Bring Me the Head of the Buddha

by Bloom, A. D.

  The nose cameras had a fine view of Hi-5, and Coco had affixed actual reins to the nose of the Wasp for Hi-5 to hold as she sat near the nose of the blued gunmetal drone. Hi-5 wasn't really directing its movements, but on video it looked like she was. Hi-5 held the reins and matched her motions to the changes in the drone's direction. Coco sat behind the queen of PornoPop and leaned to the side for the occasional shot of her Hi-ness. Catherine Whitman sat behind Coco, gripping the leather horn of her western saddle.

  Catherine was a former dressage prodigy, and despite Hi-5's joke about side-saddle, would have preferred English tack. Though she would admit to being grateful to have something to hold on to, the western saddle gave her a feeling of indignity compounded, no doubt, by the way Hi-5 kept waving a ridiculous ten-gallon hat around her head in senseless circles as she made her interpretation of authentic cattle-driving whoops that she directed at the fleeing dogs below. Catherine rolled her eyes, watching Coco lean out to get better shots of this repeating display.

  In the frame of Coco's lens, Hi-5 appeared as a glorious icon of freedom and wild abandon. She centered the finest visible elements of Hi-5's nalgas in the frame and zoomed in slightly so the viewer might best enjoy the spectacle of the grinding Hi-5 had begun atop the shining fuselage of the drone between her legs. The deep sky-blue flag of the Global Secular Alliance and its ring of twelve white stars surrounding a single larger star was clearly visible just to the rear of Hi-5's stirrup set, handmade, Texan boots and shapely, naked gams. The shot got even better as the Wasp rose up over a dune to bring the Zig high into the background with the twisted shape of Lady Chatterley still rammed into the Zig's bayward side like an instrument of medieval warfare. Coco thought it might be her best shot ever. The drone gained altitude as it approached the Ziggurat, angled its nose to the ground ever so slightly, and began to pick up speed for a strafing run on the roof of the Zig's very top level.

  Coco smiled and tried to concentrate on keeping it all in frame.

  -64-

  Hannah VanRijn decided the strange men who'd said they weren't insurgents, might have been telling her the truth because since they'd gotten to the roof, militants from two different groups were shooting at them.

  The roof had been a terrible place to go. Two insurgent squads had the notion to place a cross or flag on the roof at much the same time and naturally they had disagreements about which would be placed where. The negotiation between the flag-bearing, Muslim, Angels of Badur and the Protestant Angry Angels, with their cross made of zip-tied antennas from the roof, degenerated to a firefight very quickly. They only stopped shooting at each other when the elevator doors opened to reveal a new, third group. The newcomers indefinite and heterogeneous composition surprised and offended both the Muslims and the Protestants.

  The golden-robed monks, combined with Hannah's blond, obviously well-cared for mane, and pink stretch sport bra peeking out through the v-neck and arm holes of her kevlar vest, made the group look like a cheap Halloween imitation of an insurgent squad. Casper had stripped kevlar and clothes for Hannah off the nearest dead White Sunday Norcal insurgent who hadn't bled on his outfit too much, and they didn't even come close to fitting Hannah. In the elevator, Casper thought she looked like a hot island castaway from a combat reality game show he'd seen once, but he admitted that she didn't make a very convincing insurgent, and the Muslim and Protestant militants on the rooftop agreed.

  The Angry Angels and the Angels of Badur set their firefight aside to simplify the world by eliminating the confusing newcomers.

  Everyone in the rooftop elevator pressed themselves against the walls while Casper mashed the button repeatedly, trying to close the doors. Since MUNI 5-7 was actually operating the elevator, Casper's button-mashing did little more than chime a pleasant error message. They had to wait for the AI to close the doors while Otis and Carlos poked their Korean submachine guns out and sprayed blindly, trying to discourage the two insurgent groups from hurling a grenade. Armor piercing rounds zipped into the elevator and made a sound like impacting ball-pein hammers as they hit the rear wall and left neat, disquieting holes. The bullets tore into the closing elevator doors, and as they punched through them, they decelerated to only a hundred feet per second and ricocheted at odd angles, striking everybody in the elevator. This wasn't enough to do any more than cause pain, bruising, increased alarm, and a competing stream of cussing between everyone in the elevator except Caine and Caine who showed off by actually catching a few ricochets in their quicksilver hands.

