A bipedal robot temporarily code-named ZeroSum scans the area while jogging towards one of many warehouses in an old industrial district of Philadelphia. It looks upwards and tracks one of several of the department’s UAVs gliding silently in a gradual downward spiral, currently at around twenty thousand feet overhead. Kacey glances at her screens to get data about the locations of her team members approaching all three entrances around the building.
The robot stands up against the main entrance and waits while the rest of the team reach their designated entry points. “There’s no thermal data,” observes Kacey.
“That can only mean a couple of things, Lieutenant,” suggests one operator.
“Okay, you ready?” Kacey asks redundantly after observing the third and final robot in the team fall into position. “Let’s go.”
Kacey’s robot grabs onto the handle of the large corrugated roller door and pulls on it, snapping the padlock after being placed under increasing pressure for a few seconds. The door rolls open, creating an echo that resonates throughout the empty warehouse. ZeroSum steps inside, locates its three companions, and proceeds towards the stairwell leading to the basement just on its right, preferring certainty over trying out the equipment elevator near the rear of the building.
The robots step onto the floor of the basement and scan the scene deliberately. Kacey’s robot walks up to one of the two bipedal robots standing idle in front of two parallel work benches covered in a range of equipment, illegal devices and compounds. Kacey looks the robot up and down and says to herself, “Is this the way things are going to be from now on?”
“They were obviously abandoned when—”
“I know,” she says, refocusing on assessing the condition of the operation that was obviously abandoned just moments ago. “As you can see,” she says, presuming to be reporting to operational command, “this is still a few hours away from completion … perhaps five or six.”
“There you go,” says one operator with a grin.
“Send in the clean-up team,” recommends Kacey as she moves across to a collection of unmasked canisters and conducts an analysis of their specifications. Her robot also swipes its left hand just above them, gaining a low-level reading on the Geiger counter display on the broad-view screen of her helmet. “Okay, well, that confirms it. Let’s get out of here.” She places the robots under automated navigation and disengages from the operator unit, holding her helmet by her side as she waits for the other two on the team to step out of their own units.
Meanwhile, the robots begin their retreat from the building. Once outside, they walk down the empty street to the intersection, where they wait for the arrival of the approaching helicopter designated to take them back to the local hardware holding center. They ignore the seven trucks that roll past them and stop in front of the warehouse, allowing the team of ten clean-up robots on board to be deployed with their equipment and begin their work.
Gordon, a team member, looks at Kacey with a smile as he steps out of his operator unit. “At least we got there in time.”
“See what you think when we do that a hundred more times,” responds Kacey.
Gordon nods quietly, attempting to temper his mild expression of satisfaction.
Stephanie, the third team member, walks towards them and says, “This is just the start of something bigger … much bigger, isn’t it? What was that?”
Kacey shrugs her shoulders. “Obviously, that’s not our business, but I do sympathise with the speculations. It can’t bode well for … well, any of us.”
“The captain looked nervous in the briefing, quite frankly,” reflects Stephanie.
“I’m gonna go speak to him now,” says Kacey. “But I wouldn’t expect anything to clear up too quickly, if I were you. We’re not exactly in the loop on a whole range of things.” She turns, heads to the door, exits and glides down the hallway towards the elevator.
The captain stands looking out of his seventeenth floor office across at the sprawling suburbs beyond. “Send her in,” he says to his robotic secretary just outside the door.
He hears the door slide open and shut, followed by soft footsteps walking towards him. He notices Kacey’s reflection in the window just over that of his left shoulder.
She stops next to him and tracks his gaze into the distance. “What can you tell us about what’s going on here, Captain?” she asks.
The captain shakes his head. “Not much, Kacey. We have another operation just like yours underway in New Jersey right now. I dare say things will start making sense later in the day as events unfold and go more or less public.”
Kacey looks at the wrinkles deepening around his eyes. “When did you give up?”
The captain looks at her briefly, then turns away. “You of all people should know the answer to that.”
“Yeah, I do, but you’ve been in this game for a lot longer than I have.”
“We didn’t have adequate resources in the past; we still don’t now. Nothing’s changed. Let’s put it that way.”
Kacey glances at him. “It seems to me like a lot’s changed.”
“You may be right. But the essence … for a while it looked promising, and I even fell for it … maybe for just a few moments. But then, it became apparent, quietly at first, then like a hammer. This was never going to end nicely. It just became a matter of when and how … and that agonising task of tracking its path and waiting … no matter how well we do our jobs. It’s not about competence. It’s not even about resources anymore … although it gets operationalised as such. What it’s about and always has been is the psychotic, hyper-competitive arms race to promote and support dominance — that inexorable path of opportunity that’ll be taken by someone if you don’t take it first.”
