.  It was inevitable it would happen.  Faced with the certitude of bankruptcy states were desperate for any taxable income they could lay claim to.  He was among the first legitimate drug salesmen, and from the start there was a lot of pressure to bring a certain amount of respectability to the trade. 

His peers all had their specialty.  His was methamphetamines.  Directly across the street the man in the snappy bow-tie sold weed.  On the two other adjacent corners stood an opiate salesman and a rather twitchy character he found somewhat objectionable. 

There was something about the fellow's attire he disliked.  Sure enough the man wore a well-tailored suit like the rest of them.  By any reasonable assessment the other salesman's appearance was utterly professional and beyond reproach.  Nevertheless, he found the man's color choices garish and untoward. "What the hell," he resignedly thought to himself, "do I know about how to run a psychedelics business," and steadied himself for his own growing line of customers. 

There was no way to make one's way down any of the major streets in downtown Kansas City without fighting off the drug merchants.  They were on every corner of every street.  Whichever way one turned any number of these otherwise respectable well-heeled citizens closed in fast with a pitch for their "cure-whatever-ails-you" product.  The same was true for every metropolitan area in the country.  Gray-suited salespersons in thin-brimmed fedoras and briefcases accosted every sidewalk passerby in every major city touting the virtues of their various pharmaceutical wares.

And he was definitely no exception.  "Now there's a sad case," he could spot a perspective customer a mile away.  With a forced smile he filled the last crystal-meth prescription before his lunch-break. 

Among the pharmaceutical sales-people there was a distinct pecking order.  For whatever reason the opiate and methamphetamine merchant were shunned by the rest of the sales-force.  The others made it abundantly clear they didn't want to have anything to do with them.  No surprise then that they spent much of their lunch-hours badmouthing their fellow businesspersons.  After a while, however, their conversation inevitably turned to more serious topics like politics. 

"There must be something more important in life," he sighed, "than selling drugs to a bunch of addicts.  Mustn't there?"

"A forty-four in brainpan," the heroin salesman flatly said over drinks at the bar. They were talking about the doctor at the local abortion clinic.  "That's my prescription for the bastard, anyway."

Both looked up at the 3DTV above the bar.  It was a pornographic re-enactment of the news.  A renowned professor of archeology was getting head in his trailer at an unspecified dig-site.  "Work the shaft, squeeze the balls," he kept yelling.  Animal groans followed as the leading academic built to his climax.  His favorite student closed her eyes and tilted her face up to receive the load.  In the heat of passion he had boasted a facial she would never forget, but at the moment of truth all she felt was a single hot spatter on her skin.  Unimpressed she opened one eye to see if he was really done. 

As she flicked the single pearly droplet off her chin with her pinky the intercom crackled to life.  "We broke through to the other side of the barrier rock," the foreman of the drill-crew yelled.  "Come quick.  It's unbelievable.  You've got to see this."

Three miles down, at the base of the pit, the foreman held out a ratty Teddy Bear for the archeology professor to inspect.  "We found it just under the black rock-line Doc, what do you make of it?" 

"What else did you find?" the professor asked. 

"A mess of plastic garbage and junk just like you might find in your average landfill on the planet's surface."

"Impossible," the professor exclaimed in total disbelief.  "We are talking about hundreds of millions of years ago:  Before Lucy-kind man, before even dinosaurs."  He was clearly puzzled.  No one had ever penetrated the black shale layer before him.  For years he had argued for the great discovery that lay below the layer of impenetrable rock, and now all he had to show for it was a tattered Teddy Bear and a bunch of modern-day trash.  Unless...  The more he thought about it the more it made sense. 

News anchor Michael Michaels ripped off his fake professorial beard and unceremoniously cut off the archeology student and drill-crew orgy that followed their breakthrough discovery with a news bulletin.  "New evidence has surfaced," the anchorman bellowed into the microphone, "that a civilization much like our own existed millions of years ago.  In fact, it was almost exactly like our own.  Scientists believe it achieved a parallel level of development to our civilization then inexplicably and mysteriously caused its own extinction.  Are we doomed to relive its fate?  Is, as a prominent physicist has theorized based on this new and astounding evidence, our civilization caught in some kind of time warp where we are destined to relive our own demise over and over again?  Answers to these and many other questions at six..." 

The methamphetamine salesman knew full well the heroin salesman was right.  There was more to life than pushing drugs.  And he knew exactly what he had to do... 

Michael Michaels sat up straight in his anchor's chair as if to give the next story more credence.  "In version XX of Drone Wars," he reported, "The Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, ruled that the jury-pool should in some cases be expanded to include all interested parties."  He shuffled some papers on the narrow shelf of the news set countertop.  "...And," he picked right up again, "in the first test case, the Kansas City methamphetamine salesman accused of the cold-blooded murder of a local abortion clinic doctor was, after only thirty minutes of deliberation, easily acquitted of the crime by a jury of unborn children."

 

--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2010

Drone Wars: Revelations Level 21:15

 

            Alone in the attic the boy looked through old boxes in search of his original issue childhood Pray Station.  He remembered how magical it was when he first opened the Operating Manual.  "To start push 'Start' button," the first line read.  Version XIX Pray Stations were far more sophisticated than the old model, but he liked the arcane user-interface of his boyhood toy.  He brushed off the dust and opened the box.  All around him electric candles lit up.  The bright and shiny face of Jesus Christ welcomed him on the alter screen with a beaming smile. 

            "Revelations level 21:15" blinked on and off.  The boy read the passage: "The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long."

            When he pulled out his old joystick his heart launched itself against his ribs with such a jolt he felt the need to place his free hand over his breast as if some extra effort were required to hold the organ in place. 

            "The Suicide Party?" the boy scoffed, remembering what his old man had said.  On the news the story was abstract, funny because it made no sense.  In his father's study he realized it was no joking matter, his old man was dead serious. 

            "We are willing to die for our beliefs," the man's frail voice rose to meet his son's disapproval.

            After it finally sunk in that his old man felt as strongly about his position as he did, his son recoiled in horror.  "You're kidding me, right?" he almost pleaded.

            "We would rather put a gun to our head," the righteous earnestness in his father's manner sent a shiver through the boy, "Than contribute our blood and sweat to such a criminal enterprise." 

            "You're drunk," the unmoored teenager had stuttered.  "How do you expect to form a political party if your members drink the proverbial 'Cool-Aide' every time they disagree with something?"  He was utterly perplexed, overwhelmed by a sinking feeling he had never experienced before, and as he kneeled at the console of his Pray Station, he hoped beyond hope that the video game could somehow realign the shards of his reality.

            His old man's words rang in his ears.  "If that's what it takes," he had waved a half-empty whiskey bottle over his head and declared his party's position in a purposeful voice his son didn't recognize, "Then that's what it takes."

            It seemed to the teenager as if reality had sprung a leak, and as the water table lowered on his Pray Station monitor, a whole new universe revealed itself before his eyes.  All along under the waterline of the game's 3D world there had existed a vast necropolis he had never imagined possible. 

            What materialized on the screen was, however, not a heavenly diamond-studded golden city but something far more sinister.  What took shape was a satanic vision of monolithic slime-covered architecture that dripped as it emerged from the depths of the dark sea to reveal itself to the light of day for the first time in millennia.  Slowly, as the water drained from the sea, the lifeless metropolis came into view.  Titanic arches and domes oozed algae as they rose into the air.  To him his father's newly acquired belief system was as impossible as the terrible geometry that now climbed up all around him.

Almost the entire necropolis was made visible -- all except for one last temple at the end of the city, still partially submerged under the placid surface of the black pool; goop, he realized with fright, was for centuries all that separated his world from this hellish edifice.  

            Cryptic symbols, lurid hieroglyphs, and skull-like faces leered at him through the sloppy film of muck that covered the moldering walls.  He chocked back the smell of rot and decay.  Swarms of bats harassed him at every turn.  They rushed passed him in blind flight.  Rats, so many rats.  The vermin scrambled between his virtual 3D legs.  Slowly and painstakingly his avatar felt its way along the crumbling, damp corridor. 

            On screen, bony spires reflected up at him from glassy puddles.  He saw himself slipping and sliding down gigantic, slick wet slabs of stone. "Sonora," he pronounced his dead mother's name softly.  Her murder was devastating, but he had never missed her so much as he did now.

            "Washed in the blood of a lamb," was the phrase his father repeated.  The son mouthed it in disbelief, and held up a photograph of his dead mother he had placed beside the keyboard.  " Washed in the blood of a lamb?" he made it a question and put it to the picture.

            Without warning the giant steel rings of the chain that held up the drawbridge upon which he stood snapped with an ugly sound and clattered along the cobblestones of a great wall as they dropped into the abyss bellow him. 

