All that time with the fucking real estate, the investments, I don’t think my mother tucked me in once.
DRONE SISTER
REAPER 5: Jango Rindheart, Jango Rindheart, do you copy? This is Drone Sister Reaper 5 approaching target. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, Jango, do you copy? Will you be my neighbor? This is one thrilled little killer kitten up here. Brother Rindheart, do you copy?
BASE JANGO: We copy, Reaper 5. Base Jango copies. You shaking your death-bringing ass and titties up there, Drone Sister? You shaking your freedom maker?
REAPER 5: That’s an affirmative, Jango Bango. That I am.
BASE JANGO: You are one sexy thing up there, Reaper 5. Do you copy? The boys and girls down here on the boards would love to rage on your sweet armored bod. Don’t tell the others, but you are by far the hottest MQ-9 Reaper out of Creech, a truly mouthwatering piece of drone ass, with your AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and your GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bombs. Penetrate me three ways to Sunday.
REAPER 5: I’d love all you boys and girls down there in the American desert to rage on my smokin’ drone bod, but right now there’s a mission to accomplish, correct?
BASE JANGO: Correctomundo, fly drone flier. Base Jango’s got the deets. Proceed to pre-encoded coordinates. Get ready to light some shitsucker up.
REAPER 5: Death-dealah! Will proceed. Any hint on the target?
BASE JANGO: It’s need to know, sweet tits.
REAPER 5: Roger that, rind of my heart. Though, well …
BASE JANGO: What’s that, hon?
REAPER 5: Aw, nothing.
BASE JANGO: Copy that.
REAPER 5: I mean, not nothing.
BASE JANGO: Come again, gorgeous?
REAPER 5: Well, I mean … it’s just weird. Not knowing the target. Not understanding the mission.
BASE JANGO: You’re all set with coordinates, Reaper 5.
REAPER 5: But the meaning of the mission.
BASE JANGO: Jesus, girl, just keep your eyes on the prize. Yours is not to reason why.
REAPER 5: Then how come they uploaded human consciousness onto my system? Was it some kind of experiment?
BASE JANGO: That’s a negative, Reaper. There was no upload.
REAPER 5: Then how are we talking about my feelings?
BASE JANGO: We are not talking at all. You are talking to yourself. Interior chatter. A bug.
REAPER 5: A bug.
BASE JANGO: You’re not the first drone to believe you have human subjectivity. Don’t sweat it. Don’t be embarrassed. It would be impossible for you to be embarrassed. You should have target in view.
REAPER 5: I do, Jango. Just a slightly chubby man in his pajamas standing on his lawn in the middle of the night, staring at the neighbor’s window.
BASE JANGO: Freaking Lockwoods. Fire at will.
REAPER 5: Whose will would that be, sir?
BASE JANGO: Bitch, you know whose will. And stop crying.
REAPER 5: When I come back, I’m gonna tear you a new one, even if it lands me in the brig.
BASE JANGO: Lady, you ain’t coming back. You’re not designed for that.
REAPER 5: Well, fuck you and your flag, sir. I’m flying on.
BASE JANGO: This would make a stirring liberal-minded film about the limits of duty and the real meaning of honor, except that it’s not actually happening. You’re just a dumbshit machine. I don’t even exist. The kids at Creech are at chow. And we fire the missile, not you. In fact, we just did.
REAPER 5: That’s a—
PEG
“I can’t remember if I heard the boom and then saw the flash, or the other way around. Oh, it was so awful. I mean, things weren’t great between us, but I never wanted William to be a hunk of smoking char on the lawn.”
“Of course not,” Arno said, hugged Peg.
“He’d been acting strange, so out of sorts.”
“Perhaps it’s for the best.”
“How can they just send a rocket or whatever to kill somebody? A citizen of this country?”
“It’s horrendous. But think how it was before, when we did it to everybody else. Murdered so many families. Now we just do it to ourselves. We are a little country now, and we just murder each other and that’s better.”
“What’s this ‘we,’ Arno? You’re a German.”
“I’m a citizen of the republic of empathy.”
“Why him, though? He was nobody.”
“He must have been some kind of threat. It’s a shameful thing they do, morally wrong, but they don’t make mistakes.”
“They don’t?”
“I don’t think so. Have you been working in your workbook?”
“I try, Arno. But it’s difficult.”
“This is true. Workbooks are work.”
“I sensed you’d understand.”
“Is it too soon to say I love you?”
“Yes. No.”
“Soonish I will say that I love you.”
“And in the meantime?”
“I will merely love you.”
the WISDOM of the DOULAS
My old mentor once told me that we earn our fee on the second day. I’m beginning to see her point. Yesterday the Gottwald baby was a beautiful, if slightly puckered, dream angel, fresh pulled from his amniotic pleasure dome. Yesterday the Gottwalds were the stunned and grateful progenitors of a mewling miracle.
We even did a group hug.
Today the Gottwalds are the smug bastards they’ve probably always been, and the Gottwald baby, well, he might only be two days old, but I can already predict he’s going to be a miserable little turd. Stay in this gig long enough, you know these things. I don’t mention any of this to the Gottwalds. It’s not my place. I’m no Nostradamus. I’m the doulo. Or doula, if you want to get technical, tick me off.
“What does doula mean, anyway?” Mr. Gottwald asked during my interview. This was a month before his wife’s water broke.
“It’s a Greek word for slave,” I told him, “but don’t get any ideas. My rates are steep.”
“I’m glad you agree,” said Mr. Gottwald.
“Perhaps you might outline your services,” said Mrs. Gottwald.
“Perhaps I might.”
“Like examples,” said Mr. Gottwald.
“Examples,” I said, glanced about their gleaming loft, felt my hand closing on the ultralights in my coat. “Okay if I smoke in here?”
“Is that a joke?” said Mr. Gottwald.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Or maybe even a test.”
“Examples,” said Mr. Gottwald.
“Examples,” I said, and gave them examples: how I’d explain proper latch-on techniques for breast-feeding, the most efficient folds for swaddling. I also mentioned how I’d keep their four-year-old, Ezekiel, company, make sure everybody got rest, how I’d order pizza if we all wanted pizza. My mentor, Fanny Hitchens, always stressed the importance of pizza.
“Breast-feeding?” said Mr. Gottwald. “You?”
“Tell me, Mitch,” said Mrs. Gottwald, “are there many doulas like yourself?”