The stadium is aroar with eighty thousand raucous attendees and casts a short shadow in the midday sun. In the distance, peppered specks rise from nests unseen before gathering over the horizon like iron filings in a magnetic field. Small payload drones, hundreds of them, race balefully forward; the orchestrated swarm twists and folds in hivelike unison as it approaches its target. In response, nearer to the stadium, another group of drones ascends in concert and rushes to meet its hostile counterpart. The confrontation is swift, and casually anticlimactic, with only a few citygoers caring to notice the whir of propellers or the hissing and buzzing of the interceptors’ high-powered microwave pulses. The sky is clear once again, and the game goes on uninterrupted. This emergence and facile neutralization of drone threats is commonplace here, in a potential future.
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