An Early Christmas in New Jersey (and Drones)
No one knows what's going on with the drones over New Jersey, EXCEPT for "Weird Fiction Quarterly". Our intel is our early holiday gift to you.
As purveyors of the Weird, our remit is rather wide. We publish stories about ghosts, monsters, and all sorts of Spooky Stuff.
And that includes UFOs (or UAPs, or whatever they're called this week).
I've gotten a number of requests to explain what is going on in New Jersey recently. If what I've just typed is gibberish to you, here's America's Favorite Public Scientist, Neil deGrasse Tyson chatting with Kaitlan Collins on the topic:
Neil sounds pretty certain that no one knows what's happening, but I'm here to tell you that I know.
Since Weird Fiction Quarterly has a strict rule that we only publish pieces that are exactly 500-words long*, I've compiled my findings into a brand new original weird flash fiction(?) piece.
*_We do make exceptions for poetry, but I'm a terrible poet.
An Early Christmas in New Jersey (and Drones)
by Chris J. Karr
The bickering, whining, and gimmes finally got to be just too damn much for The Jersey Devil, and Christmas came early for his spawn in the southern Pine Barrens.
After the election, his devilets drafted and posted their wishlists to the North Pole earlier than usual. Given all the talk of tariffs and trade wars, the little demons worried that Santa’s elves might not be able to source technology components for their #1 request: autonomous drones.
The idea was seeded when Jersey received the annual letter and holiday photos from his brother-in-law in West Texas. His sister’s husband was one of those early enthusiasts of all kinds of R/C vehicles. He was notorious for spooking his neighbors around Marfa with all sorts of remote-controlled helicopters, blimps, and airplanes. An irrepressible performer, he would always try to put on a decent light show. If the county wasn’t talking about it the next day, it might as well never have happened.
Jersey was surprised that his spawn didn’t try and emulate their cousins earlier. They had too much fun in past seasons possessing Teddy Ruxpins, Furbies, Tickle-Me-Elmos, and other kinds of “talkie” toys. He was sure that they were going to ask Santa for ChatGPT subscriptions, but they landed on drones instead. And the North Pole honored their wishes.
After one evening of the devilets not shutting up about the damn drones, Jersey texted Claus and asked if he could release the drones to the kids early. Jersey didn’t know how much more of this chatter he could take, and Santa granted his wish and messaged him the code to unlock the toys.
After the devilets finally yammered themselves to sleep, Jersey stole away in the middle of the night to a heavily wooded area just west of Millville. The North Pole Logistics Group was the best in the world and one of their tricks was pre-staging caches of presents around the planet, so that Santa didn’t put unnecessary wear on his reindeer traveling back to the North Pole each time the sleigh needed a top-off. Jersey walked toward a seemingly empty meadow, closed his eyes, and mentally searched for a hatch. His claws found the invisible keypad, and he entered the code Santa texted earlier that evening. Claus’s logistics team had done him a favor and equipped each boxed-up drone with a navigation thruster, and a parade of boxes soon arced over and into the Barrens as everyone (but him) dreamt.
Jersey awoke the next morning to his spawn quietly rifling through instructions, updating firmware, and reviewing regulations about UAVs. He dashed off a quick note to the Pentagon to give them a heads-up about the early gifts. (He defended local ports for them back in the War.)
Before he returned to his crypt beneath the gnarled red oak to finally enjoy the new quiet permeating the woods, he instructed his eldest to keep her siblings from getting into too much trouble with their new favorite toys.
The silence was bliss.
Since I'm doing this one solo, I'll continue to abuse my editorial perch and encourage everyone reading this to pick up a copy of Weird Fiction Quarterly at Amazon or your favorite E-Book store.
And if you like what you've read so far, we also offer annual subscriptions beyond our free newsletter posts and holiday stories. Click the green Subscribe button (Account if you're already logged in) to review your options. We offer everything from electronic only editions to print editions that come with additional extra goodies. And while we are working on getting our gifting infrastructure up and running - if you'd like to purchase WFQ for a friend or loved one, send us an e-mail to subscriptions@weirdfictionquarterly.com and we'll get it set up.
And if you're a New Jersey devilet reading this, please try to avoid spooking any more folks in New Jersey. We all know how well that played out last time.