Chapter 1: QB

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  Paradise on Earth existed and I nuked it. And I'd do it again.

  Unfortunately.

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  My name is QB. I'm a military drone.

  No, I don't mean that in the way that I'm just a soldier.

  I'm a Mach 2 capable, nuclear-warhead equipped, long-range advanced autonomous aerial bomber drone. Or, more to the point, I'm the mind that pilots it.

  I used to be someone, I'm pretty sure. I don't remember a lot. Just flashes of images, impressions.

  My name comes from a serial number plate I can just read from swivelling my binocular camera dome backwards. QB-54732.

  I don't know how I came to be like this. I don't know whether I asked for this. Or whether I was made into this.

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  --

  I know what I am because I fly formations with other drones that are exactly like me. Their status information and specifications comes up in my mind's eye when I think about them.

  And I catch glimpses of myself sometimes when we fly low over water. I look like them, they look like me.

  A blunt dart. Sleek. Aerodynamic. Sky blue underneath. Ocean blue above.

  Everything about my design screams fast and dangerous.

  I have a very sophisticated sensor suite which has, amongst other things, a wide-spectrum software-defined radio transceiver. And while I'm normally not allowed to break radio silence myself except to jam broadcasts and optically flash preset messages to my wingmates?

  I hear things. I hear a *lot* of things.

  When we're near home base, I hear TV. I don't get the pictures, they didn't build me with the capability to interpret that. But I can listen to and understand the audio part so I can fly alongside human pilots.

  So I listen to a lot of news while I'm conscious. From what I follow, we've been at war for a while. Drones don't come up. Nothing like what I am is ever mentioned.

  But I get that there's two sides. The righteous side - our side - who want the purity of the past restored. Whatever that means.

  And the enemy. Who seem to be simultaneously very weak and very strong - irredeemably wicked and corrupt, with no military, no armies, no tanks, no boats, no planes, no drones of their own. And they're based on just a series of small islands - barely any land at all. And yet seemingly impossible to destroy.

  Well, that's until now. I and my wingmates are something new.