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    Day Of The Drones
    Day Of The Drones
    Day Of The Drones
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    Day Of The Drones

    By Will Brodie

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Journalist Isabel ‘Hattie’ Balast and just-retired footballer Justin ‘Ex’ Proverse are an unlikely couple.

    But when Hattie writes about them being attacked by microdrones, is art imitating life…  or is she courting disaster?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCombiner Publishing
    Release dateJul 31, 2017
    ISBN9780994244628
    Day Of The Drones

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      Book preview

      Day Of The Drones - Will Brodie

      Day Of The Drones

      Will Brodie

      Published by Combiner Publishing, 2017.

      This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

      DAY OF THE DRONES

      First edition. July 31, 2017.

      Copyright © 2017 Will Brodie.

      ISBN: 978-0994244628

      Written by Will Brodie.

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright Page

      Dedication

      DAY OF THE DRONES | By Will Brodie

      Sign up for Will Brodie's Mailing List

      About the Author

      Dedication

      For the patient.

      No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organizations) in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. For permission to reproduce, store or transmit any part of this book, please email info@willbrodie.com

      Every endeavour has been made to contact copyright holders to obtain the necessary permission for use of copyright material in this book. Any person who may have been inadvertently overlooked should contact the publisher.

      ISBN: 978-0994244635

      Disclaimer:

      All care has been taken in the preparation of the information herein, but no responsibility can be accepted by the publisher or author for any damages resulting from the misinterpretation of this work. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

      Cover image: © Manuel Presti

      www.willbrodie.com

      DAY OF THE DRONES

      By Will Brodie

      I like my footy and I go to a few games, but I’m no fanatic and I had to do some research before I interviewed the newly-retired Justin Proverse. Did I hate him? Was he one of those dirty players I’d yelled at during a game? I tend to blurt things out.

      Yes, I’m outspoken; I have no filter. Well, I have a little bit of a filter when I first meet interviewees; my friends love that being a journo means I have to shut up and listen to other people, they think that’s a karmic zinger. But it’s fair to say I can be blunt.

      I think it’s just that other people are quieter than me... OK, a lot of people... But I digress.

      Justin Proverse was no big star, but in Melbourne, any sort of AFL player offers a hook, even for a sidebar in the employment section on coping with a career change. Yes, your honour, I admit I wasn’t expecting a Rhodes Scholar conversant in Japanese tea ceremonies and 19th-century social theory. But I’m not a cynical snob, I swear. I was hoping this footy player would be decent and fun and smart.

      You never know what you’re going to get, that’s the beauty of reporting, or of life really, if you’re in the right headspace, so I prepared to meet him full of kindness and bliss, pretending I’d just been given a free Cupcakes ‘R’ Us voucher, my tinsel eyelashes glittering and butterflies in my bonnet top.

      **********

      The day after my send-off, I was propped up in the middle of my flat, my mangled leg in front of me, my oily agent Tully herding in business types looking for a cut of my ‘investment dollar’.

      AFL players don’t make silly cash like American footballers, but for the brief time we’re in the league, we do alright. This was my big chance to set myself up.

      The first bloke I saw was a deadset used car salesman. He was flogging some sort of phone case franchise, but he really belonged in a fringe suburb behind a chain-link fence talking up ‘99 Camiras. People think I’m measured, but I know when to go and when to stay; I based a footy career on it. I herded the salesman out quick smart, then I cancelled the other meetings, and sacked Tully.

      He was baffled. He tried to sound morally outraged, then he tried to sound like he was my dad, then he tried on sounding hurt and confused. Anyone with an ego thinks they can act.

      I shook his hand as warmly as I could, feeling a bit of an actor myself, wanting him out of my house and out of my life, relieved to be making overdue changes.

      Whatever I did now, it would be me making the decisions, no-one else to blame.

      Now that Tully’s chancers were subtracted, what was left on my to-do list?

      A meeting with a drone salesman guy my mate Rex had set up, the nutter. Then ‘Isabel Balast’, a journo who wanted to talk about career transition or something. I didn’t have much for her.

      **********

      I’m blunt and... I’ve got an overactive imagination. No, bugger that. My imagination is perfectly healthy, and everyone who thinks I’m weird is as boring as bat shit. A very respectable online quiz confirmed that my inner child is aged seven, and is ‘... silly and rowdy and hyper, the kind who hates to be told to sit still’.

      You’re getting the picture, aren’t you? You figure I’m an overactive, over-assertive pain in the arse. Well, relax. Sheesh. Sometimes I’m a monk; I swear. I’ve got gears. I can pull off the responsible adult thing, OK?

      I pass all this on so you have context when I tell you that my alter ego Michaela Mementori educed herself from me after two glasses of Pinot Gris and an unverifiable quantity of daiquiris on a special Friday night a couple of years ago. Michaela is an award-winning, capital-W Writer my age, a literary superhero with no interest in cupcakes or Battlestar Galactica or cats. She’s won a Miles Franklin, next stop the Man Booker. She is so charismatic even non-readers want her on TV show panels; she is the young feminist superhero of our times and she has a fabulous sex life, though she’s tied to no-one. Et cetera.

      Now, don’t get any ideas: I don’t need an alter ego to salve some deep-seated angst, OK? We’re not doing any penny-ante psychoanalysis here. It’s just that when unexpected psychological house guests arrive, you’ve got to roll with them, don’t you? Michaela turns up when she wants, usually when I’ve had a few, and she is fun, more so than me, so she gets to stay, and that is officially that.

      Well, lately, I haven’t been myself. I’ve been Michaela Mementori. A lot of the time.

      And... Michaela sorta kinda blew off the interview I’d scheduled with the footballer.

      Which was very bad, yes. Granted. Terrible, more like it. You’re going to think we’re unprofessional. But we most definitely are not. You can’t be a woman with a seven-year-old inner child and have a career in journalism or high-lit if you’re unprofessional. And we want these careers.

      **********

      I thought sussing out Absimil and his drones were the start of my post-footy life, but it was really Isabel ‘Hattie’ Balast. Seems obvious now, but a journo who wants to interview me about my future career? It didn’t exactly scream life-changer. But Hattie was unlike any other journo I’d met. Or any other person. She either frowned like a cartoon of a sulky baby or beamed

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