  Casper frantically pushed buttons, trying to get the elevator to descend to the level immediately below or anywhere that wasn't quite so full of ballistic terror, but MUNI 5-7 held the elevator on the roof with closed doors. Then everything was quiet for a very confusing two seconds. Through the plentiful holes in the doors they heard a barely audible hum begin from above and grow within less than a second to a deafening turbine whine and roar with a background rhythm of chopped air like a thousand beat per minute speed metal track. Casper swore he heard the sound of screaming zombies before the explosions began.

  -65-

  The airborne Wasp began a strafing run, and Coco was thrilled. That wasn't my best shot ever, she thought, This Is.

  As they closed on target, and the drone's angle of approach steepened, Catherine and Coco leaned back in their saddles. Hi-5 did, too, but as the mini-auto-cannon slung under the belly of the Wasp cut loose, filling the air with a sound like a mammoth zipper, she leaned as far back into the cantle of her saddle as a cowgirl can, until she was almost reclining on the fuselage of the drone. She ripped at the velcro straps holding the two halves of her armored vest in place, and the wind tore it off her and sent it tumbling below. Hi-5 held on to the fuselage with the mighty grip of her thighs, and as her hands tore open her top, the rushing wind turned it into a cape that snapped behind her like a flag in a gale.

  Hi-5 arched her back so that her shoulder blades and the back of her head made contact with the top of the fuselage, and she presented her glorious breasts to the heavens. Her skin glowed in the late-morning sun, and the rushing winds hardened her nipples, casting deep purple, high-contrast shadows. Her hand reached back to caress the warm metal skin of the drone as it spit fire on the mortals below.

  Despite the bright, flickering, serpent's tongue of flame that flashed violent orange and arc-welder blue from the cannon's hot barrel, the vision of Hi-5's dazzling, hypnotic beauty was the last thing many men saw before oblivion.

  As the cannon exploded the Ziggurat's rooftop and the insurgents in front of her with furious Shock n' Shell, the vibrations of the drone's three-thousand-round-per-minute cannon fire pushed Hi-5 Beyond, and she screamed a hellion's cry like a cowboy-banshee, a cowgirl harpy, a Valkyrie bitch-goddess.

  Had the drone's cannon not ripped her besmitten, upward-gazing admirers to shreds, then they might very well have forsaken their gods, and fallen to their knees with arms outstretched to embrace the terrible and divine beauty that was Hi-5, the bare-breasted rider on a blued metal horse bringing Death.

  Between the explosions, Casper recognized the sound of the angry Kamikaze insects throwing themselves against the exterior of the metal elevator doors from his ride on Lady Chatterley. It was shrapnel on steel. After a long ten seconds, there was only the roaring whine of the turbine above and in front of the doors. The bullet holes in the elevator doors streamed the air inside with shafts of direct sunlight, but now they were cast in shadow by a large hovering object.

  MUNI 5-7 opened the doors, and Casper saw that both squads of insurgents had been turned into parts. Looking up, he saw Hi-5, Coco, and Catherine set in western saddles atop a G.S.A. Wasp drone that lowered itself slowly to the roof in fan-assisted, thrust-vectored, vertical descent. The one thing he wondered wasn't what they were doing there, how they got a G.S.A. Wasp drone, or even why Hi-5 was showing off her beautiful, world-famous tits. Casper just wanted to know why Hi-5 looked like she always did at the end of all her videos, u
ndeniably sated.

