Christopher Robley

Insects are small, they already know how to fly, and — best of all — they power themselves. — Emily Anthes In an air-conditioned trailer, three geeks barely beyond boyhood fist-bump and high-five at a job well done. With the click of a key a dozen soundless screens flutter. Now in the shallow of a cave near the Khyber Pass, a stack of glow sticks activated in the blast steeps the darkness green: two cans of pineapple; a mangled can of beets bleeding juice; some boy streaked black, his burns wrapped in torn canvas tent flaps. He must hear the cyborg beetle’s brains buzz like a circuit-bent keyboard above his Pashto prayers. But we know enough to leave the live feed low,audio is for the analysts. Our weapon : witnessing — : wired that way. Somewhere in Texas or California or Kentucky Taco Bell is on the table where too the kill list rests quietly satisfied, and so its discord folds inward like an origami acorn nestled sharply in the heart.