I had good luck today

I had good luck today

When the Russians fire ballistic missiles at you through the night from Saturday to Sunday, you usually think, »Thank God, that’s not a bad option.« This might not be obvious to newcomers, so let me explain.

Yesterday turned out to be very inconvenient. The first to arrive were Iranian Shaheds – small flying bombs each packed with around forty kilograms of explosives, their engines buzzing like lawnmowers. They whirr over the city at night to scare people and keep them awake. And today they came again, as they always do. At that moment, I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 on my Xbox.

On a rain-flooded side street in Night City, neon lights flicker over slick, cracked cobblestones as I creep toward the boss’s hideout. I prepare for the fight, check my cybernetic implants, and finally I see him. The boss – a huge figure composed of patches of gleaming chrome and mutilated flesh – stands in the center of a dark courtyard, surrounded by his thugs.

While I’m playing, I hear music in the yard. Under my window on a bench, teenagers are crowded together, laughing; someone says, »I know a foolproof method … turn up the sound louder so the cops won’t show up.« I try to listen, but then he speaks quietly and indistinctly.

From afar comes the sound of »pam-pam-pam« automatic bursts, and the approaching roar of a »lawnmower.« The air-raid siren blares. I jump from my chair straight to the bathroom. I sit there while a Shahed buzzes around, like a mosquito in the room – bzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz – then it flies by. I get up and sit back in my chair, but the boss of course killed me long ago. The kids on the bench laugh. They don’t react to the Shaheds. Almost no one reacts, even in the cities away from the front line. If they did, it would be hard to live here for three years.
The fight? I start over.

I grab my plasma pistol and take aim at a couple of thugs. The mercenaries scatter sideways, giving me time to close the distance to the boss. My vision switches to focus mode, and my implant highlights the weak spots in his armor. I lunge forward, weaving between bursts of fire from the rest of his guards.
The boss parries my first blow with his blade, sparks flying from the collision. I counterattack with a series of rapid strikes, empowered by my cybernetic arms. At the decisive moment, when he swings his sword too widely, I activate the neural accelerator, time slows down, and …

I hear a buzzing outside the window again – bzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZ – something new is coming from the direction of the suburbs. An automatic burst of »pam-pam-pam,« BAM – one of them was shot down. I’ve been sitting in the bathroom for a while now. Whenever Shaheds fly, I always remember that family of elderly professors – biology lecturers at the national university – who were killed by a Shahed in winter in their downtown apartment. Such a pity, a wonderful family. Then the social media outrage began because the newspapers reported »a professor and his wife perished,« even though both were professors. And it’s an important story, certainly important. If the female professor were still alive, she’d probably appreciate it. But she was killed by a Russian drone. And the bodies from the impact sites always look so disrespectfully like heaps of rags. That’s all that remains when a Russian drone – with the sound of a lawnmower – kills you. I don’t mean to devalue feminism here (I’m a feminist myself), but it seems we have a damn huge problem with Russian drones killing our professors, both male and female. It feels like we shouldn’t lose sight of the main issue.

I come out of the bathroom, and on the screen the boss is laughing – looming above me on the gray screen of death. My phone buzzes. A colleague texts that I haven’t sent the revised training plan; I promise to send it in the morning. She doesn’t believe me – says, »Check the Telegram threat channels; the Russians have raised their strategic aviation, so there will be a missile strike tonight, which means you’ll be sleeping in the morning.«

It pisses me off when Russian planes fly to the launch pads while the city remains on alert for Shaheds. From the launch to the missile impact takes about four to five hours, and there are still many Shaheds on the map, so the alert will last a long time. I’d love to go to sleep peacefully, thinking that when the missiles come, the alert will wake me up. But I can’t, because if the alert is on, then there won’t be an alert. Logical, right? I set my alarm for the estimated time of the missile’s arrival – thankfully, that time is posted on Telegram channels. I even have an entire folder of such channels on Telegram for convenience during the shelling.

I should have slept for three hours, but I wake up to the siren. I calmly grab my phone, thinking these missiles must have crossed the border about a thousand kilometers from here. But this one is ballistic, and it’s already flying past the neighboring region. I gather my entire family into the building’s common corridor – just in our underwear, holding our clothes. It’s safer there; it’s just bare concrete with a few exits. Anyone who has ever seen how a tile or a bathroom mirror can decapitate a person starts to appreciate the virtues of concrete.

I hear the launches of our air-defense missiles. It’s strange to recall that just three years ago we couldn’t distinguish them by sound. They sound completely different. The launches of the defensive missiles produce a pleasant »bam-bam-bam,« while the incoming ones go »disshhhh.«

A Russian ballistic missile is already descending, as the monitoring channels report. The missile is descending and counting:
»Eenie, meenie, miney, moe, catch a tiger by the toe!«

This time, it’s not our turn, I think.

I hear the incoming »BIDIYISH!« – but these are already farther from my area. From the siren to the first explosion, barely two minutes pass; there’s no time to reach the shelter. And that means that for the entire following week I won’t be able to drive because I’ll be terrified that a bombardment might start at any moment, and I won’t be able to handle steering from the shock of the strike – I might even injure someone. But then, in the second week, I’ll steel myself. I’m very skilled at pushing myself, rallying, and putting myself together.

We wait a bit; no more missiles are flying, so we go to sleep. But an hour later, another alert – the missiles from aviation have crossed the border. That’s normal now; everything here goes according to plan. We dress up and head to the shelter. The missiles flew in the opposite direction, so we went back to sleep.

I woke up at twelve, and because it was Sunday I didn’t have to work. I thought how good it is when there’s a missile strike on the night from Saturday to Sunday. I got lucky today.