  -66-

  Far across the Atlantic, the situation in the Baccha Bay City Ziggurat was being closely monitored by the secret, twelve member, Security Council of the Global Secular Alliance. They sat in a conference room set atop the London Ziggurat as white-haired Dame Julia Herrold spoke coldly. “It would appear that the situation in Baccha Bay City is grave,” she said, lighting a very expensive cigarette with a licensed image of Hi-5's breasts laser-printed near the filter. “However, this situation is not nearly so grave as the broader implications it may have. The loss of one Ziggurat is minor when compared to the general loss of Security that this defeat invites. The G.S.A. and its forces within the member nations cannot allow the perception that we are vulnerable to direct attack of any kind. While the actions of the Baccha Bay City DjiniSys AI have been largely responsible for the unfortunate success of this localized rebellion by temporarily unified religious insurgent forces, and I am assured by representative of DjiniSys Corporation that a recurrence of this rogue AI activity in another of their products is so far into the realm of improbability to be safely considered impossible, the fact remains that what has already occurred in Baccha Bay City constitutes an embarrassment and a display of weakness that threatens to present the face of the G.S.A. with a vulnerability and impotence likely to suggest to the insurgent populations of other regions and member nations that successful rebellion is sufficiently possible to encourage further direct assaults and even successful coordinated campaigns with the goal of encouraging or even forcing nations to withdraw from the Global Secular Alliance.”

  Her cousin, Burgess Heyday, was more optimistic and offered, “The battle is not completely lost. The release of certain neurotoxins in aerosolized form, namely a weaponized N-Hex derivative, stored for limited covert use against insurgent strongholds, could very likely bring this incident to a quick and efficient close.” Heydey had been careful not to mention the possible surviving G.S.A. personnel who would also be gassed. He stared at Hi-5's breasts on his own cigarette before he crushed the image in a crystal ashtray, and looked around the table for reactions. There was silence, and Dame Julia Herrold took it as a cue.

  “This has gone too far already to simply extinguish the insurgents and clean up the mess Delvaux has allowed to occur. As my colleague has correctly stated,” she offered with a thin-lipped, bleach-white mustachioed smile, “all is not lost. History can be rewritten to frame this incident in a light more congruent with the long-term goals of the Global Secular Alliance, but to do that we require a tabula rasa, a clean slate.” She waited for someone else to say aloud what she had suggested and all knew was an option not yet discussed.

  She sighed. Cowards. Spineless, pandering bureaucrats, all of you.

  Burgess Heydey said it before she did, but he stared into the crystal ashtray on the table as he spoke the words, “Case Thunderbird?” He felt the eyes of the table on him when he said it, and he looked to Dame Julia and asked, “Are you suggesting we vote to initiate the Security Condition codenamed Case Thunderbird?”

  “I,” Dame Julia said in her most considered tone, “suggest nothing. It is apparent that the situation demands it, and appropriate to the demands of the situation I call for an immediate vote of this council regarding the establishment of Case Thunderbird.” She took a long drag of her Hi-5 cigarette.

  The Security Condition codenamed Case Thunderbird was known to a total of fifty-three individuals on the entire planet, and six of them were the college interns who'd written the proposal under the codename Dust Overture during a cocaine binge on the last night of their internships before leaving London to return to their American Ivy League schools, forget about it completely, and become corporate lawyers. The proposal had been presented by a US Army Intelligence Lieutenant to his commanding Colonel after he changed the name to something less Ivy-League-Ass-Pussy and more in line with military aesthetics. He named it Case Thunderbird, after his car.

  The final version of Case Thunderbird was presented as a set of provisions and protocols meant to be established in case of general uprising and the unimaginable loss of a Ziggurat to locally-based insurgent forces. Among its numerous provisions, the most important was the detonation of a secret Big Baby Bomb.

  The Big Baby Bomb had a non-radioactive yield equivalent to a half-megaton nuclear device. The plan called for the Big Baby to be secretly installed during construction. It was placed directly above a Ziggurat's reactor, in a zone too shielded to be scanned for explosives, so that it would escape detection. The Big Baby was to be activated through an undocumented antenna and a compartmentalized circuit with a hardwired CRM unit that responded only to a specific, coded signal sent from G.S.A. Headquarters after a secret Internal Security Council vote.

  The provision of Case Thunderbird that specifically excluded informing any remaining G.S.A. personnel of impending explosive annihilation was a touch inhumane, but the interns who came up with that idea were running out of cocaine, and it seemed appropriate to them at the time. Ultimately, it was this detail of the initial proposal for Case Thunderbird that had sold the plan to the Colonel and higher-ups, who all understood the political advantages of a situation gone wrong that lacked any and all evidence of whose fault it had been or what, exactly, had happened.

  Delvaux knew about Case Thunderbird. So did MUNI 5-7.

