Congratulations on Disarming that Roadside Bomb!

The army is full of all kinds of heroes. Most of these heroes do stuff like run around, shoot guns and generally celebrate life in all its forms. These men are the most brotherly of brothers, representatives of the American way of life who stand as halcyon beacons of hope to all who gaze upon them.

The army is also full of other heroes. These heroes are mostly robots. They’re the unsung heroes of our military. No one ever talks about the sacrifice that predator drones make. Well today we’re going to. Today we’re going to talk about you.

You’re one of those robots that they send in to disarm bombs when they don’t think that a particular bomb is worth the risk to human life that it involves or if they know for a fact that the bomb is going to go off and kill anyone nearby. You’ve had a long life (four months of sustained operation!) and you’ve done a lot of good in it. You’ve successfully determined that several abandoned backpacks were not bombs at Baghdad International Airport, you disarmed a bomb in a parking lot one time without it going off and at an event at a school in Baghdad you convinced a little girl that robots can love by robo-winking at her coyly when she hugged your chassis.

Yes, you’ve had a good life. But sometimes good things must end.

Today you’re going to get “the call,” meaning the door of the box you spend most of your time inside is going to open up. You’ll then roll into the heat and dust of the Afghani sun and, after receiving some directions from your operator, make your way towards a pile of rags and sandbags by the side of what could charitably be called a road.

You’ll be the only one around for miles and miles, and you’ll be fine with that. That’s kind of how you like things: you’re a bomb defusing robot, you like alone time and helping others. So as you roll up to the roadside bomb you’ll be kind of excited. This is just another time to shine for you.

But as you approach, before you even get a chance to use your clever little manipulating appendages to do your thing, the un-thinkable will happen: the bomb will explode. The explosion will launch hundreds of pieces of scrap metal, marbles and wood out in a dome-like pattern from the sacks laying on top of the charges, tiny fragments that are intended to maximize damage to the soft tissues most people are made up of so prominently. Most of these makeshift flechettes will ricochet harmlessly off your steel chassis.

But the concussive force of the bomb will not be so kind. You’ll be just close enough that the shockwave of the explosion will rattle your frame and devastate your motors, shaking your servos to bits. The bomb will effectively be defused, your mission a success, but your body will be in ruins. A pair of techs will rush out after the dust settles to collect your parts and put them in a small wood box.

The wood box will be sent back to the place of your birth, Flint, Michigan, where you’ll be given a hero’s burial: entombed underneath the factor that produced you in the hope that your spirit will transmit to the chassis of a new robot and find a new life as another bomb defusing robot. It will be a good death, and a burial appropriate for a hero of your magnitude.

Congratulations on Disarming that Roadside Bomb!