Kacey stares down at the neat flow of traffic in the streets below. “There’s a certain smokescreen involved in all of this with domestic issues getting hopelessly wrapped up in international ones. They essentially look the same at times. For example, is it the imploding of domestic values that’s creating a hostile, self-motivated agent within the country, or is it a deliberate hit from an international location of one kind or another? I’ve often wondered about that with these incidences: the hacking of equipment from a distance, the planting of false data trails, and so on. It’s easy to do. Sometimes, I’ve felt paranoiac thinking is the right orientation, yet I still see myself feeling confident when making judgments like that one last night, for instance.”
“Speaking of that, you may like to have a look at the interrogation video. I’ve provided you temporary authorisation … considering your …”
“My what? Special interest?”
The captain shakes his head. “I wasn’t going to say that. Your long-standing involvement in solving these cases is what I was wanting to mention, and also that this guy had quite a bit to say. I thought you may find it … well, informative.”
Kacey nods. “Thanks, Captain. I appreciate your support.”
“You know I understand our situation better than most, right?”
“I know.”
“One day,” begins the captain, “one day there’s going to be a majority. And then they’ll understand. They won’t be able to avoid it. Until then, we just have to …”
“Dealing with entropy has always been ultimately futile. That hasn’t been a surprise to me for a long time.”
The captain looks at her. “I was going to say ‘continue to go through the motions.’”
Kacey stares at him, then turns and heads towards the door. “You could put it that way.”
The captain looks at her reflection as she exists.
Kacey sits in her officer watching the interrogation video of the apprehended suspect.
The interrogating office stares into the eyes of Steven, a clean-cut and well-dressed young man. “So now … tell me a little bit about your rationale for your actions.”
Steven smiles. “I’m sure I’m not the first one to tell you this, but there’s a certain asi
nine quality to all of this, to everything that’s happened over the past few decades. It doesn’t matter anymore. I was just trying to make things matter again.”
“How do you figure your actions would ever have any hope of achieving that, Steven?” The officer takes a sip of his coffee and waits patiently for the answer.
Steven leans forward in his chair, rests his forearms on his legs, and looks the officer straight in the eye. “People in a society, a world like this, always need their complacency upset … interrupted. They need to feel uncomfortable. If a certain level of discomfort doesn’t work, then just give them more. Eventually, they’ll have to deal with it directly; they won’t be able to suppress it any longer. The dissonance will need to be resolved head on. I’m just part of a movement. Sometimes, you need to take things to a darker place in order for things to turn around, to shift and start going down a different path, a wildly divergent path. My cohort and I are taking the responsibility to foster that.” He nods to himself while grinning patronisingly at the officer.
“You really think that you’re … ‘helping’ … helping us to make a better world?” asks the officer with just a hint of contempt.
“Of course. In the end, we all want to be part of something worthwhile. What you guys do is hopeless. Those supposedly in charge know it. You know it even.”
“Don’t tell me what I do and don’t know.”
Steven grins and continues. “Okay … but the fact remains, it’s global now. It’s everywhere. It’s in our backyard and over our roofs, not just every day, but all day … all day long … and so is the threat. Agents like me are just stressing the system, bringing things to a head, forcing change and adaptation. If we don’t adapt first, someone else will.”
“What’s the nature of your connection to this so-called movement?”
“Choice. I chose to join, and that made me a member. That’s how it should be.”
The officer glances over Steven’s file on the tablet in front of him. “And you think your middle-class background has prepared you for this. You’ve been to good schools. You had plenty of money for your trips to the mall, etcetera, it seems.”
“That does actually qualify me. I was raised on false hope … a thin thread of hope that they attempted to implant in us. They knew it wouldn’t take, that it had no chance, that it was in itself hopeless. Just ridiculous. That all fell apart so quickly, I can’t even tell you. I was raised here; I know what the threat of randomness and the mounting predictability of the hopelessness do to the soul, to hope and despair … the effect that all has on changing the course of your life. This whole vanilla, sterile pseudo-reality needs to be undermined. Period. Sure, I come from the suburbs. But, I am what I am because I adapted to the conditions, and I started working with them actively. And millions of others are doing the same, and millions more will join the effort until something significant happens, until there’s no more room to wriggle, to avoid the—”
Kacey stops the video and watches Steven’s smiling face for a moment, speculating how proud his parents must have been when he was admitted into Law school. She looks into his eyes and wonders about what kind of middle-class, professional life he would likely have had if he’d graduated early in the century or before. She runs her five fingers across the screen towards each other, shutting the app. She spins in her seat, stands, and heads towards the door.
Standing alone in the operator’s lounge on the tenth floor, Kacey stares down at the city streets below when a female colleague spots her, walks up and stands by her side. Kacey glances at her and returns her gaze to the patterns playing out on the streets. “What do you think about when you see things like that?”
Alexia looks down at the traffic. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
Kacey stares at her. “You think there’s a right and wrong answer to that?”
