A six years old girl walked to her brother and asked. “It it ready?”
He turned around with a smile on his face and replied, “I think so. We must go somewhere and try if it works.” Then he stood from the floor and picked the drone he was working on.
The girl asked, “Why can’t we play here?”
“Richa, we need a bigger space where we can run. It will help me understand how well it recognises a person and keeps a good pave track of him.”
“Really, will it recognise me?”
“Yes it must and chase you as well.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“I assure you, it must but if it fails I must keep fixing it until it doesn’t.”

The boy had turned fourteen a week ago. His father gifted him a drone. The drone had a sixty-four pixel camera with recording option. But he was not satisfied with his gift and dismantled it for an upgradation. He simply want the drone to have a face recognition feature and an auto-tracking system. The boy had become tech geek at the of eight when he first made a motor controlled toy boat. Twenty-first century had open gates to lot of smart technology innovations. It was know as smart technology because humans knew some or other day it would not rely on humans to operate it. The boy wanted to make an unreliable drone. A drone smart enough to act as a surveillance equipment for state security. His father worked as a security agent for the state minister and it was that intention of keeping him safe made him think so.

“Come on. Let’s begin,” yelled Richa with excitement as they both went to the playground.

The boy told Richa to stand still beside him and captured her picture in his drone camera. Then transferred that picture and updated her information in the demo drone application he had developed in his laptop. It took a while for the drone to get the data synchronized which was received from the laptop and affirmed, “It’s ready to fly.” The drone steadily floated at the height of eight feet and started recognising the boy as well as Richa. The boy ordered Richa to move away. As she moved like a curious cat the drone followed her. “See I told you. It will recognise you. Now Run.”
Listening to him, Richa ran. The drone tracked her movements as she took twists and turns on the grass lone and displayed it on his screen.

He kept observing her with the drone camera on his laptop screen as she took twist and turns by the lone. The drone lost her track as she took a swift right and hid behind a tree. It was the time when she felt the thrill of hide-and-seek. Richa peeped to check if the drone was still out there or went away. Some of sudden she hurd a humming sound behind. She screamed in horror to see the drone humming above her. It was then she ran away towards the street infusing all the vigor in her body. Unaware of the surrounding she tried to cross the road but met with an accident.
“Richa!!!’, Alex screamed as he woke up experiencing that recurrent nightmare.

“Alex.. Alex.., “repeated Ila who slept beside him. “Did you see the dream again?,” she continued and took me close then caressed his back. She gave him a glass of water and told to calm. Kissing his forehead she told him to sleep. They hugged each other and went to bed. “It was an accident and not something that you did intentionally. Stop thinking about it over and over,” said Ila.

Alex looked up towards the roof ceiling which had glowing stars painted on it. He took a deep breath and continued, “I know it is a pessimist thought which has burdened my mind over these years. Just like the words of the Solomon, David’s son, who was the King of Jerusalem. As written in the book of Ecclesiastes, ‘Life is useless. It is like chasing the wind.” That incident is just like those words. As a kid I thought it happened because of me. Today I know what happened wasn’t my mistake and cannot be changed. But that memory is fitted in my subconscious mind and reoccurs as a nightmare.”

© Rohan R. Pednekar 2019, All Rights Reserved.

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Synopsis: https://rohanrpednekar.wordpress.com/2018/05/29/perpetuity-the-future-is-dupebot/?preview=true