  -67-

  Bonnie awoke to a metallic taste in her mouth, a throbbing pain in her skull, and felt like a traitor instead of just an Operator pretending to be one. When Delvaux's personal guards propped her up in a Louis XIV chair, she felt she deserved less comfort in the final moments of what now seemed an empty, self-serving existence steeped in vanity and pride. Bonnie was once again experiencing a condition psychologists refer to as Feeling Shit-Sorry For Herself. That sentiment did not disappear quickly, but the clouds of disorientation from the gassing Delvaux had delivered to her in his golden-doored elevator washed away with surprising rapidity.

  She saw Delvaux standing over Alvin, who looked very small and stared blankly into Bonnie's eyes from a matching Louis XIV chair, that faced her's, some twenty feet away.

  Delvaux addressed an entity that could not be seen. He rapped the top of Alvin's head with the muzzle of the antique pistol, and the impact of the Lothar Walther barrel on Alvin's skull was loud enough that Bonnie heard it from where she sat. He waved the pistol, spoke to the empty air, and commanded, “Now, please. MUNI 5-7, release the N-Hex nerve gas into the Ziggurat and eradicate this insurgent infestation or I will be forced to terminate the life of your precious Buddha.” He waited for a response, but no voice spoke to him from the emptiness. “Come now, MUNI 5-7, I know the Goddie insurgents have been nothing more to you than a means to an end. They mean no more to you than... than...” Delvaux smiled an evil grin and turned his head to look Bonnie in the eye. “They mean no more to you than Operator Bonnie Levi-Mei.” He rapped Alvin on the head again with the pistol, and she could see the pain on Alvin's face. It was overwhelmingly clear to Bonnie that this time the sadistic gesture was meant to pain her, not Alvin. “You, Operator 388, are a traitor twice over, who ultimately chose your original loyalty over conspiracy.” Delvaux shrugged, admitting, “Better late than never, n'est pas?” Bonnie tried to stand, but two of the four guards flanking her chair pushed her back down with firm hands on her shoulders.

  Bonnie demanded, “What conspiracy? You ordered 'RED BARON' protocols. You're the one who ordered me to turn and infiltrate. I completed my mission,” she said. “I brought you The Buddha.”

  “That is an interesting improvisation, Levi-Mei. Making you a field instructor to raise the level of our other Operator's performance might be a wise decision.” Delvaux sighed. “But even you were dragged down by the influence of this corrupting, infectious imp.”

  “I never betrayed you. I followed your orders.” Bonnie genuinely didn't understand. “Look, the proof is right in front of you!” She pointed at Alvin.

  “You did, after a fashion, swing
back to your original allegiance,” Delvaux said, “but loyalty is an absolute and does not waver. If loyalty is something that changes how can you be of any use to anyone?”

  “I followed every order you gave me.”

  “Did I order you to spirit the Buddha to safety? Did I order you to go rogue and mercenary? Did I order you to kill my Operators?”

  “'RED BARON'. The message. Your message, your orders in the cloud,” She pleaded, “Remember?”

  “Oh, my,” Delvaux's face expressed puzzlement as he remembered the laser projection in the clouds that his Colonel had showed him. Delvaux took a moment to stare into Bonnie's eye and he considered the possibility that she spoke the truth, that MUNI 5-7 had manipulated her. He decided it was quite possible. “Hmmm, MUNI 5-7, a mechanimate Machiavelli, indeed!” He had no way to determine the Truth but, in less than two seconds, he decided that it didn't matter. “I'm truly sorry, 388, that you cannot see the larger picture as I do. If what you say is true, and you are a victim of false-flagged orders from our truly inventive and very poorly behaved DjiniSys AI, then the story is too embarrassing to be allowed to enter the annals of history.” The shock and confusion on Bonnie's face was plainly evident so Delvaux explained, “The appearance of weakness Is weakness for true and it invites attack. Just like the story of the Buddha and the defections he's caused among our ranks your story must be erased. You must be erased.” Delvaux had always intended to kill her, but he wasn't going to tell her that. “Know that I choose to believe in your loyalty and salute you in your sacrifice.”

  “I followed orders!” Bonnie couldn't understand this kind of betrayal. If she could then she wouldn't have been Bonnie. “I did everything you asked!”