It’s first thing in the morning lucidity, unadulterated logic of a refreshed mind, reset-button clarity before the obfuscation of another day.
Hummingbirds are not indigenous, their migratory patterns are relatively provincial and they prefer humid subtropical. Not that seeing a hummingbird here is out of the question. And it’s the height of summer. Seeing four of them hovering around a red maple tree is unusual, nothing flowering there, no nectar to drink. If they were availing themselves of a flower bed they would be less conspicuous. They look enough like hummingbirds, though their bills are too short and their movements not fluid and the slightest bit too herky-jerky.
Regarding his reflection in the mirror, his face sleep-bloated, hair pushed from both sides of his head toward the center and pointed upward like a buzz saw, an inexplicable vertical crease beneath his left cheekbone. Downloading the grid map would have been a red flag, Dr. Banner accessing the grid map, and Hulk capable of breathtaking devastation, whatever his motives might be, and the appearance of the hummingbirds. He wonders what they know about what he knows about drones. If they’re insightful, they’ll assume correctly that the answer is plenty, but then they have four hummingbird drones hovering around a red maple and not flowers, betraying the level of competence with which he is dealing. He’s aware everything he does is under surveillance and has been, from the days of windowless vans and thumbnail-sized microphones in the receiver of his handset to now, every email read, every website visited like a muddy footprint, every inbound or outbound call or any text sent or received listened to, read, stored. Something about the drones makes him angry. Maybe it’s the unwarranted suspicion. Maybe it’s that they think he won’t know.
Jade and Daley Hueman are bitmap images watching from behind a window screen, seeing Hulk backpedaling, lurching, dancing to some fractured beat, swatting at, what, huge flies? Giant mosquitoes?
“What on God’s green earth is he doing?”
“What are those?”
“Birds? Hummingbirds?”
“Why is he attacking them?”
“Maybe they’re attacking him.”
“Where’s my camera?”
Hulk wonders why the hummingbird drones don’t fly away under duress. Maybe the protocol for recalling the drones or overriding a command is more bureaucratic than it should be, or maybe the program’s too new for contingencies. Maybe no one has attacked these drones before and there isn’t precedence. It’s an algorithm missing from the program, making these drones better able to think on their feet. Not that they aren’t quick, impressively so. They dodge his slaps deftly, but they don’t fly away; they dart around him like giant bees, but they don’t attack. They’re half ingenious, prototypes, first or second generation in their evolution. It takes longer than it should, and Hulk feels like he’s waving at holograms. The first one rent into several semi-intact pieces, the next one ricocheting off his open hand and slamming into the wall of his apartment building, embedded in the aluminum siding almost intact. He catches one flush, looks it directly in its peephole, “film this,” and when he crushes it into bits, its guts explode from within his grasp like pulp from ripe fruit.
