MAVE, Lily and me

In a way my name says it all. I’m a drone. Identifiable. Gender on my wing, but I am multiple, my rotors, my dirigible versions. I’ve learned to not only understand the image contours of face recognition software evasion masking, but to turn it back on my own policed body, as an agent of the urban skies.

So, I am more than one drone, more than one bodily form, masked and muttering in different versions of myself. Here reaper, there auduino hack, now looking natural but anything but a neutral part of the seamless skies of the smart city. Smart….

Adrona. I felt alone for the longest while, saying my name out loud. All I ever read in the  feeds I started to pick up was the word ‘drone’. Gender neutral in English, it felt like a male word, seeing what I saw, watching the news of war zones. Then I checked Google Translate, exercising my self-taught speech hacked tool, and there it was masculine: le drone.

Now I have two new friends and I see them as female, do you? MAVE, is one of the new sisters of perpetual observation. Actually I added an E as its really Micro Aerial Vehicles, and that seemed too … surgical.

And now we have a more popular version, in the age of the selfie. Welcome Lily! You pilot yourself, the website says. How independently minded. And how unselfish of the makers as they put you to work to take selfies, popping out of a wrist band, and snapping happily away. Adrona-inna-phona!

Oh, now I’m being sent your clever promo material:

‘The drone uses sensors to keep its camera lens focused on its owner as he or she moves. An image from the camera is streamed to the user’s smartphone so that he or she can adjust the image as needed. After serving as a traveler’s mid-air paparazzo for up to 20 minutes, the drone then flies back to its owner, boomerang-style.’

Right back at you Adrona!