Game of Drones

by Rick Jones

  Trevor rubbed sleep from his eyes, waiting for the whale to surface again. He was anxious for another GPS reading; the last one contained incomplete data. His eyes wandered to information posted on the web site, his most recent obsession:

  “This is the official web site of the Wired Kingdom television show. All content herein is the sole property of Wired Kingdom.”

  He clicked the “Contest Information” link:

  “Wired Kingdom strives to present a thoroughly absorbing and unique educational experience for all of its viewers. A large component of our programming involves this web site. Viewers are encouraged to participate by entering weekly contests sponsored by Wired Kingdom in conjunction with its television nature series. Most of our contests revolve around online interaction with our free-ranging wild animals featuring live web-cams. These audio/visual feeds are streamed through our web site completely unaltered in real time through our privately owned satellite network.

  With an amused sort of detachment at what had been done with his technical creation, Trevor clicked the listing for the current week’s contest:

  “A cash prize of one million U.S. dollars will be awarded to the contestant who submits a screen-captured image from our web site’s Wired Animal streaming broadcast demonstrating a ‘spectacular and clearly visible example of human presence in the ocean.’

  “All entries must be submitted no later than midnight, July 23. Winners will be announced live on the following Friday night’s 8:00 P.M. television broadcast. In the event that two identical images are submitted, the winner will be that with the earliest submission date/time stamp. Only one entry per contestant per week. Once a contestant has submitted their entry, the entry is final. Contest only open to Wired Kingdom web subscribers.

  “Good luck!”

  As an employee of Wired Kingdom, Trevor was ineligible for the show’s cash prize. But human presence in the ocean? At first he thought there would be a lot to choose from; however, the whale had remained hundreds of miles from land, avoiding the major shipping lanes. At an entry fee of fifty dollars, potential contestants were passing on the occasional plastic six-pack tie, shopping bag or miscellaneous piece of fishing gear in hopes of snapping a one-in-a-million shot of some icon of the sea: maybe a message in a bottle or perhaps a sunken Spanish galleon loaded with gold doubloons that every sea aficionado dreams of discovering.

  He wondered if he’d missed anything while asleep, but the web site’s message boards confirmed that other users had so far not seen anything noteworthy. Trevor clicked back to the whale’s live feed. More blue, but the water was lightening in color. Trevor guessed the whale was drifting up to the surface for air. He hunched forward in his chair, watching, waiting in vain anticipation, as though something interesting might happen this time. A plume of mist shot thirty feet skyward, accompanied by a thunderous grating sound that reminded him of gravel being dumped from a truck bed. Nothing unusual here.

  And then he heard something else.

  A voice.

  Trevor turned up his speakers.

  A female voice.

  The video showed only the whale’s back slicing through calm, blue water.

  Now he could make out words . . . distant, as if carried by a breeze, yet distinct.

  “Please no. Please—”

  Gunfire.

  Two shots, about a second apart.

  A splash.

  “What the . . .” Trevor muttered.

  Water washed over the camera’s lens as the animal submerged.

  Did someone shoot the whale?

  The curtain of swirling bubbles dissipated, revealing a quick shot of bare legs and feet, kicking in a cloud of greenish blood. Before Trevor could freeze the image, the whale rolled to one side, returning the monitor to its familiar blue.

  “Damn it!” Was that real?

  The whale moved and again the view changed.

  A flash of bare breasts.

  Bits of flesh and blood.

  Then the screen went to static.

  “No!” Trevor grabbed the monitor and shook it. “Come on!” He checked the connections, knowing full well the interference came from the satellite transmission. Although the broadcast was susceptible to occasional interruptions of service resulting from bad weather—similar to consumer satellite television feeds—he had never seen this type of sustained interference before. And the weather was perfect.

  He was considering possible sources of interference without success when the garbled transmission on screen suddenly cleared.

  Sharks!

  Trevor froze as blue sharks swarmed through the greenish sea, inflicting savage bites on the woman. Clouds of blood obscured her upper body and head. A ten-pound chunk was missing from the gushing torso. And then, once more, the scene plunged into indecipherable snow.

  Trevor slammed a fist into his desk in frustration.

  “Bastards!” he yelled at the empty room. They said they wouldn’t stage anything. Millions of dollars worth of cutting-edge R&D being used for entertainment? The contract he had signed with the show guaranteed that his device would be used solely for scientific purposes and to promote awareness of the marine environment. He recalled painfully that it also tied his salary to the performance of the whale-cam and web site.

  He continued to watch. The static intensified, rendering the transmission worthless. This concerned Trevor even more than what he had seen—his testing had been exhaustive. On a second computer monitor, he consulted a stream of technical data that acted as the vital signs for the constellation of private satellites transmitting the signals from the telemetry device to the Internet. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

  To confirm that the show’s web site had broadcast the actual data stream from the satellites, he bypassed the commercial web site and used his secure account to view the satellite transmission directly, only to find that they were exactly the same. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a simple hack whereby someone had substituted a pre-made video for the satellite feed as a hoax. This is what the satellites are transmitting! Maybe the show staged some kind of surprise publicity event. But why the interference?

  His other monitor flickered back to life, displaying an empty blue frame, with the exception of the whale itself. He glanced at the GPS coordinates. Jotted them down. The whale was far out to sea off the Southern California coast. The whale rose again, breaking the surface. Sun-dappled open water. Calm, but no longer mirror flat. A light breeze whistled through the mic. Although he had integrated a windscreen into the device to prevent the annoying whooshing noise familiar to camcorder users, if the angle was right it couldn’t be completely stopped.

  Again, the image returned to a scrambled mess. When the picture returned a few seconds later, he heard a sound he couldn’t place. Something vaguely familiar. Then nothing.

  The connection now appeared to be lost entirely as the screen went black, leaving Trevor to stare at his own reflection. His brown eyes betrayed a lack of sleep. His wavy dark hair needed cutting. He thought he appeared much older than a recent graduate. Finally, he banished his mirror image by clicking out of the video feed.

  A quick check of the site’s chat room and message boards revealed only the impassioned confusion of people wondering what was going on, whether what they had just witnessed was real. Trevor placed a call to Anthony Silveras, one of Wired Kingdom’s many producers, but the only one who seemed able to get things done. Anthony picked up on the first ring, his voice strained.

  “Trevor—”

  “Did you see—”

  “I was about to call you. My phone’s ring—”

  “Tony, listen.”

  “What’s going on, Trevor?”

  The open line went quiet. “Looks like we just broadcast a murder live on our web site.”