SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Homeland
“Holy crap,” I breathed, as the copter rose higher, revealing the size of the crowd, which
spread from Fell Street to Market Street, spilling out over the side streets, filling them back
for blocks and blocks.
“Day-umn,” Lemmy agreed. “Want to buzz `em?”
“Can you do that from here?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It'll take the copter out of direct radio range, but we'll still get its feed off
the net. And we can check out the software, see if it really works.” I watched as he tapped
out a flight pattern on his phone, tracing a zigzag over the crowd with his fingertip. Then he
pressed “GO.” Over our heads, the copter zipped off toward the crowd, keeping its altitude
for most of the journey, then gently descending to a mere five yards off the ground.
At this height, I could make out individual faces in the crowd, read the slogans on the signs.
Then the flightpath kicked in and the point of view swerved nauseously, tracing that zigzag
with mathematical precision, sometimes shuddering as the copter got caught in a gust of
wind. We stopped walking and just watched the feed for a while. I shouted “Look out!” at
the phone's screen when the copter nearly collided with another UAV, this one covered in
markings from MSNBC. Either it had some kind of automatic avoidance routine built into
it, or there was a fast-fingered human operator nearby, because it banked hard and barely
missed the midair collision.
“Uh, Lemmy, what happens if that thing crashes? I mean, I don't want to turn someone
into hamburger.”
“Well, yeah, me neither. In theory, any two rotors can give it enough lift to slow its descent,
and it makes a lot of noise if it goes in for an emergency landing, which should help people
get out of the way.”
“Unless it's so noisy that they don't hear it.”
“Yeah. Well, that's life in the big city.”
I wasn't sure I agreed. Crashing the quadcopter into someone's head would really, really
suck. On the other hand, the knowledge that this might happen certainly gave watching
the footage an air of extreme danger, which made it that much more compelling. As if it
wasn't compelling enough, watching the video of all those faces, thousands and thousands
of them, ripping past at speed.
“Let's get down there,” he said, and I agreed.
-..-
The demonstration was even louder than the one the day before, a roar like a PA stack that
I could hear from two blocks away, over the honking horns of the cars trying to find their way
around it. The sidewalk was too jammed with people to walk, so we joined the hundreds
who were threading their way through the stuck cars, dodging the bikes and motorcycles
SiSU www.sisudoc.org/ 189