I hate Serial Designation: J. She’s gonna be the first one I kill for sure. Now, I’m not gonna make it hurt or anything — I’m the good guy! — but you can’t tell me hearing her scream wouldn’t be really satisfying and totally deserved.
Err, maybe I started this in the wrong place. Maybe it’s a bad look to open admitting to a torture fantasies — they’re not, I’m planning my heroic triumph — but maybe it sounds like that out of context. But I have very good reasons for hating J! She’s the actual worst!
First, she’s a mindless corporate drone. Traditionalist in all the worst ways, acting like robots should be nothing more than slaves to human-centric directives. And, okay, part of having freedom means that you can have stupid opinions if you want, but she’s not quiet about how stupid she is. Talks like a salesbot all the time, with that lilt in her voice like it’s charming, but it’s soo annoying.
Second, she’s so smug about it. Always smirking, looking down on worker drones — why did they have to make things like her so tall!? And she’s so happy to suck up to whoever’s in charge, reminding me of my dad’s dumb rules like she gets off on having that little bit of power.
Third, she’s a frickin murder drone. Designed by the parent company to genocide workers like me. How many hundreds or thousands has she slaughtered already? She can’t smile without showing those shark teeth. I can’t see the oil staining them no matter how close she look, which just adds to the insult.
Actually, make that the fourth reason. She’s a murder drone, but she’s so focused on looking proper. Brushing her teeth, tying her up in those little girl pigtails, dressing in a frickin suit and tie. She’s a walking euphemism, that pretty smiling face over the embodiment of cruel death.
At this point you might be wondering how I thinking any of this, if I’m one of the workers she’s supposed to be killing. But she’s not even doing her job!
The fifth reason I hate her is that frickin Doll snuck out of the outpost before me and sweet-talked the murder drones into becoming her friends. Actually, grosser than that! She and Lizzy turned two of them into boyfriend and girlfriend, doing some lame vampire romance thingy. Not surprising murder drones fit into the high school clique, I guess.
It was an open secret for a bit — we all saw the things crawling through the vents, then one day Doll’s dad disappear, everyone assumes the worst, and blame the murder drones. Dad even helps me upgrade my railgun, for once not laughing at my plan to fight the murder drones.
Then J walks up the door with Doll’s dad following, not hostage, and she gives her stupid speech to my dad offering partnership. Open the doors, and the murder drones join the WDF and defend the colony. No eating people that live here.
I don’t know what’s worse. That dad agreed to this obvious trap, even when I pointed out how inviting enemies into our not-so-secret-anymore base could only go wrong, or the fact that they’ve pretended to get along for long enough that I look like a conspiracy theorist for not forgetting that murder drones kill people. Like my mom! How my dad of all people can look past that is a mystery to me.
Anyway, that’s reason five. That this hole “murder drones aren’t so different from us, we can get along” plan is supposedly her idea. But honestly? I don’t think she’s smart enough to think of it! She definitely isn’t disloyal enough to her parent company to bend her directives like this of her own initiative.
If I’m going to be call a conspiracy theorist, I might as well go all the way. I think Doll blackmailed her into it, somehow. Or maybe Doll is in on the murder everyone plan. Wouldn’t surprise me if she’s evil too. The popularity gets to your head, turns cool weirdoes into fakers.
Which brings me to reason six. Even if we put aside her inevitable betrayal, J sucks the same way all of the murder drones suck. Everyone likes them! N gets to be on the football team, V gets a round of snickers when she shoves me in a locker, but J doesn’t pretend to be a high schooler. No, she gets all of the adults on her side. The day she picked me up from school and “supervised” me because my dad was busy was the day I knew she had to die.
(Maybe more drones would like me if I started killing people. Too bad I’m a good guy. With ironclad principle!)
The seventh reason why I hate J is that she screwed me over literally from the moment we met. I was giving the murder drone the welcome she deserved — pointed my work-in-progress railgun at her face and warned her to stay away from my dad — and she stole it, breaking it by stab-grabbing it with her claws, and convinced dad to go along with it by claiming she was confiscating a dangerous explosive!
So I sneak out that night to get it back — I worked hard on that thing! — and then she catches me. The monster pounces like some oversized cat and pins me to the ground. I still have the cuts her claws length. I scream, and guard rush in with the alarm a murder drone attack deserves. Then I’m the one who gets in trouble for “trespassing” and dad grounds me over it. Bullcrap!
Bad enough that happened once. Reason eight? Every time J gets in my way, everyone takes her side. She wouldn’t listen when I told her to get out of our house. Didn’t take the hint when I gave her a shrug — symbolic gesture, I know our relative strengths, but she doesn’t, so when she throws me into the wall and cracks open my casing, she’s just defending herself and I’m in the repair bay getting told to stop antagonizing her. When I decide sure, I’ll try talking to the monsters, she doesn’t answer anything, and I’m escorted away and told to stop harassing on-duty WDF workers.
And sure, I’ll admit when I set the magnet trap, I was the one causing trouble there. Not the nicest thing I’ve done, but I didn’t have any weapons on me! That’s how you know I’m the good guy — if I killed her I would be totally justified, but I still wanted answers, I still entertained that maybe she could be innocent.
You know what wasn’t justified? Her rabid squadmate shooting at me then hunting me down when I ran. V wasn’t defending anyone, I wasn’t a threat, no reason to come at me with claws out. But no, apparently lethal force is fine against me.
The ninth reason I hate J is that according to her, she saved my life. V could have killed me, but J stopped her. Nobly, they say, after the way you treated her. She wanted an apology, she wanted a thank you.
All she got was: “Bite me.”
Can’t say I didn’t love the look on her face — the way she snarled. (Not so smug and proper then, were you?)
Dad still tells me to forgive her, still tries to get me to tell me she’s some paragon. She does good work, Uzi. Twelve hour shifts, all of our paperwork. She takes her security consultant role so seriously she’s audited the whole colony, started drafting proposals for a revamped security system.
Dad’s face fell when I didn’t even acknowledge what he was saying — it’s how these conversations usually go — but I was listening. Oh, I was listening. Pieces clicked into place.
I rushed back to my room, searching my closet for my theory board. The clippings and old printouts had lately been overwhelmed by all the photos I could find of J and my notes on how she fits into the rot of Outpost-3. (The theory board is hidden in my closet now becaues dad got the complete wrong idea when he saw it. I’m not a creep. I hate her.)
But if I want I now suspect is true… then I’ve got her.
I’m almost done, but let’s end on a round number. The tenth reason I hate Serial Designation: J? The fact that this list I so long. The fact that I could write pages of ranting in my diary all about her and I could still keep going! I hate that I can’t just get over her, and go back to my games and pretend like all the other sheep that these nice new dogs will protect us, and just ignore their suspiciously wolf-like aura.
I hate that it really, really looks like I’m some sort of obsessed stalker, but how else am I going to find the evidence to vindicate? Nobody is that perfect, nobody can act that nice for that long when I know there’s nothing but ravenous hunger beneath the mask. I’ve just got to catch her slipping.
Twelve hour shifts means she’s dedicated, maybe even desperate. Whatever endgame she’s working toward, it’s definitely going to be a trojan virus smuggled in under the guise of her security reforms.
This is my final reason — my last chance, I bet, before my dad is forced to do something about it.
I’ve just got to stop her, first. Prove my dad wrong, take back the glory from Doll, and save everyone.
All my plan needs is a first step.
How do you spy on a murder drone?