            The game was on. 

            He was plunged into a lightless netherworld filled with predatory phantasms he had never known existed before.  Amidst the shadows of cyclopic columns were creatures so far beyond description they could not possibly have been born from human imagination.  Giant white-haired Sasquatch-like robots and even more frightening apparitions lurked menacingly among the shadows. 

            With a final thrust into his consciousness, the frightful edifice of the temple at the end of the city was fully laid bare before him.  A number of mammoth laser-cut stone blocks from the highest reaches of the dead city narrowly missed him as they crashed to the ground. There wasn't much time. He replaced his mother's photograph beside the electric candles of his Pray Station and squeezed the handle of the joystick tightly.  Alien Abominable Snowman robots or not, all he knew for sure was that horrible hostile demons were closing in fast.

            In a flash he realized the freakish phantasms had not come for him.  They had come for his father.  The old man was the one who had summoned the eons-old wrath of these alien space creatures with his idiotic, nihilistic selfishness.  Instinct took over.  His avatar edged its way through the dead city and loped up the oversized mud-smeared granite blocks that led to his dad's study. 

            Despite protests from his 3D old man -- who, true to life, simply couldn't understand what had come over his son -- the boy pulled him out of the chamber. 

            His son kept referring to some temple.  "We have to get there as fast as possible," the image of his boy kept saying. 

            "What temple?" his virtual old man asked peevishly.  This was new, this talk of a civilization of alien death-worshipers. 

            "Right ahead," his son answered.  "Almost there," he tried to reassure his drunk father who was dragging his feet the whole way.  "Can't you see it? Right up ahead.  Only a couple of more steps that's all," the boy pleaded.

            "Hear the gong?" his son asked his old man.  "Hurry now," he dragged his father behind him.  "Any hope of salvation, any at all" he tried to explain, "Means we have to get to the alter before the third and final gong." 

            With every step forward the terrible temple loomed larger until it all but blotted out the sky.  The two of them looked no bigger than miniature toy figurines at the base of the enormous steel doors.  Once inside it took a while for their eyes to adjust to the dark.  Arched ceilings seemed to rise forever into infinity.  Each hall they entered was larger than the last. 

            "Faster," the boy yelled at his old man.  "We have to go faster if we are ever going to get there."

            "Get where?" his 3D dad was losing his patience.

            "There," the kid pointed to a staggered pyramid in the middle of the great chamber.

            In order to get to the next level of the game they had to first scale two sizable walls.  It was not easy.  His old man was in pretty bad shape, but they finally made it to the base of the pyramid.  All they had to do afterward was climb the twenty thousand steps to the top.  An array of incredible creatures harassed them.  The boy fought them off one at a time with a slew of primitive weapons.  Once safe they paused momentarily to catch their breath.  The floor was far beneath them yet the ceiling looked no closer than before. 

In the middle of the pyramid's flat capstone a block of granite stood before an altarpiece of devilish design.  It was on this stone before this altarpiece the boy wanted his virtual 3D father to lie down and bare his chest.

 

--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2010

Drone Wars: The Valleys of Terrabella X

 

A beautiful fairy princess from another planet stood over the reluctant astronaut.  He lay on the metal floor of the spaceship and squinted his eyes up at her.  She trailed colors like an erratic rainbow, as if she were dissolving in the warm sun.  The girlish phantom had on a golden plastic tiara, and poked him with a juicy looking cherry flavored lollypop that matched the color of her lips, clearly trying to tell him something.

But when she opened her mouth the princess spoke a strange language he had never heard before.  In fact, her gestures were utterly foreign to him, her vocabulary inscrutable, her tone filled with dread and animal brutality one moment, and singsong kindness the next.  Sometimes her voice was low and deep as if slowed way down.  At other times it sped up suddenly and without warning to a loud screech, as if someone had just kicked a cat down an alleyway.

Garbled sounds radiated out of her mouth in thick gushing torrents, but not in any particular order and with no rational end he could make out.  He rolled onto his stomach to try and crawl away, but she easily outmaneuvered him and blocked his escape with a remarkably nimble step considering her strawberry red high-heeled shoes were at least a couple of sizes too big.

"Am I already on Terrabella X?" the reluctant astronaut wondered to himself.  "Funny how these things go," he tried to puzzle it out, and quickly concluded the girlish apparition he saw before him was probably his welcoming committee.

