Sink or Sky

178.

My indoctrination to the Helmet/Glove/Drone trio illuminates the unmistakable reality that I am the weak link of the quartet. In a four-piece ensemble, the places to hide are few.  Luckily The Queen had refined the stock GPS programming to include a ‘bailout’ feature where if potentially catastrophic directions were initiated the unit would override them and return the device to its last recorded safe coordinates. If not for this code-red feature, we would be building a new drone to replace the one that I crashed and agonizingly watched burn. However, after a break-in period, the sink or sky experience, I quickly gather confidence and enough piloting skills to attempt a snatch on my own.

Her Majesty keeps one step ahead and instructs that I conduct a dress rehearsal and navigate the Drone as if I was preforming the live demonstration for the Warden, or, as she puts it, “With the game one the line.”

I engage the Verometer and hear the now familiar tone indicating an operation in progress. I have to shake myself into meeting up with this dramatic moment and almost immediately sense a tingling of augmented power. Like, I can imagine, a pauper waking from a dream to remember that he is the Prince. I open the narration that is intentionally scripted to result in a pair of crucial conclusions: The first to overwhelmingly shock the Warden with the awesomeness of the aerial device, and secondly to prod him into wearing the Helmet for himself to test it out firsthand and witness the absolute thrill and ethereal beauty of unmanned flight.

I open the narrative by reciting the lines I have studied like a Shakespearean actor playing Hamlet for the first time. I hear the Vermonter concur with every exaggeration, prompting me to keep the momentum flowing with enthusiasm and flair. It is guiding me musically, as Beethoven might, into seizing the moment, a tone poem ode to the joy of dynamic presence. I find it magical to be conducting both operations; the flight of the Drone and my gaslighting effort, in a simultaneous flow of artistic technology. I bend the drone’s vector in jazzy choreography with dramatic emphasis of the narrative’s key inflections. I steer the Drone to the hover and snatch position and lower the cable. Drysdale’s bike makes another ascent and lands safely about one hundred meters from us.

I am dancing with fireflies and thunderbolts in the painted desert when I hear the warning sound.

The Verometer makes an instant segue from benevolent mentor to highest ranking officer in a series of short beeps followed by the command-voice announcement that we are running on less than ten percent remaining battery power and that emergency landing operations will be automatically initiated in ten seconds if I do not override.

I look at The Queen and she gives me the ‘you are the pilot and must respond to this’ look. I pause the narrative and address the current situation. I need to set the Drone down now. I audibly request available flight time and the distance from current position to the make-shift landing pad. I am told that the distance is too far for a conventional landing.

In the heads-up display of the Helmet I see the flight path back to our location. I immediately point to the spot with the glove and set a horizontal approach. I hear that battery power is at one percent. I look again at The Queen for either instruction or support and get neither. I steer the Drone directly overhead but it is still over four hundred feet up. I hear the dismal report that power will fail in ten seconds, nine, eight……

The drone gets to one hundred feet elevation and runs dry, its eight propellers suddenly still and silent. An alarm sounds in the helmet. On the heads-up display I see a two-word, full-caps question flash: ENGAGE PARACHUTE?

She is dropping fast, I shout ‘ENGAGE PARACHUTE’ into the Helmet and a stealthy chute flies open and gently sets the Drone at our feet a few inches from its take-off spot.

My heart is pounding. I pull off the Helmet and bark at The Queen. “Why didn’t you tell me about the chute function?”

“There might be a time when we need to ditch the Drone to keep it from enemy hands. In that case the default is to do nothing, if you are still at the controls you have the option of a safe assisted landing or a ditch. It was a last minute addition.”

I recover from my momentary loss of control, take a deep breath and humbly agree.

“Right.”