Touched

Toby, the Sharper Image camera-mounted drone with a beagle bobble-head, himself untouched since the previous winter, had tired of the palaver and sought to give his humans’ colloquy a rest. He yanked himself from the doghouse charging station and launched off the fireplace mantle. Uninspired by a warren of small rooms, he slipped through an open casement window in the basement and hurtled west across the river then southward to the financial district where a large contingent of protestors was being kettled in by the forces of law and order. There was a National Guard platoon squeezing one pincer and a bit of tumult was underway.

The drone, deploying an unplanned feature that wouldn’t be discovered for another 14 years or formally recognized for another 20, latched onto the fantasia of National Guard PFC Josh Barrette who was new to this mini metropolis but already had a warehouse job with some promise and would often unwind at the shooting range where he’d gotten quite good. He stepped back a bit but not too far as the girl reporter’s friends gathered to stanch the blood dripping from her grazed eye socket. He stood a chance of courting her now.

Barrel still warm in his hands, he fancied a nice stretch of time as her rock through recovery before coming clean that he had National Guard duty on alternating weekends and was assigned to the crowd control detachment. She’d have context for him by then. Nix on the shooting range short term. Moving forward, they could step out together on Saturdays, do their respective things then go out for ice creams.

He’d just kissed the zygomatic bone, which fractured easily but left the eye perfectly intact. A little reconstructive surgery and you’d have to look really close to notice. Putting eyes and teeth out was quietly fashionable in law enforcement circles but this took more skill. He was positive that it was a surgical hit but he would have loved her and tended to her either way. There are some very feminine eye patches on the market.

A slingshot-propelled, ocean-blue marble shattered against his helmet, resounding like a bell clapper and almost staggering him. Apoplectic, he loaded a new clip. The beagle drone monitoring him, but no longer his thoughts, turned up in his rifle scope and he took aim but couldn’t get a bead on Toby’s default evasive maneuvers over crowds.

Had his owners given the operating manual a less perfunctory read and downloaded the free apps, Toby could have been essentially invisible from ground level and capable of transmitting the fracas below live, everything from zoom to panoramic, to fans worldwide. Like Oklahoma storm chasers, shitstorm chasers dispatched their drones to battles, riots, high-casualty natural disasters, and mass-shooter incidents to harvest broadcasting gold. Something had finally marginalized those memes of improbable animal pals.

Toby’s other default for lingering over crowds was tail wagging. He was programmed as a yard drone but purchased by brownstone dwellers, so he hadn’t had a proper frolic in months. He did a few ostentatious flips to further engage the human and was rewarded with a spray of rubber bullets, a little too easy to dodge for his tastes. He tried a mock bounce for encouragement and another volley wafted skyward. Ducking between missiles salvaged the sport a bit but the guy’s aim was straying from his target. Little wonder, three members of his squad had brought him to his knees and were wresting the gun from him. Toby darted back homeward in the hope that his people were finally talked out and amenable to a romp in the park.