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For false messiahs and poets will appear and produce great ideas and thoughts, to turn to treason, if possible, even the neighbor.
—Matthew 24:24, True Revised State Script (2040)
Is this acceptable?
These three words wander about in my head throughout the day. Bouncing from eardrum to eardrum and at times getting caught in my sinuses.
The medispray, applied nasally once every three hours as prescribed, reaffirms this fact. I was born with a deviated septum, as many of my generation were.
I exit the elevator, my heels clicking along the marble tiles of the lobby in the same cadence they learned when I was 16. A metronome guides my movement as I move into the queue with my colleagues. Black leather shoes, black slacks, blue shirt, crisp collars, hair cropped and parted in accordance with the handbook. Brass and silver pins through the left collar denoting rank. They shine under the fluorescent lights leading to the scanners.
I nod to Jerry, a Lieutenant Junior Grade who works on the floor below mine. He returns it. We move along at the same pace as the wait for our own scans decrease. Efficiency prevails, and within the half hour we are through the lines, our retinas and tongues scanned. Jerry exits the scanner as I do, and we make our way up the steel trussed stairs to the 15th floor. The elevators stop at the lobby due to safety. My hand grazes Jerry’s. We breathe. He leaves. I continue to the 16th.
The door at the landing of the 16th floor has four horizontal bars across the middle and nothing else. There is a keypad on the right. My fingers work from memory and grant me access. It’s darker in here, each cubicle lit up by a single bulb dangling above. Necessity breeds frugality. The birds don’t fly when it’s light. OWLs hunt at night. Enter my cubicle and place my briefcase on the worn surface. It has its place, and it is home.
I sit and turn on the monitors. A flight stick slides from under the desk and up between my legs. The panels in my desk open up, displaying all critical metrics and gauges. I check the altimeter and adjust the intensity of the light hanging a foot over my head. The cubicle goes dark. I inspect and wear my headset on and Erie’s voice greets me.
“Good morning, captain.”
She never returns my greeting. The next voice is Lieutenant Graves.
“Relinquishing control in fifteen minutes. Will maintain altitude of 80km. Reserves are full, both prop and det. Please confirm that the craft is acceptable, Captain Pilkey.”
I glance at the gauges and wrap my right hand around the yoke, my finger resting lightly on the worn engage trigger. The throttle slides up slowly to my left. I test the resistance. Acceptable.
“Roger that Lieutenant. Ready to assume control. Tell Bobby I say hello.”
I watch the screens, moving eyes from left to right, taking in all information of the surrounding. We are not told where the OWLs fly, only the targets for our shift. Geography did not teach us these foreign lands, only the state of our own region, of the world constantly above.
I observe until my command begins. The controls tighten and I am twisting the owl downwards towards the sand, many miles below. Work takes over and I level off, disengaging the blowers and loosening the flaps. The enemy’s technology has advanced to the point of being able to detect the exhaust, so the mechanical wings have been developed to give the speed and the silence after which we are named, and what is now gone.
I see the blooms on the infrared scanner. I turn them the same black as the cooling sand. I am given a new vector. I tilt the craft and engage the blowers. Thousands of miles away the OWL is twisting through the cooling night air. Thousands of miles away, white hot pixels are decaying to merely throbbing embers. The trigger wears at the blister on my index finger.
I climb to the thermosphere and engage the autopilot. The blowers disengage and the flaps easily keep the aircraft aloft. Gravity is barely a hurdle here.
I go to the water cooler. I exchange pleasantries with the commander across the way. We exchange numbers. We crumple the paper cones and dispose of them in the receptacle. We part ways and resume our watch over the skies.
The white ghosts in front of me dwindle away. Imminent. Profiled. Cataloged to the database and recorded in our performance reports. I descend upon the foothills and clear away the debris. I do my job. I accept my works with a certain grace. I hear them murmur as I walk past in the tunnels with my children, calling me a ‘ripper’, a ‘reaper’. They do not appreciate the work I do, even though it keeps them safe from the torn landscape above.
--
We used to fear the sound of the engines above us. But then we learned to fear the silence. With the sun bright and hot on our necks and the sharp crack of the demons patrolling, we at least had some warning of when our time had come.
But now we have nothing.
Nothing but terror. It permeates through us all as we try to gather grain. I have taken my mother’s place, as she can no longer walk due to the child in her belly. I ask my father why the prophet would allow this to happen to us.
He falls to his knees and holds my shoulders tight. He levels his eyes with mine. I can feel the fear rise between us both, a moment in rest, a moment in danger.
“This is not his doing, Anja. This is not his doing at all.”
--
The white ghosts fade on the panels. My finger relaxes.
This is acceptable.
Two enemies in a field. Conspiring. Imminent. Probable. Justified.
This is acceptable.
My eyes grow red and the craft ascends.
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