Pigeons.

A staple of Great Britain. Any city, town, or village in this country, you will find them. Huddled grey masses swarming food waste, delving into pungent bins, navigating the fag butts to find a morsel of Favourite Chicken, scratching the last drip of melted chocolate from a Lion Bar wrapper on a summer’s day. Or so it seems. They’re as ubiquitous to Britain as rain, Wetherspoons, and CCTV. But harmless? Think again.

The story of pigeons, state surveillance, and the oppression of the British people is a long and intertwined tale. Buckle up.

Originals

The once great and noble pigeon, driven to extinction by a human culture of control.

Surveillance

The rise and popularity of CCTV security systems watching and recording your data.

BIOTECH

The developing technologies allowing microchips to function in a biological host.

It was 1987, Britain was reeling from dozens of IRA attacks in both Northern Ireland and mainland Britain. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher vowed to do whatever it would take to end the carnage.

As the violence continued unabated, Thatcher confided her concerns in US President Ronald Reagan during a secret meeting in Washington DC. Sensing the importance of this, the American leader divulged his own tactic for getting dirt on suspected communists, jihadi terrorists, anti-war protesters, and anyone else who were thought to threaten the US order. The answer, pigeons.

But not real pigeons. Biotechnology surveillance drones, harnessing the power of the pigeon, designed by the government to look, walk and squawk, just like real pigeons.

Sure, the US government could have simply hired investigators, sent the FBI out, but that would be time-intensive, and most of all expensive to hire enough agents to scour the country. Instead, Reagan’s administration fought from the air. The state systematically infiltrated the pigeon population in the United States, developing their internal surveillance technology. When Thatcher overcame her initial shock, she realised that this was the most effective method for her government to monitor the British people as closely and discreetly as possible, in a way that would not cause alarm to the public. It took a few years to complete production, but by 1990, the government was ready.

In February 1990, Thatcher’s pigeon purge began – known among some as the Cootastrophe, it heralded the mass takeover of city centre pigeons in mainland Britain (the purge in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland only began in 1998, thanks to the Good Friday agreement). By June 1990, entire pigeon populations were working as drones for the government.

As natural pigeons became a creature of the past, the government simultaneously began phasing in the drones, the pigeonbots. They looked and acted exactly like a natural pigeon as a result of inherited instincts combined with advanced programming, illustrating impressive advances in biotechnology. When the rumours of robot surveillance pigeons started to emerge a common joke and misconception was these metallic creatures would be walking the streets (incidentally this is why Thatcher adopted the moniker “the Iron Lady”). However the biotechnology blended the surveillance pigeons so perfectly into the community that their presence went almost completely unnoticed. Behind the robots “eyes” sat tiny cameras, recording and transmitting footage to secret databases. When their batteries ran low, they would automatically fly to their closest replenishment centre (there were over 230 around the country) to recharge.

Over time, as technology has improved, pigeonbots no longer need to be charged at the replenishment centres, due to the development of inductive charging. This phenomenon was first devised by Nikola Tesla and his discovery of AC based electricity resulting in his invention of the ‘Tesla Coil’ in the late 1800’s. This laid the foundations for inductive charging – the wireless transmission of power. Pigeon drones dock themselves on national grid power lines all across the country to charge using this technology.

The process:

Mains voltage is converted into high frequency alternating current (AC).
The alternating current is sent to the transmitter coil which is inside the national grid power lines.
Alternating current flowing within the transmitter coil creates a magnetic field that extends to the receiver coil, which is embedded in the foot of the pigeon drone.
The magnetic field generates current within the pigeon’s receiver coil.
Current flowing within the receiver coil is converted into direct current (DC) and this recharges the pigeon’s internal battery.

This same technology is now commonly called Qi, from the Chinese word qi (pronounced CHEE), meaning energy flow. Many of the modern smart phones in todays market use this technology for wireless charging and we have spy drones, unfortunately, to thank.

Despite regular malfunctions and clear discrepancies in the behaviour and appearance of pigeon drones, the government has successfully deceived the majority of the population into believing that these machines are living creatures.

Most obviously, no one in Britain born anytime since 1990 would have ever seen a baby pigeon, yet they still believe these creatures are conceived and born naturally.

It’s difficult to blame them, though, as government propaganda has worked hard to prevent the truth from getting out.