Drone Warfare Anthem

When the West Bank Federation’s iron war beasts entered Usar, I, a drone hobbyist from Huaqiang District, used two hundred modified FPV drones to take down their “Sentinel” mecha, worth 200 million. The whole internet hailed me as a “god of war.” The next day, the Dragonriders came knocking. I thought I was headed for a life sentence, but the old man handed me a yellowed data chip. The moment I activated it, I saw a hologram of my father, missing for many years: “If civilization is shrouded in darkness, my son must carry the flame. Lin Chongshan, signing off.” From then on, I, a champion from nowhere, was forced to command a “grassroots squad” and dropped into the world’s bloodiest battlefield, the “Shattered Lands.” We use game controllers to direct swarms, sense electromagnetic currents through cybernetic limbs, and guard the last spark of humanity against the absolute rationality of algorithms. The West Bank’s “intelligent machines” promise to bring ultimate order, the “war artists” of the northern frontier compose blood-soaked symphonies, and the “Prophet” is using an out-of-control chaos algorithm to cleanse the world. They all say my convictions are the most laughable obstacle on the road to civilization’s evolution. Then, at Crescent Strait, facing the self-replicating “mosquito swarm” disaster, I pressed the button meant not to conquer, but to end it. Live before the world’s data networks, I told them, “Rule through fear, and all you’ll get is ruins. But if we protect the spark...” “...we will forge the heavens anew.” I used to hunt chaotic data. Now I must weld the lock of reason shut with my own hands, for humanity’s final war. When killing becomes cheaper than breathing, how can we win and still remain human? This is my answer, Lin Yun, from the East.