The two of them exited the rocket ship hand-in-hand.  The astronaut looked back over his shoulder one last time at the huge silver ship lying on its side, and remarked at the purple and pink sunset; how beautiful it was, "like an Earth sunset," he thought "but somehow way more haunting and strange."

Terrabella X was silent.  Except for the occasional Chinese security patrol, streets were empty, devoid of people.  The princess pulled him by the arm.  She wanted to go into a big-box electronics store.  A pimple-faced Asian kid was the only one around.  3D flat-screen televisions lined the walls.  The reluctant astronaut noticed that every single one of them had a foreign brand name he couldn't read.  "If that don't beat all," he thought. "The Chinese already have a forward base set up here."

Eventually, the beautiful princess' strange tongue began to make more sense to him.  He ascribed it to some kind of advanced form of mental telepathy known only to the alien race of the planet.  Words like "cool", "gosh-darn", and "nifty" floated out from the otherwise incomprehensible hisses, gurgles, and barks that had issued from her pretty throat up to that point.  But when she pointed to the array of monitors and announced, "What a dumb-ass," he was elated.  It was the first entire thought he comprehended from the alien species.

"To paraphrase the old song," the snarled voice of Top-Cop Stalker Flogum interrupted the reluctant astronaut's reverie "You don't count the dead when God is on your side..." His black-lipsticked face appeared in virtual 3-D on all the flat screens. "And," the five-star general thrust his leather bustier out, "You damn well don't ask questions when God is on your side."

Up on the podium Stalker Flogum reminded him of an Earth-type he had once known.  The kind of irreconcilable bully that had made his service life hell -- one of those knuckle-dragger types who would rub your nose in his shit-stained panties.

Near as he could make out the press conference was called to announce the capture of some important dissident.  For Drone Wars Version XVIII a pre-recorded videotaped confession was released to the major monolithic news networks.

"This is the kind of egregious over-reaching by the government that's gradually making our lives unlivable," the hangdog ex-Baltimore cop said.  "First off, if you really think the government is going to roll back the program after economic times improve, that's never going to happen.  The whole idea that we are going to be monitored to this extent... why don't they just have Predator drones flying over the entire country recording everything we do all day long, and then they can sit down at night and write tickets for people who spit on the sidewalk..."

The reluctant astronaut wondered what his wife was doing back on Earth:  probably having another drink and screaming at the poor nannybot.

"Is this the kind of society we really want to live in?" the hangdog traffic cop on the 3DTV continued.  "Where we are photographed and monitored every single thing we do just because all the morons in the government building have wasted all the revenue they taxed us in the first place?"

Somehow the wrong tape was sent out to all the stations.  But Transvestite Top Cop Stalker Flogum remained oblivious to the mix up. He was too busy fixing his makeup. 

"I don't support the government plan at all," the former motorcycle officer didn't mince his words.  "I spent forty-one years with the Baltimore Police Department, I did thirty-three years active duty, I was a motorcycle supervisor, I supervised motor officers for eighteen years.  It's exactly because the government of Maryland has turned to this kind of activity to bail out its budget, to generate money, that I finally said to hell with them and their corrupt thinking.  Hey I got an idea for the maniacs in Annapolis: Why not just eliminate law enforcement officers altogether, eliminate the cost altogether, and simply put up 'Big-Daddy' cameras everywhere?"

The family joke was if the reluctant astronaut was in an airplane with his wife and it went down over a jungle rainforest it was only a matter of time after the plane crashed before she emerged from the forest fully in charge of the situation, whereas, if not for her, he might never emerge.  After a while, so the family joke went, out of sheer impatience his wife would rush back into the jungle only to find her husband sitting against a tree and staring with great intensity at a Halloween yellow autumn leaf, or something equally obscure.

His wife could obviously survive and thrive under any circumstance.  She was an "indestructible child" like Charlie Chaplin's "Little Tramp" figure.  The reluctant astronaut, on the other hand, had no such resilience.  He couldn't live for one second without his electric appliances.  "How am I going to get along on Terrabella X," he suddenly despaired, quite disconsolate.  His enthusiasm flagged.

"Transvestite Top-Cop Stalker Flogum didn't just use the expression 'silver-bullet', did he?" the reluctant astronaut perked back up.  "God knows I can't stand that expression," he griped, and began to feel more like his old self again.  "Back on Earth they go for it all the time, as if every problem is lunar, and the only solution is to kill a werewolf, or some other demonic hell-spawn."

