← Archive objects

A crow with visible mechanical joints at wing, leg and shoulder, perched on a rusted pipe

Obj-CSD/??

Crow surveillance drone

Rumoured bio-drones used for covert surveillance. No confirmed specimen has ever been catalogued, which is either proof of nothing or proof of the design working.

Recovered

Everything in this entry depends on the word rumoured.

Bio-drones, allegedly, built for covert surveillance and shaped like the one bird nobody in an Indian city ever looks at twice. No confirmed specimen has been catalogued. Either they never existed, or they are indistinguishable from crows, which was the entire point of building them.

Chandra is the reason the file stays open. She is larger than most, has a white patch on one wing, turns up at relic sites, and kept a girl’s school ID safe for a year. The archive has never established whether that is training, engineering, or a crow.

The manuscript in the Treasure Room offers a third reading: that ancestors return as ants or crows, to guide us. The catalogue records this alongside the surveillance hypothesis without ranking them.

Filed with

  • Chandra: A large crow that does not scatter. An ancient manuscript in the Treasure Room holds that ancestors return to us as ants or crows, to guide us through life, as the moon, Chandra, guides the stars.
  • P.A.I.: The name is the joke. It implies public access; in practice it governs the public while remaining entirely inaccessible to them.
  • The Resistance: Formed by librarians, scientists, elders and teens, and built on preserving truth.