If the old adage is true, and one’s bedside table really is a good litmus test for their current state of well-being, that does not bode well for Officer Patrick Ogen. The small table, really more of an overturned crate, wedged between his mattress and the wall, is home to his phone, his service revolver, a tipped pint of Jim Beam cradled in a white plastic tray, burnt black around the edges from its time in the microwave, its basin greased to an orange semi-opaque, and then there is the vibrating, bleating fleshlight whose commotion has disturbed the good officer’s sleep.

“Ready for round two, ol’ girl?” Ogen growls as he rolls over, bleary eyed and sick. But he knows that isn’t it. The thing had seemed eager enough last night, how it had wrapped its eight mechanical legs around his waist and started pumping quickly. It had felt damn good, but its appearance was startling. He still hadn’t gotten used to that: a black, robot crab-like thing, with a big sucker of a mouth to stick your dick in. Pat had bought a pair of silicon tits which he tried to attach to the top, but the thing moved so violently that they flapped around totally unerotically. Still, felt so good that he barely had time to fit his lips around one of the big brown plastic nipples and moan Mmmaawwwmmy before it had ripped a string of opalescent pearls from him and stored it away within a hidden vial.

Now the alarm is going off, letting him know the drone is near. Probably hovering directly over his house already, waiting impatiently to pick up his specimen.

Ogen lumbers out of bed to carry his mechanical mistress to the backyard. Indeed, the telltale sound of a large drone hovering just out of sight in the darkness overhead fills the small yard. He stares up into the starless abyss, rubs his eyes, still only sighting the blinking red light when it drops nearly to ground level. It floats before him and chirps impatiently. He lifts the legged fleshlight and helps it mount the drone, like some kind of dog breeder, or, maybe, more like a cuck, because what is this he feels as he watches a mechanical proboscis extend out of the drone and press into the same hole he’d recently occupied, it couldn’t possibly be jealousy… He watches awkwardly as the two machines make the exchange and then the fleshlight is dropped back into his hands and the drone lifts up and flies away. Sayonara, I had a good time, I’ll totally call.

Ogen watches in disbelief as the drone’s retreat is aborted by a nasty SMACK. The drone tarries for a moment before dropping suddenly, its blades, still spinning wildly, send it careening through the air and right into the side of his house which it hits like a bird flying into a clean window, then drops to the earth, taking with it a considerable amount of siding.

“Guh guh,” Ogen manages as the unbelievable scene continues to play out. A swarm of shapes floods over his privacy fence, stomps across his lawn, and starts ripping apart the fallen drone, filling bags with the contained vials, including, probably, his own. As quick as they came, the invading force turns to flee, carrying with them the next generation of this nation’s True Citizens, the promised Golden Generation, selected for only from within a stock of trusted elite, such as those brave, patriotic few such as Ogen himself who protect this beautiful country from all those, domestic and foreign, who aim to do her harm.

Ogen reaches for his weapon, forgetting he’d dragged himself out of bed without it. He stands in his lawn, barefoot and naked but for a loose pair of boxers, lone witness in the dead of night.

“Uh uh,” he clamors before suddenly finding his voice. It booms out of him as if amplified. “CANNIBALS! BABYKILLERS! WITCHES!” The three words, more than just an accusation, alert the nearest precinct of his predicament, so that someone will know to tune in and check out the proceedings through his augmented vision.

The cannibals must’ve used rocks to bring down the drone, and it seems someone among them had been a good shot because they still have plenty to spare. They aim them now at Officer Ogen. Several of them pelt him, a few hard enough to leave large welts. One even manages to draw blood from the corner of his mouth. He really wishes he had his weapon, but by the time he retrieved it from upstairs they would have disappeared into the night as, in fact, they are doing even now.

Ogen takes off after them, not totally by his own volition. He is barefoot, alone, and practically naked, after all, but something propels his feet forward.

OVERRIDE WARNING flashes across his vision, meaning HQ has taken control of his bodily autonomy and are now steering him after the perpetrators.

“Back up requested,” he keeps shouting.

Ogen can barely see, but back at HQ they must have his feed blown up and enhanced because they are able to steer him neatly through the unseen suburban darkness, bringing him to a stop in time to watch the last of the horde slip into an abandoned building on a quiet street where they must be squatting, living off officers’ spent seed, or else using it for their occult purposes. The idea makes him sick. That had been meant for procreation, for the future of this great nation, not for mere animal protein or devil worship.

Whoever is at the controls lets up on the lever and eases Ogen towards the building.

He tiptoes over to a boarded-up window and watches through a tiny sliver of light. There are about seven of them inside, less than they had seemed. If only he had his revolver, he could make quick work of this, and be back in bed in no time. Filthy homeless scum. How they have evaded round up for so long, he can’t imagine. He feels ill just thinking about them living their lives the way they insist on doing, this underclass of rats surviving off the surplus of honest folk such as himself.

His disgust bumps into another breed of thought up in the tangled wires of his mind. Maybe they want to use my seed to impregnate their own women, he grows a little hard at the image. To bolster their stock. They are all so scrawny. Could use some of my genetic material. He pants loudly as he leers inside, trying to make out if there are any women among them right now. Yes, it seems. A few. Though it’s hard to tell, the way they dress, and carry on, as if there is only one single sex, or none at all. How sick in the head they are, running around like this. No. Not the women. Being dragged is more like it, by their degenerate men. What they really long for is a safe domicile and babies to raise. If only he had his gun, he could give them that. He could be their hero. But what’s this? They are smashing the vials and laughing!

That is too much for him, and for HQ, too, evidentially, because he finds himself moving again, creeping along the outside wall towards the hole those rats had wriggled through.

NO BACK UP AVAILABLE flashes over the scene. PROCEEDING WITH PROTOCOL BURNING ANGEL. TRANSMISSION INCOMING.

Ogen’s heart begins to race. His body had been implanted with a wide array of tools, but he never thought it would come to this. To Burning Angel. But it has, so be it. These scum have forced their hand. Purging the land of their filth is worth any cost. Let his blood seep into the soil and feed the roots of this mighty nation, a worthy death, and yet it all seems less than real as his feet move him along the edge of the busted old building. There is broken glass glittering in the scant moonlight, and his controller plants his foot right in a nest of it. He holds back a scream. The pain threatens to take him out of his martyrdom. Each step drives a thick shard further into his foot. It feels as if it is stabbing into his very bone, yet his body is pushed on, unperturbed, through the crack.

Those before him immediately try to scatter. One or two of them launch more stones in his direction. They smack wetly against his flesh, but he is held taut by the override, so to those who face him he appears unassailable. His body blocks the only way out. The seven cower together before him. They have heard stories.

“The bag. I can get the bag. Most the vials are still intact,” Ogen tries to say, but communication is strictly one way.

“Thank you for your sacrifice,” he hears piped into his ear, and then: “O Christ I really got to read this? Just hit the damn button before they get away!”

“Your mic, dammit!”

“O Christ,” the voice says again. “You don’t think the poor bastard heard that?”

“Just read the rest!”

“You have served your country honorably,” the original voice continues. “We, the people, thank you. Our beloved leader is proud of you. He sees you. You are seen. Your bones build the very foundation upon which our glorious tomorrow stands. Glory awaits you in Christ’s Valhalla."

A moment of confused terror fills Ogen’s blue eyes as he takes in that short exchange, but the next second they are turned, momentarily, to boiling jelly, and, finally, to ash, unidentifiable apart from the rest of the building and its former inhabitants, all of whom are reported, in the morning, to have died in a meth lab explosion.

Jacob Austin lives and writes in Texas. For more, find him at gnosticpulp.substack.com.