"Silly-Billy," the fairy princess said in a magical musical voice, and added rather seriously, "I'm hungry!"  She wanted to go to the food-court.  "Don't french-fries sound really, really good right about now?" she asked.  "And a quarter-pounder with cheese!"

"I'll be darned if they haven't," the reluctant astronaut thought as they walked through the empty mall.  "They've created a near perfect facsimile of the Earth, by golly I believe they have.  Everything," he marveled, "down to the smallest detail reminds me of home."  He looked around.  "All my favorite outlets -- and right here on Terrabella X!"  He really found it quite remarkable what the Chinese had been able to pull off so many hundreds-of-millions of miles away in such a short period of time.  "There's no way they could have done all this on their own," he thought.  "The people of Terrabella X -- these fabulous creatures at the outer edge of the Milky-Way galaxy -- must have been in on the deal.  They must have helped," there was no doubt about it in his mind.  "Clearly their technology is far superior to our own Earth technology."

He looked at the little alien princess beside him with not a little awe.  "If french-fries and a quarter-pounder with cheese are what she wants, french-fries and a quarter-pounder with cheese are what she gets," he said to himself.  "Probably made from some exotic potato-like plant found only here on Terrabella X."  He could barely contain his newfound enthusiasm.

 

--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 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

Drone Wars: News at Six

 

            "Nothing is as scary as living through a bad idea," Michael Michaels got the editorial meeting underway.  "When it's happening anyone who is halfway sane thinks the whole world is on a free-fall slide to hell.  Afterwards you can joke about it.  Afterwards the immediate danger of the old bad idea is gone.  So many worse ideas have filled the gap in the meantime the whole thing is funny like a bad joke.  Everyone can look back on the old bad joke with twenty-twenty hindsight and shrug it off."

            "What's on tap today?" the news editor cut the dim-witted anchor off. 

            "I'm not sure if it's actually such a bad idea," the political desk started the ball rolling. "It's a little complicated, but here goes.  How about the Puppy Dog Channel?  New Mexico Senator Loudan Rich is way out in front of it.  His latest anti-Rebel strategy.  Can't figure out if it's a bad idea or genius.  What he wants is to have a channel that plays nothing but images of cute puppy dogs frolicking twenty-four seven at every major government checkpoint.  Here's the quote: 'No need for metal detectors, pat downs, interviews,' so the senator's argument goes.  We could make it a question:  Superfluous police theater?"

            "Everyone likes puppy dogs," Michael Michaels said in his best anchorman voice. 

"In fact, the Senator believes anyone who doesn't like puppy dogs is against the American way of life, a villainous enemy of the State.  So, the best way to weed out insurgents hell-bent on bringing down the US government, according to the senator, is to make them watch puppy dogs at play," the political desk continued.

The news editor turned it over in his head.  "I like it," he finally said.  "The story's got legs.  But what's the gimmick?" 

"Most everyone would think the Puppy Dog Channel was the cutest thing they ever saw, right?" the political desk fleshed it out a bit more.  "Anyone caught reacting in a negative way or looking away as they pass the monitors is immediately separated from the rest of the crowd and directed into a special line.  There are some tactical problems, but Senator Rich is already at work on a fix.  Curmudgeons, it was pointed out to him, would likely get swept up in the dragnet.  Among patriotic citizens there are undoubtedly a few bitter old coots that hate small children, kittens, and puppy dogs, a small number of ill-tempered geriatrics so forth and so on." 

            "I saw the senator speak on Meet The Press," Michael Michaels said.  "He was really putting the meat into the microphone.  He suggested the line get divided.  'Two lines,' he said.  'One for the firing squad, the other for the restroom.'  The civilization-hating anarchist saboteurs will go down the main path to their certain death and the old fogies will go to the restroom which is where they probably were headed anyhow."

            "Bladder control," the news editor scoffed.

            "The Puppy Dog Channel?" Michael Michaels mused. 

            "Let's go with it," his editor smiled.  "What else?"

            "The Smart Mattress?" the business desk perked up.  "It's the latest black market craze to hit the nation."

            "I don't know," Michael Michaels answered.  He hated the idea of a mattress that was smarter than him. 

            "Maybe we should put our weight behind it?" the news editor nudged. 

            "Maybe," Michael Michaels conceded.  He knew full well there was more to the story.  Some of the mattresses had gone haywire in the past and the Federal Trade Commission considered them so dangerous they were outlawed for public consumption. 

