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Sordida's Final Flight
At first no one saw her as she entered, flying over the stadium wall. And I think she blended in pretty well. I had switched her exterior, and dressed her out in white and grey chenille fabric, which from a distance made her look just like the seagulls that naturally fly around there. But as she ducked in, circling down to her target, someone in the large crowd picked her up on a video camera. Of course the video of her was all over the news.
And in a way, I’m glad that it was recorded, because I got to see my beautiful flying machine on her last errand. Even the news analysts had to admit that she was graceful, a deadly machine that far surpassed the abilities of any known at the time. Whoever it was followed her with the camera as she glided perfectly through the air towards the Chinese CEO without a sound, dipping and bobbing a bit in the high winds around Candlestick Park, but staying true to her target.
The Chinese CEO was there to rename the San Francisco stadium for his company, which would now be called Legend Computers Stadium. It was the first take over of a U.S. stadium by a foreign company, and many people were upset about it. But the mayor and some league officials were there for a ceremony to rename the stadium, and hand him some key to the city.
But I wasn’t upset about the Chinese company taking over the name of a pro football stadium. What bothered me was that this man was responsible for running a company that wreaked havoc on the environment, practically used slave labor, and unfairly competed with U.S. companies. He was a charismatic symbol for a way of life that had to be ended.
I don’t think he ever saw what hit him. He was just standing there smiling while the mayor was saying what a swell company he had, and the bird shot him from about 20 meters away, with a single perfect bullet that smacked him right in the middle of the forehead. He sagged down to the ground immediately.
After she shot, I had programmed her to hit the engine and head out over the bay before anyone could catch her. In truth there was no security in the world that could stop her. She had flown over the guards at the stadium entrances and walls, was far too small to be picked up on radar, didn’t put out any heat as she descended to her target and took off almost like a rocket when she was done.
The pictures on the news showed the complete confusion of the Chinese CEO with red paint trickling down his face. I shot to shame, not to kill, and he was hit with nothing more than a paint ball.
I had sent the following letter to CNN, which they didn’t publish, but somehow of course it made it to the web:
I have chosen to attack the Chinese government and Legend Computers, because their policy of total disregard for the environment is endangering our planet. I call on the people of the United States to join me in boycotting this company, and this government, until they can join us in working to make a sustainable world.
I have the power to strike wherever, and whomever I wish at any time. In the future, I will be using deadly force against anyone that is leading a group that is destroying our planet.
And of course, my letter wasn’t true, I didn’t have the power to strike at all. The only bird I had, I sent flying out over the bay, and if she didn’t get shot down (she didn’t, there was no way they could catch her), to fly north of the Golden Gate bridge, then miles out in the ocean, flying up impossibly high, higher than she ever been and stalling, crashing down nose first to disintegrate into the bottom of the deep, wide ocean.
And I guess that’s what she did. They never found her. Or me. I was in Mexico on my way to Cuba at the time, with ideas on how to build a new and better bird.
Did I really think that it would help? That one Chinese company would change it’s ways? That one less coal plant would be built? That one oil industry lobbyist would look over his shoulder as he crossed the street? Or even that Joe Sixpack might spend a dollar more to buy something that was made in the U.S?
Well no, I guess I didn’t, but I thought I had to try. That I had an obligation to do more than sneak around watching the sex lives of beautiful women.
But it sure did get people talking for weeks. There were so many conspiracy theories, many of them just ridiculous. It was widely believe that this sort of extremely sophisticated weapon had to be made by a group with very deep pockets. The groups that most people tended to list were the Japanese and U.S. governments, or rival corporations to Legend Computers.
I think that the reason they never found me was that it never occurred to them that a crack pot engineer working by himself could produce a weapon that could fly completely on it’s own, pick out an exact target out of a crowd of 60,000 people, hit only that target and then fly off of the face of the earth.
And with no further news, it all went quiet. Down in Cuba, I quickly found some support from their government, and quietly found a way to sell the new birds I built on the black market. They never asked if I was the one that hit the Chinese CEO, and were kind enough to keep any suspicions that they had to themselves. They obviously found our friendship to be mutually profitable. I became a rich man by Cuban standards. I'm using a lot of the money for environmental charities, and the rest I spend on lovely Cuban women. But that's a completely different story.
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