Another Day in Paradise
There was once a drone operator who loved his job. He got to fly on sick missions in faraway lands, killing bad guys and making the world a safer place. It paid good and the commute wasn't bad - 45 minutes, half hour on a good day. The trailer where he worked had AC and fresh coffee and his colleagues were good people. The hardest part was sitting in a chair 12 hours a day, but he mitigated it by banging out burpees between missions.
He ran suicide drones and averaged twenty to thirty a day. Once he'd done 45. That got him a call from his section chief and a shoutout in the company newsletter. Life was pretty good for RKM 14/17. He drummed his fingers in the steering wheel of his vintage Jeep Wrangler and nodded along to the thrash metal song that was playing.
A steady stream of traffic unrolled ahead of him, down the hill, over the bridge, into the city. It was already hot and sunlight reflected on the roofs of the cars, making it look like a river of mercury flowing towards a forest of burning gold.
The AI in his ear told him it would reach a balmy 42 degrees today with a clear night ahead and a waning crescent moon.
What the fuck does that mean? he thought.
Waning crescent, said his AI, a lunar phase characterised by a thin, curved sliver of moon. Waning means getting smaller - tomorrow night will be even thinner and there’s no moon on the 29th. Would you like me to tell you more about the history of the lunar calendar? It's a fascinating tale we can trace through Islam’s great empire, the shamans of Babylon and Neolithic cave paintings.
Nah, thought RKM. Give me stats. And for the next 20 minutes, he listened to the AI listing off the company scoreboard. The list of letters and numbers was like a poem, like a river of mercury upon which he floated.
He used to get all aggro when it came to the list. Work late, smash goals, try and climb the greasy pole. But as he got a bit older, he found he was getting chiller. It didn't matter how many of the fuckers you killed, he thought, drumming his fingers on the dash in time to the beat, there would always be more fuckers tomorrow.
