Drone Wars - Issue 1: Secrets and L.I.E.S.
William Hrdina
Copyright 2014 William Hrdina
Kenny G Must Die!! A Satire about Music- and Zombies
Mrs. Puddlepocket stood before her new recruits, “You all know the history of how America came to be under the dominion of Clint Fleener and his army of drones, but who can tell me the consequences?”
“Everything sucks,” Jenna laughed.
“That’s true,” Mrs. Puddlepocket agreed, “But that’s not really the answer I was looking for. Evelyn, why don’t you tell us.”
“It means there are thousands of remote-controlled drones flying over our heads, recording everything we do and tracking everywhere we go. The government treats everyone like children. Every time we burp or scratch our butt, Clint thinks he has the right to know about it. It’s wrong.”
“Like I said, everything sucks,” Jenna reiterated.
Laughing, Mrs. Puddlepocket replied, “The good news is, every system has cracks. Clint’s biggest vulnerability is that he doesn’t believe teenage girls like yourselves are capable of caring about politics or science or technology. He doesn’t believe you could represent a threat to his power because he thinks you’re too busy putting on lipstick. It’s the primary mission of the Secrets to make him pay for this oversight.”
“And to do it while wearing fierce lipstick,” Tasha added.
“Indeed.”
Their resistance had begun.
Four Years Later….
“I don’t know Tasha, if Ken’s not calling you back, I would just blow him off. It isn’t like he’s worthy of you anyway. You’re a Secret - we don’t chase guys - they chase us,” Jenna said.
“You say that like anyone knows who we are. Ken doesn’t know I’m a member of an elite secret team of teenage Drone Hunters. He just thinks I’m the stupid girl I pretend to be at school,” Tasha replied, giggling like an airhead to illustrate her point.
“On the bright side, if he knew who you were, we’d all be in jail,” Michelle chimed in. “Playing dumb at school is the easiest way to avoid suspicion.”
Jenna gave Michelle an annoyed look, she just didn’t appreciate the value of complaining for the sake of complaining.
Tasha said, “I just don’t understand why more people don’t fight the drones. Considering they mess with everyone, you would think people would be more willing to resist.”
Evelyn cut off the conversation, “Alright ladies, enough chit-chat, we’re coming up on our designated coordinates, let’s put on our game-faces.”
All boy-related discussion evaporated. Boys were certainly interesting to talk about, but they paled in comparison to a Secret’s real passion - the thrill of the hunt.
Evelyn sat at her control station. It featured a laptop with a large external monitor, a pair of iPads and a joystick. She ran through her preliminary checks to make sure everything was working properly. It was.
Evelyn asked, “Okay guys, are we ready for separation?”
“Cool on my end,” Jenna replied, her eyes flitting from her laptop’s monitor showing a wireframe view of the terrain ahead to her iPads. They listed a mountain of logistical and mission-related data. All her lights were green.
“Brain ready for aerial separation,” Michelle replied, typing madly on her own laptop.
“Okay, here we go,” Evelyn said. She tapped a button on her iPad.
Evelyn was remotely flying a single, large drone twenty miles away in the air over the Chicago suburb of Lansing. When she tapped the button, Evelyn’s single drone broke apart into three distinct modules: two identical planes and quadcopter. Until the separation, Jenna had been flying all three units as one.
After the separation, each of the three aircraft regained flight stability and snapped into formation automatically. Jenna took control of the plane Evelyn wasn’t flying and Michelle took control of the quadcopter affectionately known as ‘The Brain.’
“Prepare to initiate The Brain,” Evelyn called.
“Initiating,” Michelle replied.
The Brain was a heavily modified quadcopter (a quadcopter is a drone with four rotors that is designed to hover rather than fly). Because the Secrets often functioned in heavily populated areas, Michelle usually chose to land the Brain to avoid being spotted. At her command, it ran through some algorithms and a number of landing choices popped up on her screen. Michelle picked a house that seemed unoccupied and brought the quadcopter down. It perched on the chimney like a spider with its four rotor legs in the air.
