Adam
The Drone Controller
Opening the door, I am greeted by my 24 inch widescreen window into death and in front of it my weapon, a 5 inch joystick attached to a steel base, encased in a hard plastic. It’s quiet in here, even quieter with my headset on. Chaos is abundant outside my shell; yet I will cause the most damage. My desk, my killing floor, surgically clean. I pull back my chair and spin it towards me, Vulture was written along the inside of the headrest. I sit. The stick was warm. Suddenly the monitor exploded into colour. A cockpit was simulated in front of me, I was now the fighter pilot of a mark 2 drone, equipped with Jesus missiles and a 50 cal.
“Mission Control this is vulture, am I clear for takeoff?” I request
“Vulture this is Mission Control, you are clear for takeoff, good hunting.” I’m ordered. Grasping at my weapon, I push the joystick forward, the drone comes to life. It begins to sprint down the runway. It begins its hunt. In here you can’t see it, you can’t hear it; yet I could control it. I don’t even know what model it is there constantly updating them, replacing drones that had only been used a couple of times. Politics they say, if we are not seen to be using the latest technologies, the shiniest machines, the smartest ideas, the sexiest nukes, I guess our enemies would attack us? But not the people we are fighting, it would be the people we call our friends; it’s the people we trade with, the people we have armistice with. The real enemies.
Silence. The drone glides seamlessly above the clouds, like a knife across butter. I’m memorized to the drone’s view, fixated on my reticle. How quickly I forgot that I was at the back of a military base in a rotting container, for I was really 9000 feet above Afghanistan. “لعين” The eye of the devil. That’s what they called my drone. It looks at you. It kills you.
Suddenly I’m plunging towards the ground. A Sandstrom vicious enough to rip the flesh off of a human, batters my drone. Endless scientists, abundant resources and limitless funding yet we are still betrayed by mother nature. Does she not realise we are the good guys? Maybe she doesn’t care? Maybe she wants to even the playing fields? Whatever her motivation, she has taken my drone whole. Mission control explodes into my ear.