I Am A Bomb by Mark Wolf

I Am A Bomb
by Mark Wolf

I dream of being human. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, since the organic part of me still contains human brain cells, though they don't function very well, being filled with cancer. The rest of me was cremated last year when I died. Cancer does that, you know.

The part of me that is still human is in a Croid, (cat-droid), patrolling the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, observing the behavior of Taliban forces as they move between the two countries. Waiting for my tasking order. For you see, I am not JUST an observer. I am a bomb.

The organic part of me that is cat, the part of the cat's brain that controls motor skills and behaviors, would rather sit in hiding, waiting for a rat to peek its head out from one of the ground burrows scattered throughout the region, and finds my scouting boring. It is a constant struggle to keep the cat on task.

I sat-link my observations to my handler back in Afghanistan. One of the sites I've been watching, a series of caves, has been seeing more traffic in and out of it for the last few days. My handler pulls me from my other observation sites and tasks me to move in closer and relay faces back to him; my mission is infinitely more dangerous now. My droid cat body would never be mistaken for the real thing, being made of Kevlar composites, and titanium. T-Rex/cat terminators, or T-Ts, we are called.

Red lights flash in my heads up holo display as a white robed figure passes before me. My facial recognition software recognizes a primary target. A major Taliban leader. I'm ordered to go active.

I feel relays clicking inside me, mixing the ingredients of the chemical bomb. I'm now toxic on two levels, the proximity explosive that will trigger within a yard of my primary target and the biological agents that will mist from my body from a dozen yards away. I'm sent in.

As the mist seeps from my body, I am spotted and fired on. I began running and leaping toward my target. Several rounds from an AK-47 hit me. I drag myself forward the last few yards with my front legs. Just before I trigger the explosive, my cat brain fixes on a memory, more of a dream, actually, of being blind, surrounded by warm siblings searching for mama's milk. It's a good dream to fix my mind on as I blast myself into oblivion.