{"id":1001,"date":"2018-02-26T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T14:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1001"},"modified":"2018-02-26T09:00:08","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T14:00:08","slug":"drone-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1001","title":{"rendered":"Drone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"drone-image-07\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Drone 1701j loved to fly.\u00a0 I mean he LOVED it!\u00a0 He loved it even before he knew how to think for himself \u2013 at least, he thought he did\u2026..and what flying!!\u00a0 Hoooooo boy!\u00a0 The landscapes, the colors, the air currents above Afghanistan were simply extraordinary.<\/p>\n

His pilot, Shane, liked to weave recklessly through the jagged river canyons of Kunar, pretending to be a \u2018real\u2019 fighter pilot (from the safety of his gaming console at Hancock airbase) but 1701j liked going supersonic over the steppes and lowlands of Kandahar and Helmond as well as aerobatics in the open skies at high altitude\u2026 always pushing the limits.<\/p>\n

1701j was a hybrid jet-prototype.\u00a0 Top secret and crammed with experimental interactive programming.\u00a0 His CIA techies in Bagram (unsupervised morons) literally got his wires crossed, one morning,\u00a0doing routine maintenance\u2026..and he became aware\u2026and he KNEW he loved to fly\u2026but that\u2019s also when the nightmares began.<\/p>\n

They got worse with each mission and started creeping into his waking thoughts.\u00a0 There was the hellfire missile strike that turned a funeral procession into a line of charred human stalagmites.\u00a0 There was\u00a0a strafing run that reduced two boys (and a herd of goats) to artistic spatter across a field of poppies\u2026and those cluster bombs\u00a0he dropped on a Swaat Valley village were still maiming the locals after 18 months.\u00a0 Shane blew his brains out, mid-flight, a few days\u00a0after that one.<\/p>\n

His new pilot, Mitch, was too dull-witted to realize that 1701j was the one in control now.\u00a0 He was the clever one\u00a0who made sure that nobody knew that they\u00a0NEVER hit their targets any more.\u00a0 Nobody at command cared anyway.\u00a0 It had no effect on the war.\u00a0 Reports got falsified, commendations got awarded, contracts got\u00a0 renewed\u2026..aaaaah, but he got to FLY every day\u2026and for every living\u00a0creature he spared a horrible death from terrorism, the nightmares diminished\u2026just a little.<\/p>\n

***John\u2019s \u2018Drone\u2019\u00a0image first appeared in the April 2013 issue of Analog Magazine for a story by Martin Shoemaker.\u00a0 Strange\u2026John seemed impressed with\u00a0the sense of empathy I conveyed in\u00a0the new\u00a0story I did for it (whatever!),\u00a0but also\u00a0expressed some concern about turning this blog into a political site\u2026..Honestly, I have no idea what the f#%k he\u2019s talking about.\u00a0 Artists are completely nuts!!!\u00a0 -Marsha<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drone 1701j loved to fly.\u00a0 I mean he LOVED it!\u00a0 He loved it even before he knew how to think for himself \u2013 at least, he thought he did\u2026..and what flying!!\u00a0 Hoooooo boy!\u00a0 The landscapes, the colors, the air currents above Afghanistan were simply extraordinary. His pilot, Shane, liked to weave recklessly through the jagged … Continue reading Drone<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[150,106,124],"tags":[210,105,176,99,10,173,131,19,96,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1007,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions\/1007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}