Monday, October 13, 2008

What kind of mission was this, anyways?

Seconds to impact, going in too fast. The scope is hash, probably jammed. Then I'm in the trees. The left wing shears away in a shivering spectacular explosion of carbon and titanium fragments as the jet fuel blooms fiery red and yellow. I can feel the searing heat through my suit when the whole airframe twists.

I come to right before dawn, I see that I am wrapped in part of what remains of the jet. I numbly feel myself up and down, the left side of my face is roasted a bit, a nice 3 inch gash on my knee, but I think it still works. Somehow I get out of the burnt harness, and I extricate myself from the wreckage. I carefully look around. I'm in a meadow. I crashed into a slot-like canyon -- anywhere else around here, I can see I'd have flown into a rock wall. It was like threading a camel through the eye of a needle. What are the odds of that?

And as I'm congratulating myself on this, I see odd shapes all over the field, in the trees, everywhere. They are vaguely familiar, and totally out of place, and I feel subconscious horror. I don't know why. But in the growing light, I have to go and see what these things are. Walking up, I notice how one of my bombs has burst open, ejecting whatever it is all over the forest. Before I took off, I was told that this was a very dangerous cluster type "shock and awe" payload. But there are no bomblets anywhere. As far as I can see, there are stuffed toys. Specifically, stuffed gray bunnies. Hundreds and hundreds of stuffed, cute, toy bunnies.

They sent me to drop a payload of toys. They said it was bomblets, but the bombs were full of plush gray bunnies. Bunnies. Again, to repeat myself, bunnies. My face is starting to hurt like hell, and now I can barely bend my knee. What kind of mission was this, anyways?

No comments: