“All stations ready!” A voice called over the intercom. You stood in the back of the control room, biting your knuckle, waiting for a decade long project come to completion.
In the ground deep below you were six missile silos, each containing a training intercontinental missile and a highly trained fluffy. In the past, pigeons have been shown to be capable of directing a missile to a target using a specially adapted screen. You thought, if something as dumb as a pigeon is capable of directing a missile, what is a fluffy capable of?
Finding funding was a nightmare. You got laughed out of many meetings until you made a very poorly disguised attempt to sell the idea to the militaries of other countries. Then the army decided they were interested. You had multiple setbacks, your fluffies escaped, then the building burned down, then there was the incident with the sprinkler system…
But today you would be done. You would be hailed a hero, given a hefty bonus, and go home and plow your wife.
All eyes in the room looked to you. You closed your eyes for just a moment, saying a small prayer to any gods, deities, or passing ghost that may hear you.
“Send it.”
All at once the control room exploded into action, many conversations happening at once, alarms and lights going off one after another.
“Fluffy one is in position!” One voice over the intercom said.
“Fluffy three is in position!” Another said, almost interrupting the first.
“Fluffy four is in position!”
“Fluffy six is in position!”
“Fluffy two is in position!”
There was a long silence from the speaker. Much longer than you were comfortable with. You dug your teeth into your finger, the sharp pain giving you something to think about other than all the ways fluffies could fuck things up for you.
From the front row a voice called out, “Fluffy five unresponsive, backup en route!”
You didn’t relax your jaw. Not until the call came.
“Fluffy five is in position!”
A small exhale, a slight release of the pressure in your jaw.
“T-minus 3 seconds to launch!” Another voice over the speakers said.
,
You scanned the screens in front of you, looking for anything that could imply something had gone wrong.
“Two!”
Every desk in this room had an abort button. Anyone, for any reason, could delay this. And they would. You made sure of it. Even though these missiles contained no explosives they could still do massive damage if something went wrong. You would rather another failed launch than to kill your entire crew.
“One!”
And you’d had a ton of failed launches too, usually because one of the stupid creatures managed to die even in their carefully padded restraints. It seems like no amount of training could undo the fluffy need to find the fastest way to die. Still, as long as none of them-
“Fluffy five is unresponsive!”
“SON OF A-”
“Launch!”
Six missiles lifted out of their silos in front of you. You watched anxiously, it was out of your hands at this point. You walked over to the screen tracking missile five’s position.
Of course the stupid creature had to die the exact moment you couldn’t do anything about it. A second earlier and someone would have aborted that missile. A second later and the life support system would have noticed and redirected. Stupid fucking creatures, they always manage to mess it up.
“Fluffy three unresponsive.” One of your team said, tracing the line on the screen. “Missile three is moving to the abort point”
“What happened?”
“I’m… not totally sure, sir.” He leaned in to look over the various readouts. “Her pulse ox just dropped suddenly, like she-”
“Fucking drowned. Of course.” you slapped your hand to your forehead. It was bound to happen, there’s a lot of world out there. You tried teaching the fluffies that water was red by dying all the water in their bowls a dark color, but it didn’t always work well enough to trump what seemed to be an instinct. There was no way of knowing what set her off, could have been as little as a droplet on the window.
“Any other problems?”
You scanned the room. Your techs looked over their respective stations, checking numbers and placements but no one spoke up.
“Great! Keep an eye on the readouts as we get closer to the Gulf, I’m worried that the water will-”
“Missile four is off course!” The shout came up.
Then another. “Fluffy one’s heart rate is off the charts, something is-”
“Missile two is off course! Seems to be following four eastbound!”
“One and six are rerouting as well!”
“What the fuck?!” This had never happened before. Not in any of the training, not the simulations, never. You were looking from screen to screen, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The fluffies were trained to guide their missile to a specified target, in your case a derelict warship in the middle of the Gulf. A nice, big target in empty ocean. They were trained that if they got close enough, they got sketti. What could possibly have distracted them so much? What could be more important than sketti? “What the fuck are they targeting?!”
“Uh…” one very small voice to your right said. “Italy… sir.”