Murder Drones: Born from ashes

Chapter 5.5 : Whispers of the Flame

DATE:[CLASSIFIED]

SUBJECT:[TOO LARGE; REFER TO DIVISION 30]

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It was a fairly hot day to go shooting.

The Sun beat down on the yellow sand, turning them into hot coals that melted through the soles of my thin shoes. The sky was a sickly, blue hued yellow and black. Rocks and hills dotted the mass of land. It was deathly silent out here, as it should be. The researchers, a bunch of sweltering people in lab coats, breathed heavily from the suffocating heat. Though they were the epitome of poor health, the extreme body size difference, and noticeably unkempt hair being the trademark sign of such a thing, at least they wore the right colors. White reflects the sun, while black absorbs it. I was feeling adventurous that day, wearing a black undershirt underneath my now discarded black coat. My skin was a deep red, and my undershirt was drenched in sweat. We were under a small canopy, in front of me was a table with a series of firearms I had been asked to test, and judge which ones were optimal for "continued combat". I'm still trying to understand what that means, large magazine size? Economical ammunition? High fire rate? People kept trying to sound technical as if they were there.

I had spent the past month wandering from company town to company town. Feeling the carcinogens building up tar and puss in my lungs. I would pick a place to hide every night, some cold unwelcoming ditch, not like the homeless who would sleep on the benches in blankets, with their masks and filters on. The air quality was according to Jensen news, getting better. Sometimes they found me, I would go through the motions, run, then hide elsewhere. I never wanted to stay attached to anything. There was no "home": quiet evenings populated by crickets and faint dog barking with the occasional star beyond the light pollution. My previous home was wondering whether or not I would wake up to another skirmish between the ULU and Jensen. My new home was a small shack in this new company town, I genuinely didn't care.

The Mk14, an improved version of the M14 rifle made from metal alloys rather than the unreliable wooden one. I aimed down the sights and asked why the sights weren't zeroed in, and where my scope was. In the war, the Mk14 was designated to snipers only. It made me bitter when I saw them used more in the movies. It was such an easy concept to understand, yet it was as if they were trying to make marines like me seem more and more fake.

"Well, drones won't need the telescope. They have an optic length of 1 mile. As for the sights, Tessa, what about the sights?" asked one of the researchers.

A frail girl in a black sweater looked up. I couldn't get how someone could wear clothes like that in such heat, then again I was still wearing my suit and tie that was ruined by the dust.

She walked over to me and looked at the gun quizzically. I looked at the confused look in her eyes. It was like she never saw a weapon her entire life. We were the same age! How could she not know about the war?

"They calculate where to aim based on the midpoint of the gun."

Well that's impractical. How would they know what's this "midpoint" and what's not? I looked further down the table and saw multiple guns in which the barrel wouldn't even be at this supposed mid point. I tried to address this issue with the other men.

"The drones have autonomy, they'll be able to figure things out on their own. New units will be taught by the older ones which behaviors ensure their continued survival on a battlefield. It's not much different from teaching."

One of the guys picked up a gun I skipped over, an old bolt action.

"You have a problem with this gun?" he asked, aiming down the sights, wrapping his armpit around the buttstock. I dropped the pistol I was testing earlier and yanked it out of his hands, scolding him on the unreliability of such a gun. Bolt actions were prone to jamming very often, any gun that has the bolt open up to the very sensitive internals is a gun that should not be in a combat environment.

"You could have just told me I was holding it wrong." He grumbled. I withheld my comments and moved over to the next rifle, the AK74. my palms were slickened in sweat as I gripped onto the wood finish. I aimed down the sights, trying to relax my heart as I closed my eyes on the target and pulled the trigger. I I asked where they got this gun.

"We bought it off someone, that's a military rifle, right? What was it like during the war?"

There were guerillas then there were us. We fought each other until one retreated. Then we would push or fall back depending on the outcome of each battle. Many "good people" died fighting and I left out the rest of the details that would have sent me into hysteria to make it seem unimportant, but they brought me here for that reason.

"Well that's why we are doing this," the girl said, her body bunched up as if it was still shrinking, "The drones are here to help us. You won't have to go to war anymore, they'll fight your battles for us. No more people dying."

I lied to the people that I had seen enough, and that they could all go home. I stayed at the range, firing the rest of the guns. Helical drum mags and bullpups. No matter how awkward the gun looked, I always figured out how to use it.

I didn't like what I was feeling. The feeling of the voice in your head telling you to follow instinct over logic. It felt wrong, none of this made any more sense to me than it did before. The issue was that they all worked identically to each other. Slide the bolt, pull the trigger, firing pin goes off, bullet goes out, the gas pushes the slide back and chambers. The gun jams sometimes or seems like it will jam if you put it in a combat scenario. They were all the same, yet these people insisted that they were different. Just as I was about to leave I saw that girl again, Tessa, that was her name.

When I first understood her it was in a studio she rented out. She was surrounded by computers, all of them illuminating her skin into a clean white. I didn't make much progress after that, she seemed completely afraid and useless from our first interaction at the store. She soon asked me to buy groceries for her every month. It was how I made a bit of side change during the off times, this was before I was drafted. When I told her the news, I could see her look up from the ring of monitors for the first time since we met. I still couldn't see her eyes, all I saw was a tear slowly trickle down from her cheek. She begged me not to leave, telling me that she needed me, but I was naive, telling her she was ready to go on her own. Just like that I left her world forever.

"You're not really here because of the guns, are you? We're still friends, right?"

I felt embarrassed, I didn't know how long she was watching me for.

"When I was younger, my parents were constantly fighting or were busy overseas. They never hit each other, but I didn't know what to do. I used to watch videos and movies of families and weddings. If I knew what I did now, I would have made a machine to help them be together. Maybe they would still be alive if I just knew how to make it perfect." she said, her voice seemed to grow louder in the ever darkening sky. The yellow haze glowed in her eyes as she looked back at me.

"I don't know what happened in your battle that you fought. These drones will be doing things and I need experts that know how to make them perfect. I'll give you whatever you want. Just tell me what it was like really."

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