The Bad Planes
A young girl chronicles her existence in the age of technology in 2028 America.

Drones are the futuristic, technological danger Anthony J. Russo’s characters face in his chillingly poetic, topical short, “The Bad Planes”. 

Set in 2028, after the world has been ravaged by a virus, our story opens on a drone hovering in the sky. This is when we hear the story’s haunting opening line, made even more haunting by the innocent nature of the little girl’s voice speaking it:

GIGI (V.O.)
Momma always said to stay away from the bad planes.

Driven by eight-year-old Gigi’s narration, we see the world through her simplistic innocence as a drone hovers over a couple trudging along a farm road. The drone reads their body temperatures. Though the woman reads 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the male reads 100.8. And that’s when a much larger drone flies in an unloads rounds of ammunition into him. Essentially killing him because he’s sick.

But, as we soon find out, having the virus isn’t the only thing you can get killed for. The drones also read “acceptable” melanin levels in a person’s skin. We soon find out through Gigi’s chilling voice over that there is a race war, though she doesn’t fully understand what that means.

That’s when we meet Troy, a black man, who gathers waterin the middle of the night for his family – Jane, a white woman, and his mixed-race daughter Gigi, the narrator of our story.

A drone tracks him down and gets a read on his body temperature and melanin levels. But Troy is well aware of these “bad planes”.

GIGI (V.O.)
Daddy says we can only go out at night.
The bad planes have a harder time seeing us then.

To further deceive the drones, Troy covers himself in white skin cream to hide his color and keep himself from getting killed. But it’s not enough to fool this drone in particular and the unseen white man behind its control panels. Soon, Troy finds himself running for his life as he tries to get back home to his family, the drone hot on his tail.

As he reaches his home, he and his wife, Jane, work together to fight off the drone, building to a gut-punch of an ending that will haunt you long after FADE OUT.

I won’t give away everything about the story’s ending, but as we opened with a chilling line of dialogue, the story appropriately ends with a line of dialogue just as chilling, reflecting many of our own thoughts as we face racial issues in today’s world.

This is a script you won’t soon forget.