“Brain deployed. Full resolution coming online,” Michelle called.
Until the Brain activated, the girl’s displays looked lousy. The video images were sufficient to perform basic flight functions, but they weren’t good enough to perform the precision flying necessary for their missions. The Brain added the computer power necessary to upgrade their visuals to photo-realistic HD imagery along with clear landmark tags and a total inventory of all other objects in the air for a radius of twenty-five miles.
“We probably have a couple of minutes, any interesting deliveries in the air?” Jenna asked.
(Almost all small UPS, FedEx, Amazon and US Mail deliveries came via delivery drones)
Michelle said, “Running program - let’s see… we’ve got thirty-nine delivery drones in our airspace - mostly Amazon and UPS, so unless you want a book or some groceries…”
“Nothing else?”
“This might be interesting,” Michelle said.
“What do you got?” Evelyn asked.
“Allied Tech delivery just popped into our airspace, heading south.”
“Run the manifest.”
“Already doing it. Let’s see, some chips, some boards, ah, here we go, fifteen brand-spanking new RA50 drone engines.”
“Are those compatible with our RJX-7’s?” Jenna asked, looking at Tasha.
As the team’s mechanic, it was one of Tasha’s jobs to know whether or not an item was worth stealing. After a moment’s thought Tasha said, “They are compatible, but it would take some serious retrofitting. Probably not worth the effort.”
“What’s flying the cargo?” Evelyn asked.
“It’s a Rhino - Mark III from its shape,” Michelle reported.
A Rhino was a heavy duty delivery drone, designed to carry heavy loads. They were much harder to crack into than a regular delivery drone.
“Do we have the Ticks we need to jack a Rhino?” Jenna asked Tasha.
“Yeah, Evelyn has one, but I’m looking at the payload weight and it’s pretty close to our max. They’re cool engines, but we’re not really outfitted for a snatch job. This was supposed to be a hunt/kill mission.”
“Tasha’s right, we skip the engines,” Evelyn confirmed.
Jenna was disappointed, she liked jacking corporations just as much as she liked destroying government surveillance drones, but Evelyn was in charge and all she ever cared about was killing drones. Considering what had happened to Evelyn’s Mom, Jenna could understand why her commander’s attention always focused on them, even if it frustrated her sometimes.
Jenna said, “Okay, if we’re not going to do anything extra-curricular, then find me my L.I.E. Michelle.”
“Give me a second, I’m adjusting the filters.”
A majority of the information on their screens disappeared, leaving only three signatures.
“We’ve got a pair of Predators accompanying a L.I.E.S.,” Michelle reported.
Evelyn got excited for a second when she heard Michelle say L.I.E.S.. She thought there was more than one. But then she listened back in her head and realized Michelle ha
d said, ‘a L.I.E.S..’
Evelyn groaned, “Michelle, we’ve talked about this. I know they are technically called L.I.E.S., not L.I.E., but when you use the plural to describe a single drone, you confuse everyone.”
“Sorry boss,” Michelle said, her tone making it unclear if she was apologizing or just acknowledging the mistake.
L.I.E.S. = Logistical Information Enhancement System. A fancy title for the most egregious arrangement of privacy invasion ever devised.
L.I.E.S. were the ultimate surveillance drones and the backbone of Clint Fleener’s power - his Big Brother in the sky. Approximately seven thousand L.I.E.S. were flying in the air over the United States at any given time. L.I.E.S. were capable of hearing sound through three solid feet of concrete and seeing heat signatures through six. The L.I.E.S. drones captured all cellphone data, all phone calls, all wireless internet usage, all the RFID chips on driver’s licenses and all the license plates on the cars. They could turn anyone’s phone or television into a microphone or they could reach into houses and take control of a computer’s camera. The L.I.E.S. were