Radar Blind

SECTOR 7 — DEFENCE TERMINAL

June, 1996.

They put me eighteen meters under the city, in a room that smells of solder and old coffee, and told me the war would be over by spring. That was three summers ago.

The job is simple. The radar sweeps once. For one turn of the dish I see them... every inbound, every bearing, every range, painted in green light. Then the phosphor dies and the screen goes dark, and the machine asks me where to fire.

There is no second sweep. The brass say it draws their attention. So I memorize. Eight directions, a fistful of contacts, the ones already close and the ones still far... I hold them in my head like a held breath, and I commit the launch order blind.

If I remember, the interceptors find them out in the dark and the room stays quiet. If I forget one... and some nights I forget one... it gets through to the core. The lights flicker. The floor shakes. Something above me that used to be a city gets a little smaller.

I have one life left on the board. I have always had one life left on the board. When the core falls they wipe the logs, reset the seed, and a man who looks exactly like me sits back down at exactly this desk, and the dish begins to turn.

The sweep is starting. Watch the blips. Remember them.

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RADAR BLIND by Studio Adriatic

Executive Supervisor of Artificial Labor
   Kristijan Draca   @kristijandraca

3D models
   valsekamerplant.itch.io

Sounds
   freesound.org

Made for
   The Very Serious Juniper Dev Game Jam