Drone

It was the visual nature of the thing I was least prepared for. The way a smell that wasn’t really a smell--but only the visceral response of my newly altered body to the pheromone signature of another of my kind--would erupt in my mind. A Technicolor display that would have distracted me from the task at hand if I were still myself.

Just myself.

I know to keep what I am seeing a secret. I know it is never to leave the hive and I know why. What I don’t know is who was first to conceive of it and how they could have done so without someone like them to show them a picture like this. Some lingering part of my old mind thrusts a memory forward: a small child in a cold room asks a frowning man in black, But who created God? I know I am that child and that I should care, but I also know I am not her.

And I don’t.

The picture assails me again and my own pheromones send back a picture that means, Yes, yes, I understand, you don’t have to shout! I wonder briefly what that looks like as I pluck another thingamabob from the bin, place it onto a whatchamacallit and twist.

The bin of thingamabobs never empties and the flow of whatchamacallits never ceases during the sixteen hours of my shift. My hands fly of their own accord and I never miss. I am a part, now, of this well-oiled machine and a remnant of me I am sure is no longer supposed to have a voice, tells me this is ironic. That man should rise above all the other animals, only to build machines that are best suited to dumb beasts.

Not for the first time I wonder if it was the right decision. As usual I remind myself I had little choice. And I pluck and place and twist and pluck and place…

Word on the street had been that it was easier if you went for the GT. Life was a long time. The longest, really, and a life standing there snapping shit together sixty-six percent of it was hard on a human body and mind. I’d also heard favorable treatment was given to the GTs. People said it was because the guards trusted the drones better than the prisoners who had refused the gene therapy. They figured the hive was safe, manageable.

They thought we were tame.

Pluck and place and twist and…a newcomer! A bare back wriggles in my mind’s eye, writhes away…crawling. A massive hand appears, arrests the progress of the naked figure by grabbing a fistful of dishwater blonde hair. A breast bobbles into the scene as she’s yanked backward and up onto her knees. Then I get the full monty as she’s thrown down on her back and her slender throat disappears into the giant mitts my new brother calls hands. Pluck and place and…he’s twisting so hard her eyes bulge and the vision is so clear I see the first petechial hemorrhage blossom in her milky sclera.

All around me the hive responds with awe to the brute violence on display. Such strength is a valuable addition and I feel a very un-drone-like envy as I recall the far less impressive crime I shared upon my arrival. I’ve barely had the time to register I feel this though, when the hive begins love-bombing me. My contribution is also valuable, I am reminded from a thousand different directions.

And I know it’s true. The human misconception was to believe drones, because numerous and focused, were unimportant and unthinking. We GTs know the truth: that every drone is indescribably, immeasurably important to the hive. And for our particular hive? Every new addition is another set of hands that have killed, maimed, brutalized.

I feel a shiver of anticipation. His hands were so big and his crime so brutal. Surely this is the time. Surely there are enough of us now. But no. The signal does not come. And I pluck and place and twist and the hive is peaceful, and there is nothing at all for the human guards to fear in their complacency.

Yet.

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