#TalesFromTheGrid is a surreal thought experiment regarding AI, algorithms, technology, giant rodents pretending to be doctors. Born in that weird, vulnerable moment between being awake and asleep, this set of text explores the dream logic of humans. And sometimes this series features very real stories about actual recorded human history.
#MoreTrueFacts – This episode is fake movie scene from a a TRUE tale of the time Australia lost the “Emu War” …Municipalities will never beat nature.
NOTE: So many people have written stories about how absurd this was, but today I present to you a cinematic version of the story
DATE: November 19, 1932 (Simulated/Redacted)
LOCATION: Camp 4, Campion, Western Australia
SUBJECT: Operation “Plucked Despair”
EXT. THE NULLARBOR PLAIN – DAWN
Major Meredith stood on the running board of the truck, his knuckles white as he gripped the frame.
Meredith: (Voice like grinding gravel) “They’re out there, boys. Twenty thousand flightless demons with the eyes of ancient gods and the tactical patience of a sniper.”
Through his binoculars, the horizon was a vibrating blur of feathers and frantic, prehistoric motion.
The Lewis guns were screaming. It was a rhythmic, mechanical staccato that should have signaled the end of any infantry charge, yet the air remained thick with the smell of scorched earth and cordite, but no victory.
“Adjust your fire!” The Major roared, his voice cracking against the wind. “Concentrate on the lead cluster! We’re wasting lead on the scrub!”
A Sergeant, his tunic dark with sweat and his eyes wide with a frantic, exhausted sort of disbelief, scrambled toward the truck. He had to scream to be heard over the rattling of the mounted guns.
“It’s no use, Major! We can’t get a bead on the main body! Well, the birds are just running in different directions, sir!”
Meredith didn’t lower the glasses. He watched as a thousand-strong mob of emus split with the tactical precision of a veteran cavalry unit. They didn’t retreat; they dispersed into small, chaotic cells, weaving through the acacia bushes with a speed that defied the heavy machinery of man.
“Then bring the trucks closer!” Meredith demanded, spinning around to face his ordnance officer. “I want every spare crate of ammunition opened. If we can’t aim, we saturate! I want more ammunition on those guns now!”
“Sir, we’ve already burned through two thousand rounds this morning,” the officer stammered. “The barrels are overheating.”
“I don’t care if the guns melt into the sand! We are the Seventh Heavy Battery! We do not retreat from… from poultry!”
A line of dust rises. It’s not the wind. It’s the Emu Phalanx. Thousands of birds, standing six feet tall, moving in a tight, military formation that shouldn’t be possible for creatures that eat their own reflections.
In the shadow of the truck’s tailgate, a young Digger sat on an empty ammo crate. He was lean, his face masked in a fine layer of ochre dust, his hands steady as he smoked a hand-rolled cigarette. He looked less like a soldier and more like a man watching the tide come in—inevitable and indifferent.
The Major looked down at him, his face flushed with a colonist’s rage. “Private! Why aren’t you on the mount? Get up there and feed the belts!”
The Digger exhaled a long, thin stream of smoke. He didn’t look up at the Major; his eyes stayed fixed on the horizon, where the dust clouds raised by ten thousand drumstick-legs were beginning to settle into a new, terrifying formation.
“The bullets aren’t deterring them, sir,” the Private said, his voice terrifyingly calm amidst the mechanical roar of the war. “They’re winning.”
He flicked the ash into the red dirt.
“They’ve got a leader in every mob, sir. Big black-feathered ones. They stand guard while the others eat the wheat. They watch us. They wait for the reload. If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds, it would face any army in the world. You can hit them with a burst that would level a man, and they just keep sprinting.”
In the center of the flock stands THE ARCH-BIRD. It wears a tattered military tunic found in a ditch, and its beak holds a half-smoked cigar. It doesn’t squawk. It judges.
The guns fired RAPATATATATATATAT
For three seconds, the world holds its breath. Then, an Arch-Bird lets out a single, low-frequency drum from its throat.
The Emus don’t charge. They maneuver. They split into two flanking columns with the precision of a Prussian cavalry unit. They aren’t running; they are “disassembling the perimeter.”
Major Meredith: “They’re flanking! The birds are flanking! Reload!”
He finally looked up, his eyes hollow. He surveys the landscape: It is just a flat, burning war zone.
“We’re not fighting a war, Major. We’re just providing the target practice.”
CUT TO
LOCATION: Perth, Western Australia
INT. Government House
Sir George Pearce, the Minister of Defence, stands by a massive mahogany desk, staring at a telegram that looks far too small for the weight of the news it contains.
Opposite him, a representative from the Treasury—a man whose suit is as sharp as his ledger—paces the length of the Persian rug.
“The optics, George,” the Treasury man says, his voice a low hiss. “The London papers are calling it ‘The Emu War.’ Not a campaign. Not a cull. A war. And by all accounts, we are losing to a flightless bird that eats wheat.”
Sir Pearce slams a hand on the desk. “I sent the Seventh Heavy Battery! I sent Lewis guns! You told me the farmers were on the brink of revolt. I gave them a solution!”
“You gave them a comedy,” the man snaps. He stops pacing and leans over the desk, pointing at a stack of reports. “Ten thousand rounds of ammunition expended. Ten thousand, George. Do you know what the confirmed kill count is? Scarcely a few hundred. That’s fifty bullets per bird. At this rate, we’ll bankrupt the Commonwealth before we clear a single paddock.”
A junior clerk enters, looking pale. He holds a second telegram, his hand trembling slightly.
“Sir… a dispatch from Major Meredith.”
Pearce snatches the paper. He reads it in silence. His face turns a shade of grey that matches the leaden sky outside.
“What does it say?” the Treasury man demands.
Pearce looks up, his eyes glassy. “He says the birds have developed a ‘guerrilla command structure.’ He says they’ve begun sabotaging the fence lines at night to create escape routes for the smaller mobs. He’s requesting… he’s requesting armored cars.”
The Treasury man lets out a sharp, hysterical laugh. “Armored cars? Against a bird that can’t even fly? We’re the laughingstock of the Empire, George. I have the Premier of New South Wales calling me to ask if we need the Royal Australian Navy to secure the beaches against a ‘feathered invasion’.”
Pearce sinks into his leather chair, the weight of the absurdity finally crushing him. He looks at the map of Western Australia pinned to the wall, where the Campion district is circled in red ink—a war zone that shouldn’t exist.
“They aren’t just birds anymore,” Pearce whispers, almost to himself. “They’re a tactical nightmare. They don’t panic. They don’t retreat. They just… endure. Our historians have already begun to write books about their tactics. How do you fight an enemy that doesn’t know it’s supposed to be afraid of a machine gun?”
The clerk clears his throat, his voice barely a squeak. “Sir… there’s a crowd of farmers outside. They’ve brought a dead emu. They’ve draped it in a Union Jack and they’re demanding a state funeral for ‘The Only Soldier Who Showed Up’.”
Pearce closes his eyes. The ceiling fan overhead clicks rhythmically, sounding hauntingly like a Lewis gun firing into the void.
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