The Cow Chronicles Part 3: Infiltration

It was midnight in Washington, D.C., and the Director of the CIA was happily dreaming of his childhood bullies being lined up and executed by firing squad.

Suddenly, a stab of cold yanked the Director into reality. He looked into the face of Phil, the CIA secretary.

“There’s an emergency, sir. We’ve gotten a call. Some guy says there’s a bunch of terrorists”.

“Why do these things always have to happen when I’m dreaming?”, the Director grumbled as he stumbled out of bed and shuffled down the hallway of his house to a small, white hatchback waiting outside his house.

The CIA Director lived in a housing development called Conformity Cove. It consisted of identical, row houses, eight of which were packed into one of 800 identical blocks. The only plants in Conformity Cove were elm trees, two per backyard. Even the trees were identical, with the owner of the development ordering that every tree be cloned from a single tree’s DNA. The development owner had originally wanted to require tenants to receive plastic surgery so they all looked the same, but that decision proved to be unpopular. To sum it up, the owner of Conformity Cove thought everything was better when it was the same.

“Sir, isn’t it odd that you’ve headed this agency for seven years now, but you’ve never told anyone here your name?”, asked Phil as the Director maneuvered the hatchback into a parking space at the CIA headquarters.

“Nonsense, Phil”, the Director replied. “In fact, refusing to tell people my name shows how good I am at this job. CIA Directors are supposed to keep secrets, so a person who keeps even their name secret must be perfect for the job.”

Meanwhile, it was 2 AM over Farmer Joe’s farm. Farmer Joe was fast asleep in his house. And all 2,039,535,096,458,234 of Farmer Joe’s cows were asleep in the secret bunker beneath the barn. Well, except for Bob W.K. Jenkins, who had a bad case of insomnia. The robotic laser cows made their rounds across the pastures, scanning for any would-be cow thief. All was peaceful and quiet.

Suddenly, something caught the eye, well, camera, of Laser Cow 32. As the laser cows were programmed by Farmer Joe himself, to shoot anything that moved, the cow fired a laser at the thing. Whatever it had once been, it was now nothing but subatomic dust.

“We lost contact with the drone, Director”

CIA operative Richard Wachowski sat in the back seat of an armored vehicle parked at a cliff overlooking the farm. Two tiny screens were in front of them. One showed static, with TRANSMISSION LOST flashing across the screen. The other was a live communications feed with the Director back in Washington.

“We’ve got a stealth jet flying over the farm, and there seems to be an advanced weapons system. We’ll need to fire an EMP rocket.”

Richard pushed open the door of the armored vehicle, and ran to the trunk of the vehicle. He opened it up, and pulled out a rocket launcher.

The farm slid into focus as the crosshairs of the launcher’s scope moved over the farm pasture. Richard moved his finger onto the trigger, and fired.

The EMP rocket sailed through the air, the ground rushing towards it.

As it entered the farms airspace, an alarm began to wail. Farmer Joe leapt from his bed, running to his window. Through the smudged glass, he saw the laser cows galloping across the field to defend the cows from a target unseen by the naked eye.

In unison, the laser cannons within the cows began to warm up.

It was too late.

The EMP rocket plowed into the ground a few yards away from the laser cows. As the trigger on the nose of the bomb worked its magic, an electromagnetic pulse spread across the farm.

Farmer Joe could only watch in horror as the life left the laser cows’ eyes.

Meanwhile, Agent Wachowski stepped back into the armored van as the Director spoke.

“The security system is down. We’re going in.”