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Forrest Brazeal is a software engineer, writer, and cartoonist based in rural Virginia. This is his fourth story for Daily Science Fiction.
The Silicon Valley Military Contracting Consortium proudly announces that World War 2.8.41 is our biggest and best war ever, bringing hundreds of new features to your favorite battlegrounds across the globe.
KABLOOI
SVMCC continues to disrupt the weapons industry with our latest tactical missile, the Kablooi. Kablooi can attain low earth orbit, features a polonium-based core that can scatter radioactive fallout for thousands of miles, and pairs with any phone or smart watch. Note that Kablooi is not and should not be considered a nuclear weapon, because it is not regulated under any of those kinds of laws.
PRE-FIRE PROMOS
As the war continues its transition to an ad-supported model, we're proud to offer new, lower-cost automatic rifles that roll a short promotional clip before firing an actual clip. Just squeeze the trigger and look into the gunsight to view branded content from our sponsoring partners.
MOLOTOV
Chafing under an occupying force? Crowdsource your guerilla resistance with Molotov, the gig economy app that facilitates micropayments to saboteurs and other havoc creators. Blockchain-based and completely anonymous, Molotov will absolutely be a good thing to set loose in your community.
KNOW YOUR ENEMY
The brain contents of any captured prisoners can now be uploaded to the cloud for machine learning analysis. This feature is free and completely painless, except to the prisoners. We take user privacy seriously, so even if your prisoners are later exchanged, all the data is yours to keep.
World War 2.8.41 also includes significant performance improvements and upgrades to existing features, such as:
- An all-new Whiff app with up to 60% faster alerts on the location of wind-borne mustard gas.
- Easier access to lifesaving field medics via our 8G LTE Internet of Things button.
- An updated code of conduct and terms of service applying to users on all sides of the conflict. We are taking substantive efforts to curb hate speech and rhetorical violence on battlefields associated with the war. Any users violating our community standards may have their weapons disabled for up to thirty days.
Finally, this update to the war contains a number of important bug fixes:
- We've patched the AI on our Obliterator strike drones. This fixes an earlier error where children between the ages of one and three were sometimes misidentified as enemy officers.
- Noncombatants are now classified in our facial recognition database as "possible combatants." This addresses an edge case where noncombatants sometimes became combatants after being pursued for awhile by Obliterator drones.
- The notorious "Parsnip Loophole" has been fixed. Users of our food rationing app PortionControl will no longer be able to procure unlimited parsnips in excess of their quota.
- We've applied security patches to several zero-day exploits, making it slightly less likely that Obliterator drones can be remotely hijacked and used against our headquarters.
- The scroll bar on our official homepage now works in all web browsers.
As always, World War 2.8.41 is backwards-compatible with previous wars, so you'll continue to enjoy the features you love like midnight raid sirens, brain-altering propaganda, and of course, plenty of indiscriminate death and destruction.
The updated war will arrive seamlessly in your neighborhood between midnight and 5 AM (unless you are connected to someone in power). You may choose to be reminded of the update later, but that will not prevent it from happening whenever we want.
Thank you for helping us make the world a better place!
The End
This story was first published on Monday, January 7th, 2019
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