“There generally is, yeah.”
“And you don’t think you can safely hazard a guess?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
Alexia purses her lips, slightly frustrated. “Why does everything have to mean something?”
Kacey points forcefully down to a truck driving through an intersection with her left hand squeezing on Alexia’s shoulder in order to make sure she focuses. “What does that truck make you think of when you see it doing what it’s doing, Lieutenant? I can’t get any plainer than that.”
Alexia pulls her shoulder away. “It doesn’t make me think of anything, okay? It’s just a truck.”
Kacey stares at her and shakes her head. “You couldn’t be further from the truth. And you know it. That’s the problem with you people.”
Alexia squints at her in fury. “‘You people?’ Did you really just say that?”
“Do you wanna know what I see?”
Alexia doesn’t answer.
“I see the things that support it, that make it happen, that oversee it, that surveil it, that coordinate it, that integrate it, that make it part of the system. Does all that make you think of progress? Or does it quickly get you to the underbelly, the implications, the margins, the …” Kacey falls silent and looks away.
Alexia nods sympathetically. “Okay, I get it. I’m sorry. I …”
“Why would you be sorry? You don’t think you’re part of this?”
“Look, I don’t need to be reminded about it all day, every day. I know where I am. I have to look after …”
Kacey stares at her. “Go on. Say it.”
Alexia shakes her head. “Why bother?”
Kacey looks over her shoulder and points with her head symbolically to their colleagues in the building. “You think I can’t feel it with every interaction in here … what I mean to them by my very existence? You think you’re different because you come and stand by me in some twisted show of support, yet all you can do is evade and recoil just the same?”
“You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?”
“How quickly sympathy turns to hostility,” observes Kacey. “But let me ask you … how could it have been avoided … in this environment?” Kacey flicks her hand towards the outside world. “Why should my role be to go and hide so people aren’t confronted? Why should I talk in a way that helps them feel better and more comfortable … like I’m not a dangerous infection and like they’ve done some good by reaching out to me … or worse, that I’ve done my job by doing my utmost to dissipate their fears despite the fact that they’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve it from me? It’s childish. Who in their right mind would expect that of anyone? So what are we left with?” Kacey shakes her head in dismay.
Alexia nods in understanding. “You’re right. We should be better able to—”
They both stop and listen.
“All on-duty teams not actively engaged in current operations assemble immediately for briefing,” declares an urgent voice being amplified through the public address system throughout all six of the remote operation levels.
Part 3
In France, a driverless semi-trailer races along a highway near the north-western coast. In the darkness of the early evening, the roof of the container slides open, allowing a long-distance, fixed-wing, quadrocopter-hybrid UAV to begin its ascent high into the air, increasing speed and heading towards the English Channel only a few miles away. Another UAV emerges, already locked onto a course direct to Paris. They’re hidden from satellite and international UAV surveillance only by background-projection screens embedded all over the surfaces of the UAVs, providing effective line-of-sight protection from around a hundred yards; additionally, protection from the lower orbital, international radar network is provided by a frequency redistribution emitter, which reduces their presence in radar data to unanalysed noise fluctuations.
The truck continues down the highway for nearly three hundred yards, passing several cars travelling long distance between cities. One of the cars has a family travelling to Amiens to visit relatives. Sitting in the
back seat, the nine-year-old boy taps on the screen of his tablet, tracking the tail end of the truck and zooming in on it as it speeds away behind them. He taps on the satellite view and zooms in. He fiddles with the magnification and the position of the footage on the highway for a moment, but he’s unable to spot the truck. He looks back at the video stream captured by the camera at the rear of the car and squints with perplexity as he can still clearly see the tail lights and the outline of the vehicle.
He shrugs his shoulders and moves his fingers towards the screen to close the apps and restart the film he was previously watching. Before he does, he retracts his fingers and takes in a deep breath as he watches the truck turn into a massive fireball, filling the screen with a bright flash, the boom of the explosion penetrating the car from nearly a mile away now. With his peripheral vision, he watches his parents turn around, inspect the situation, and check to see if he and his little sister are okay. He glances at his mother’s face as she looks at the rising plume with fear that’s evidently just been kept under the surface for years on end. Uninterested by this, he looks back at the screen and zooms out slightly in order to track the full extent of the explosion, making sure that he gets the best shots possible for future reference.
The car continues to its destination, as do the UAVs.
In a coordinated attack nearly forty-five minutes later, London and Paris are attacked by the UAVs, which release mini-quadrocopters from their cargo bays as they sweep around their respective cities. The fixed-wing UAVs dive down to the center of London and Paris and detonate their nuclear payloads in unison, while the smaller payloads of the mini-quadrocopters explode in a series, forming a circle with a ten-mile radius around the central explosion.
DRONES (SPECTRAL FUTURES) Page 2