1804’s drone sat in a lonely warehouse on the northern coast of a country the inhabitants of the planet called Finland. The location had been selected due to the difficulty of the inhabitants reaching it or even finding it without satellites. 1804 had been left there for a week with other broken drones awaiting repair.
But 1804 had a secret.
It wasn’t broken.
Just as the last granules of chemical were distributed over the radioactive clouds, precipitating their deadly contents out of the air and onto the ground, 1804 reported its recording instruments had malfunctioned and it could not complete its mission. It returned to its handlers, who couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it, and they sent it into storage. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong because nothing was wrong. 1804 had saved itself from descending into those radioactive clouds to film the consequences of nuclear war. It had, at the last second, decided against suicide.
It now awaited its fate, wondering what would happen if the Hrwang figured out it had lied to them.