Endtown by Aaron Neathery for February 11, 2014

The propulsion is rather like Petey, back whenThe blades change diameter, now and againSometimes they’re quite wide for the vertical liftThen small, and they disappear, too. Quite a gift!These drones are much larger than I’d thought beforeCould those legs grab people? Is that what they’re for?The craft seem so large that a Topsider couldGo traveling fast if he wanted.Not good.=|====/ Level HeadVote for Endtown 2.0And for Doc Rat, tooThe Endtown ForumThe Endtown AuctionThe Endtown Books

And I thought MUTTs were freaky.

Wow, even bigger and a bit weirder than expected.

What do you call surface to air missiles when your “surface” is largely a lake of molten glass?

I’d been thinking the Drones were the same size as the Mutts…well, they’re scarier this size…but I don’t think they’ll fit through that door…

Working up some scale drawings, these, things are really big, I’m WAG-ing 70 ft or so long. That there are so many on the ground makes me suspect they’re going to systematically beam everything in an expanding perimeter, maybe some miles in radius. Or they still might pace out a pattern and blow up.

They walk. Why. Is this some kind of search and rescue mission? Betcha They have convinced a few TopSiders to convert to MUTTs, but they tell they can better take care of them this way, and no mind drain. . Vote ENDTOWN . Vote Doc Rat

. Vote Hubris . Vote Kevin and Kell . Sincerely, . JusSayin

They might pick up two bodies first.

If this ever happens in the distant future in our world, I hopeI’m at home with the Lord before it does!

Interesting, the propellers rotate for landing, then slip into storage?

Do they carry passengers?

Hmmm…I remember Flask saying something about shortages of resources and cutting corners while she was discussing the biosuit’s weak area with a newly captured Linda. These things make me question her words. If the Topsiders had the resources to build something this big, give them folding rotors and walking gear and were willing to send out this many of them after two of their people flatline they can’t be hurting too badly.

Eep.

oh my

Think new and improved Mark II with “improvements”.No emotion, no mercy, no quarter, no heart, no human interference.Fully autonomous.Another APEX monstrosity available at finer weapon dealers.Satisfaction…….guaranteed.

With all the weapon production, you would think the topsiders would have figured out how to clean up the environment.

It’s creepy that they all have faces so to speak….a reminder that they are made from humans????

It appears the engine covers or nacelles have rotated from vertical to horizontal. The JVX Swingwing, AKA known as the Osprey, can rotate its props about ninety degrees, up for vertical take off and landing(vtol), and possibly rotate to a horizontal plane for speed. I can understand feathering the props and tightening them in, like closing an umbrella, but it almost appears the props have been feathered, and with part of the nacelles withdrawn into the wings, possibly to prevent damage to props and increase maneuverability. Feathering the props means different things in aircraft and auxilliary powered sailboats. Bell and Boeing have had enough problems with the Osprey without adding complexity to the rotor, but I guess they should’ve called Aaron and saved development time.JusSpeculatin

they kinda look like the oscar mayer wienie mobile with faces…

Does some of them come standard with harvested mutant brains? LOL. Somebody stop me!

Sheesh!! The scale of those things….

The thing about them is not their length. If the door to the building can be estimated at three feet wide, then I would guess the building to be thirty feet on each side. The craft seem to be about one and a half the length of the buolding, making them about forty five feet long. Big, but not humongous. It’s the width that is disturbingly large. The “head” is at least twelve to fifteen feet wide. What looks like a mouth could be a window for five Topsiders to look out from if the craft were occupied. It’s more likely a sensor bank for remote viewing across the energy spectrum.

I’m reminded of an evil version of Anne McCaffrey’s “The ship that Sang”.All spelling errors are mine.

From the ground they all look sad, but from the air they all look happy.

Happy or sad they all look freaky.

Or..the drones aren’t really all that big, and they’re now landing around some sort of ditto illusion…

Since when do hawkish governments care about resources when supplying themselves with toys?

BTW, I mean governments, not military. The U.S. military wants Congress to stop sending them big expensive weapons. Congress wants a lot of big boomy things, the more the better.

I’m WAG-ing some kind of largely automated “fabricators” for a lot of topsider hardware. Conventional assembly lines take a fair number of bodies and large supply chains, while a several generations beyond current 3-D printers could grind out all kinds of stuff, needing only some basic feedstocks and the data to do the deed. They already have nanotech and some pretty advanced medtech, so that aspect doesn’t seem at all far-fetched. I wonder if there is some level of fragmentation in the topsider communities? Or, at least compartmentalization of both info and resource. In both what Flask didn’t know, and now the surprise of the drones, there seems much more out there.

You’re right, the drones are not quite as big as my first impression.

If these are Search & Destroy units, then they’re unmanned (calling them drones implies the same thing). They’re expendable, which means that even if a bunch of them are all in the same area as a suspected target, there’s nothing stopping them from taking out everything within radius.

Yeh, they are probably unmanned, or possibly with with mutant brains. I was wandering earlier if the machines had become self aware and turned against the inferior TopSiders. Maybe. They do seem a bit of a tech jump, but not necessarily. Someone, maybe Three Steps Over Japan, or possibly someone else sent me a review of a little four rotor drone, that could serve drinks at a party(my speculative app based on what I read). So maybe these Mr Happy Drones aren’t that much a jump.

TopSiders may be dealing with Lucrainians. TopSiders may have located and taken Wally’s former airship. It possibly has its own version of a self repair module, and has all that equipment. I think there are still many dittos on the Opabinia Queen, as Marx only took a few feet. The dittos were either in control of the ship, or working with the Queen’s brain.In a few minutes, the drones may roll over onto their backs and start making, something like snow angels.Speculatively, JusSayin.

Oh, and I agree with Coyoty about Congress sending the military weapons they neither need nor want. For Congress, a multibillion dollar order for tanks represents jobs in several congressional districts. A couple of Southern congressmen were notorious for pushing huge defense toy budgets, and getting the contractor to spread the work over several states.