Dawn on Jefferson (scifi story): Chapter Twenty-Five - The Veena Swarm Circus

Chapter One: Getting Up
Chapter Two: Where I Live
Chapter Three: The Walk
Chapter Four: School
Chapter Five: Introducing my Friends, the Merry Pranksters!
Chapter Six: Walking to Mom's
Chapter Seven: Mom’s House
Chapter Eight: It Began on Constitution Hill
Chapter Nine: Attack of the Awknerds!
Chapter Ten: No Awknerds Were Harmed
Chapter Eleven: The Breaking Shadstorm
Chapter Twelve: Where I Envy Grilled Cheese
Chapter Thirteen: Doom! Doom! Doom! Where I Want to go to School! The End Must be Nigh!
Chapter Fourteen: The Game is a Foot
Chapter Fifteen: Uncomfortable Revelations!
Chapter Sixteen: WAITAMINUTE!
Chapter Seventeen: The Healing Power of Popcorn
Chapter Eighteen: The Lessons Learned Before Maven
Chapter Nineteen: No Haven From Maven
Chapter Twenty: Meeting Maven
Chapter Twenty-One: And Then I was Roasted Alive and Served Up With a Worm
Chapter Twenty-Two: That Which has Been Set in Motion…
Chapter Twenty-Three: Shall Stay in Motion...
Chapter Twenty-Four: Until Acted Upon by Something Absolutely Annoying

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Veena Swarm Circus!

Security drones were not meant to be subtle. They were actually, mostly used for scare AWAY people or critters rather than engage them. Think of a barking dog. Most people wanted their dogs to scare away people rather than cause harm.

However, the more advanced models of security drones were equipped with glue guns. Those sprayed people's feet (or other mobility means) so they cannot get away. Sometimes they would spray very aggressively and pin someone to the wall. That's what happened to Aitan and Juan the Derplicate. The last thing we wanted was to get glued to the very spot we were not supposed to be.

Doubly so with all the incriminating bits on us: clean boosters? And all the other gadgets and mischief we carried with us? Huuullllooo?!

Jackie, Tom and I started to bolt for the watchpoles when Veena knelt and Rosa took her backpack off. Veena had loaded up with something for her and Rosa. I had been preparing our boosters when she'd pulled it from her hideyhole. Veena laid down the pack and fished out whatever it was. She studied it for a moment and tapped - actually touched it! - at an interface that had lit up. She then sprayed the whole package with something that smelled like bleach. Then she ran to us with Rosa following.

As we started running together - and tripped the watchpoles, no helping it, but still...Ooops! They lit up with the drone and started making a siren noise. Flashing lights! Flying drones! Sirens! Oh the excitement! The adventure! The mischief!

I hope they didn't get a good face picture or DNA trace. A little late to worry about that now!

I realized I was really glad I had made Tom leave behind the gun. He might have been tempted to shoot the drone. That would have been a disaster. Yes, he might shoot it down, but all bullets on Jefferson have IDs embedded in them and he'd be really, seriously, uberly busted: as in going to jail and a swarm of drones would have followed after and the robots would have locked him up and thrown away the keys. Both of them, physical and software.

What Veena had done made me curious. What could our bookworm possibly have that could help with this? I didn't need to wait long and I probably should have seen it coming.

Out of the bag came a dozen tiny drones. They flew up and around and danced in weird patterns. They lit up. They had different colors. They even started playing sounds. Music! Classical music! What else would you call music from 150 years ago?

They looped. They danced. You would have sworn they were doing acrobatics or were trying to impress everyone like they were fireworks or they were conducting some sort of dark ritual hoping to summon some cybernetic daemon. They made sure to fly between and around every single watchpole. It was a ballet of bots! It was a dance of the drones! It was beautiful and a little scary at the same time.

And then...they swarmed around the security drone.

Veena's little helpers zipped around and made a sphere around the drone. The sphere looking like models of atoms with their electrons zipped around. The sphere slowly contracted until the security drone was unable to move. Then one of them slipped in the sphere and flew up below the security drone and attached itself. The other drones scattered like they all thought, "RUN!!!!! SHE'S GONNA BLOW!!!!"

Not exactly.

But then, yeah.

The attacking minidrone suddenly DID explode, but not with fire, but it explosively inflated a giant balloon. The fans of the security drone were suddenly pushing against the balloon and the balloon was attached and thrust that kept the drone flying was reduced and the drone started falling. The fans on the drone revved up, but all it did was create a smaller, softer, gentler crash instead.

The security drone landed softly, not with a bang but with a plop and as much as it tried, it couldn't drag the balloon. It was immobilized. And we were getting away.

Veena's other drones left a couple in the air and the others landed in the Jefflife trees around the clearing. The drones still in the air were blowing Jefflife tree needles and debris onto our tracks. Veena breathed that we had about an hour's worth of time before the drones started slowing down and not being able to cover our tracks. The ones left in the trees were going to 'attack' anyone, or rather distract, anyone who came by.

The BIIs (bees) were gonna get buzzed! HA!

I gawked at her. She was a bookworm. Rosa was smirking though, too. So I knew my Immie obsessed sister had some help in it. I asked, between breaths, how Veena had come up with the drones. Veena smirked a mirror of Rosa's and said she'd read about the idea in a book. I had to roll my eyes: of course she had, the bookworm! She explained she'd read about ballutes, balloons that act like parachutes and had been reading about how biologists used balloons attached to marine animals to help track them and retrieve data recorders, and she'd remembered the glue guns on the security drones and...

Yup. She's smart. I love reading, but she loves not just reading but putting together crazy ideas from what she reads. She did get Rosa's help though because Rosa. Rosa can make any drone do anything.

I'm so proud! My Merry Pranksters!

We sprinted down away and then did something stupidly smart: we entered a stream and ran down it for a while in the water. If we were wrong and a security drone was in the air just then or the stream passed out in the open instead of under the Jefflife trees, then we could be spotted by infrared. As hard as you might try, you can't get away from heat. You make it. Lots of it. In a stream, we would stand out like a sore thumb. The reason we took the risk was because we wanted to wipe out our tracks. No one would come after us with dogs like on Earth, but here bots could have easily followed our tracks and faster than a person could run. Between the minidrones and the water, we thought we could get away.

We did.

But when we rested a good two and a half kilometers away, we realized we needed to decide what we were going to do.

Do we continue the adventure or call it quits?