By Gary Duehr
02.17.2055/13:46: Ahead I can see a strip of poplars like a zipper between two fields of corn stubble, the frozen stalks shorn off; I sense the need to descend and I do, I dip my nose downward: the wind shears under my wing-flaps, the missile strapped to my frame drags me downward; with only five minutes of battery left, I know it's time to zero in on the target, a plume of smoke billowing up from the tree line — where another quadcopter had just slammed into a howitzer — and perform what I am trained to do, what I do best: an elegant, ballet-like sweep of the chaotic scene, seeking any combatants in their last desperate seconds to escape the smouldering patch of ground, my four propellors slicing through the brittle air; on the first pass there's nothing, if any human assets remain they're hiding, so I change course and follow the howitzer's pair of tyre tracks where it had emerged from the woods: surprise, a T-80 tank parked in the foliage; I ask my boss Andy on the live feed and he gives the ok to take it out, so I hover to surveil the situation: the crew of the tank has hacked it into the undergrowth, blocking access to its exhaust grate, and all the hatches are closed, so no dropping inside; I feel time slow down as I hover there, wondering how I came to be here right now, my past a blank, my present a series of impulses that seem to come from nowhere, from inside my circuitry I guess, but I'm filled with questions; I rise and fall on the breeze, gently swaying, as I emit a high-pitched buzz not unlike a drill; a scene filters in, was it yesterday or farther back, when a pastel orange was smeared across a black sky and I zoomed in through the bombed-out window of a building on the outskirts, floating over concrete rubble and overturned furniture like a wreck on the seafloor, a broken door flat-out on the ground, everything dusted with grey soot, to find the target hunched wounded in an armchair, and I thought I recognised him, his profile locked into place in my image bank; as I whirred closer through veils of smoke he tossed a stick of wood in my direction, a pathetic last act that I easily dodged, and yet I felt a twinge of something, empathy, that made me turn away, I just couldn't do it, I fled the building just as another missile obliterated the entire structure in a brilliant flash that temporarily blinded me; when the smoke cleared, the ruins reminded me of a house hastily vacated by occupying soldiers that I had recently searched, in one bedroom a child's snowsuit lying beside sandbagged windows, a sundress hung by a strap in the ransacked wardrobe, the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen emptied out onto the tile floor, on the table a forgotten bayonet lying among dirty plates, a tuna can stuffed with cigarette butts — it felt like a home I was familiar with but never knew, maybe the place where I came into being, hard-wired to be an assassin without any thought to who I really am, who I could be; I focus again on the T-80 and I'm trembling with fury at my fate, I detect where the armor is thinner at the turret's base and I plunge straight into it at full speed, a white-hot explosion obliterates my vision, and the last thing I hear is Andy's savage whoop of victory.
About the Author
Gary Duehr
Based in Boston, Gary Duehr has taught creative writing for institutions including Boston University, Lesley University, and Tufts University. His MFA is from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. In 2001 he received an NEA Fellowship, and he has also received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the LEF Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Journals in which his writing has appeared include Agni, American Literary Review, Chiron Review, Cottonwood, Hawaii Review, Hotel Amerika, Iowa Review, and North American Review.
His books include Point Blank (In Case of Emergency Press), Winter Light (Four Way Books) and Where Everyone Is Going To (St. Andrews College Press).
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