The canopy in the backyard was a squashed pink bug whose silvery legs were splayed. When the drone short-circuited over the air space of our property and the crisis came, the bug didn’t know which way to run so it tried to run every way.
A line of smartphones recording video and taking pictures of the wreckage leered over our privacy fence, the eyes of ravenous creatures who live in deep parts of the ocean.
There were no markings on the drone, which was mostly black metal and had short antennae. Who do you call to say hey, come pick up your secret spy drone? And what the hell about my squashed pink bug?
The drone whispered in a language of hums and clicks I of course couldn’t understand. But it wasn’t saying its last words, making its final testimony. It wasn’t wheezing. Its whispering was clear and steady. It was still on the job. I had the feeling it knew my credit score.
No one ever came to pick it up.
I tried to get the city to remove it. I texted a picture of the drone, and the city said it might pick up “the object” if I moved it to the curb. Too much liability coming so far onto our property to haul away such a complicated, menacing-looking thing. I understood. I would say the same thing in the city’s place. But I was afraid to touch the drone, let alone try to pull it to the curb.
One night when I couldn’t sleep, I went out to the drone in my bathrobe and peed on it. It hissed like it was hot and my pee was cold, and it continued whispering.
Many months later, it’s still sitting on top of the squashed bug. Weeds have crawled over the bug’s ruined shell and are pulling at the drone’s shell, trying to force apart joints and seams to work their way inside. It’s still whispering but its day are numbered.
Sometimes I think about the thousands of drones just like it that didn’t crash. At first the thought scared me — and maybe it should still. But it’s been gathering intelligence on my backyard for so long now, whispering idiotically day and night, that I just can’t take the government seriously anymore.
Birds of Bad Omen 