The best PSA was one that opened with a shot of a brother and sister sitting on the couch in their living room. The boy is playing Armada on their giant television, while the girl sits beside him playing Terra Firma on her handheld tablet. On their screens, we can see that she’s operating an ATHID infantry drone while he pilots a WASP quadcopter. Both of them are trying to take down a giant alien Behemoth robot stomping its way through a suburban neighborhood. On the TV screen, we see the Behemoth lurch forward and step on the corner of a house, crushing it under one of its massive metal feet—and at that same moment, the wall of the kids’ living room also collapses, revealing that it was their house the giant robot just stepped on. The two kids aren’t playing a game—they’re defending their home! Their parents cower behind the couch, watching as their two children do battle with the giant alien machine, with the help of hundreds of other drones operated by their neighbors. When the Behemoth explodes under a hail of enemy fire, the parents whip out their smartphones and use them to take control of two more drones and join the battle, too. It reminded me of one of those old toy commercials that ended with the line “And mom and dad can play along, too!”
When I couldn’t bear to watch the news feeds any longer, I climbed into my control pod and closed the canopy, then made it nontransparent, creating my own private isolation chamber.
I sat there in the darkness for a while, listening to myself breathe. Then I took out my QComm and queued up a song I’d first discovered on one of my father’s old mixtapes. It was a great rock instrumental by Pink Floyd that I’d often used to psych myself up before a big Armada mission.
I played it over and over, each time mouthing the words to the single lyric spoken in the middle of the song: “One of these days I’m going to cut you into little pieces.”
01h00m00s remaining.
When the countdown clock showed only one hour remaining, all of our QComms beeped in unison. A notice on my display told me that the EDA had finally unlocked our QComms’ access to the public phone system. Graham, Debbie, Whoadie, Milo, and Chén each climbed into their individual drone controller pods and then closed their canopies, to give themselves some privacy before for their calls home.
Shin didn’t call anyone. Instead, he picked up his bass guitar, and, in what seemed like an odd coincidence, he began to play a solo version of “One of These Days” while staring up at the stars projected on the dome over our heads. Then I noticed a practice set list taped to the floor in front of him, and saw that several of the songs listed there were tracks I knew from my father’s old mixtapes.
My father was off by himself, too, sitting at the command center console. When I walked over to join him, I saw that he was staring at my mother’s contact information on his QComm’s display screen.
“Are you going to call her?” I asked, making him jump slightly.
He shook his head. “I was about to send her a video message instead,” he said. “I recorded twenty-three takes of it, but they’re all terrible—so maybe I’ll just give up and send her the least terrible one. …”
I plucked the QComm out of his hand and began to dial a number.
“Are you going to call her?” he asked, like a nervous schoolboy. “Right now?”
I nodded.
“I need to let her know I’m okay,” I said. “And before you send her some psychotic video message, I should probably break the news to her that you’re alive first—otherwise she’ll have a coronary when your face pops up on her iPhone.”
My father gave me a relieved smile, but before he could reply, we were interrupted by Milo’s voice, coming from his nearby pod. When he’d climbed inside, he must’ve forgotten to close his canopy all the way, and now we could hear every word of his conversation.
“Ma, it’s gonna be okay!” Milo said. “You know how they’ve been training everyone to fight with videogames? Well I’m one of the best Armada pilots in the world, and so that’s why they recruited me early! Yeah! And guess what? Now I’m stationed up here on the moon!”
“The moon?” she cried. “That’s ridiculous, Milo! Don’t you lie to your mother!” She raised a giant TV remote. “I need your help with this blasted TV. The same nonsense is on every channel!”
I glanced over and saw Milo raise his QComm’s camera, then tilt it to give her a quick look at the Thunderdome, and at the dazzling field of stars projected on its dome ceiling. She gasped and Milo grinned, lowering the QComm’s camera and aiming it back at his own face.
“Told ya,” he said.
His mother started to wail in fear—there was no other word for it.
“They put you in charge of defending us? Now I know we’re doomed!”
“Ma, please,” Milo said, sounding more and more like a little boy with each word. “Relax. I’m gonna stop these things, I promise. Don’t worry. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you and little Kilgore from getting hurt. You’re gonna be proud of me when this is all done, you wait and see—”
I didn’t get to find out who or what Kilgore was, because my father walked over and closed Milo’s pod canopy for him. Then he walked back over and watched nervously as I raised his QComm and placed the video call to my mother.
A second later, my mother’s drawn and worried face appeared on the QComm’s display. She was at work, of course, standing in one of the hospital’s rooms, clustered in front of a TV with a dozen other nurses. Even now, after the announcement, she still hadn’t abandoned the people she cared for.
“Zack!” my mother shouted the moment she saw my face. She rushed out into the empty hospital corridor, holding her phone up in front of her. “Thank God you’re okay, honey! You are okay, aren’t you?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” I said. “You know, aside from the impending alien invasion.”
“Can you believe it?” she said. “It’s all over the news—every channel!” She held the phone directly in front of her face. “Where are you? I want you to get home, Zackary, right this minute!”