Free DRONES (SPECTRAL FUTURES) by Olsen J. Nelson

 
     
     
    Note From The Author
     
     
    It would be really appreciated if you could leave a review after finishing this story. If you like it, leaving a review is the best thing you can do to support it and to ensure that it has a chance to reach other like-minded readers. On the other hand, if you don’t like it, leaving a review may assist like-minded people to avoid it; negative reviews also contain the potential of attracting readers who don’t care about the things mentioned or think that they may be unfair or unjustified, which is sometimes better than having no reviews.
     
    Moreover, if the negative review is particularly pathetic, a more sympathetic reader may be inspired by this to write a supportive review, thus getting the ball rolling in the right direction. In any case, the worst thing you can do for the story and my writing programme in general is to do nothing, particularly when there are no or very few reviews, and if you like the story and the direction I’m heading with my work.
     
    I don’t want to depend on people I know — I don’t know that many people, anyway; I don’t want to depend on soliciting reviews from other authors — it’s a pathetic game of cat and mouse and a waste of my time, anyway; I don’t want to purchase reviews in bulk from someone on Fiverr, etc., in order to gain visibility and popularity de jour — I’m more interested in building a readership over the long-term. I’ve watched a lot of titles rise because of friends, family, colleagues, puppetsocking (writing your own review via someone else’s/another account), author comrades, and fraud; some or all of this is commonly seen as necessary to get the ball rolling.
     
    Unfortunately, only a small amount of readers seem to care about how a title they like gets to them; most seem simply to need a lot of reviews or a threshold amount present in the opening stages, perhaps ten or so. It sometimes works; but in most cases, more reviews are better than less or none, the latter being what you’ll find for most of my titles at Amazon.com at present. Nevermind. Having said that, I still think that opening with reviews is a vice and a matter of vanity, even if it is pragmatic for sales volumes. I prefer to publish my books ‘naked’ because, eventually, if you write and publish enough and consistently, you’ll need to. Furthermore, if you publish with intent and build a strong backlist, you won’t need to worry about reviews … over the long-term. The idea of the long-term is important there…
     
    I just want to write as much of the best SF that I can in the coming years and see what results. Hopefully, some readers will respect and support that … eventually. If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll know how gamed, corrupt and tasteless things can get. But if you haven’t, and you stick around, you’ll find out soon enough.
     
    You’re bound to come across me again and again in the months and years ahead if you continue to use the SF sections at Amazon; I’m just getting warmed up. If you don’t like my work, then I apologise about these future annoyances. But if you do like what I write … then I hope you can support my work at some point by writing a positive review.
     
    All the best!

 
     
     
    Description
     
     
    In a rapidly emerging, high-tech near future, Kacey, a remote robot operator working for a department of the Regional Remote-Security Division, has been confronted by her past on a daily basis for years … but never more so than now.
     
    As events increasingly demonstrate the road to amplification and the inertia of the deteriorating social conditions of the country and the world system, Kacey and her remote operator team are among the first to witness some of the diabolical harbingers of the near future referred to in the emerging present.
     
    The daily routine continues, regardless: the department and her remote operator team do what they can with inadequate resources and limited,