            "You know those dreams you have about how you didn't graduate from high school?" the business desk offered a possible lead in. 

            "I never did graduate from high school," Michael Michaels joked. 

            "Maybe you could have used a Smart Mattress?  Ever since Private Joe Shmuck got his nothing's been the same," the business desk offered.  "Something along those lines. Private Joe Shmuck could say something like: 'In my old reoccurring dream I never graduated from high school.  Now that I have my Smart Mattress I've graduated from college.  I still have the old anxiety, but I'm not anxious anymore.  Before I got the Smart Mattress I never even went to class in my dream.  Now I do even though it's bizarre because I am so much older than the other kids.  In my old dream I used to skip all my classes because the premise was so ridiculous.  Now I actually attend my classes.  And even though I am still sometimes really late I don't sweat it as much with the Smart Mattress.' What do you think?" the business desk turned to the news editor.

            "Needs more drama," he shot back.  "A hook."

            "What if someone in Private Joe Shmuck's dream breaks into his locker and steels his class schedule?" Michael Michaels gave it some thought.  "At first Private Joe Shmuck is upset, but then he realizes he doesn't give a shit.  I mean he's already graduated from college in his dream.  What does he care about high school?  Zip.  Nada.  Nothing.  It is like an anxiety nightmare, but because he has a Smart Mattress he doesn't care one iota one way or the other!"

            "Okay," the news editor said.  He clearly had some reservations, but he let them go.  "What's going on over at the science desk?" he asked.

"Professor Ivar Zimbolist over at Fort College has an interesting theory about human migration patterns and how they could pertain to the Civil War here in the States," the science desk answered.  "According to the professor, people who lived in the warmer climates were loud.  They loved the sand, the sun, and the surf.  The loud people were philistines.  They liked eating, fucking, and fighting, not necessarily in that order.  They liked all the things loud people like.  Most of their time was spent on the beach.  'Loud and lazy' is how the professor describes them in his book.  They ruled the world.  They still do.  There were lots of seashells all around them, the professor has discovered, so they made seashells their currency.  It was the simplest and laziest thing to do so that's what they did."

"What's the pitch?" the news editor wanted to know. 

"Well," the science desk continued, "The loud people were so obnoxious anyone who liked peace and quiet was forced to move to the outskirts of town.  But before they knew it the loud people began to overpopulate the warm tropical shore they inhabited and they started to impinge on the outer-lying hamlet the quiet people had settled.  So the quiet people moved even further away.  'That's how they got to the polar ice caps,' the professor writes on page 123.  They figured it was so inhospitable and uninhabitable up there the tropical loud mouths would never follow them.  They were wrong.  For a while they were free from all the mindless chitchat of the loud people.  It was a kind of golden era for them up there on the North Pole.  They read and did all the creative things people can do when they are not crowded out of their own minds." 

"A golden era of silence, however short lived," Michael Michaels ended the meeting.  The show was about to go on air.  He took his seat on the news set and smiled his million-dollar smile.  Under the harsh klieg lights in the broadcast booth the anchorman looked positively alien, like a Venusian talking head. 

"It's not what you sell, it's how you tell them the price," Michael Michaels briskly launched into the first story of the newscast.  "Drone War Idol has just announced they will donate Pray Station laptop game-boxes to every underprivileged schoolchild in Uruguay.  A top executive was quoted as saying: 'This isn't just a media stunt designed to boost our ratings.  Think of the children.  Every kid in the world deserves a chance at fifteen minutes of fame.  And not only that, these kids are heroes.  Think of them out there protecting us from the evil-doers here in our own front yard.' 

"Later in Drone Wars news, we will take an insider look into the version XVI recall.  We will also look at New Mexico Senator Loudan Rich's latest security proposal -- The Puppy Dog Channel; Smart Mattresses in the military; and a new study out of Fort College that could shed some light on the Rebel psychology. 

"But first: the Federal Government closure of its embassy in Atlanta, Georgia.  After six military trucks with weapons and explosives went missing the compound was temporarily shuttered as a precaution.  Officials believe local insurgents hijacked the trucks.  A State Department spokesperson would not deny or confirm concerns about instability in the region.  'It's premature to call Georgia a failed state,' the spokesperson said.  'But we definitely don't want it to turn into another North Dakota or Idaho,' the spokesperson added.  The government of Georgia faces a secessionist uprising in the south and a rebellion in the north..."

 

--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2010