MYSURU, KARNATAKA. During Dasara, the autumn festival commemorating the victory of good over evil, 3,473 drones rose above the city and arranged themselves into a peacock. The formation earned a Guinness World Record; the drones were then powered down and packed away, which had always been the intention. The city's durable acquisitions from the event are a framed certificate and the wages of the personnel required to verify that the bird occurred.
A record of this category is not awarded for beauty. The certifying body requires evidence that the machines were present and in formation, and evidence of this kind is produced by a human holding a document. "The public receives the spectacle," said Nandini Prakash, Joint Commissioner for Festive Assets. "The office receives the proof. We are not in the business of birds. We are in the business of demonstrable birds." She then showed me the frame. It is glazed on both sides, she explained, so that the certificate cannot be smudged by the public, the dust, or, she confirmed, the Joint Commissioner.
The counting is a discipline with its own posture. Raghavendra Bhat, an aerial tally officer engaged for the event, described the method: "I did not watch the peacock. Watching is not in my instructions. I watched a screen that reported each drone present, and I signed a form confirming the total. The peacock happened above me the entire time. I am told it was beautiful." His instrument, the Drone Presence Verification Sheet — eleven fields, one signature line, no field labeled "peacock" — is now filed among the festival's permanent records.
For readers unfamiliar with Terran governance, the sequence follows in standard form. Step one: the applause, aimed at the sky. Step two: the committee, which commissioned the sky. Step three: the other hand, holding the tally sheet. Step four: the certificate, the only component of the bird that does not require electricity. The Senate of the Ninth Spiral repealed a water resolution within one season and keeps its attendance ledger bound in leather. The eight-limbed collective I once reported for took a census of itself every morning. The census survived. The collective did not.
The drones wait in cases outside the city for the next festival requiring a large luminous animal, the peacock having been rendered aesthetically obsolete by a local process the species also applies to clothing. The number itself is held by an institution licensed to store numbers. The man who counted remains on the festival rolls, the sole remaining employee of a peacock that no longer exists. The trick, performed well, ends with the audience remembering the dove. Mysuru has refined the form. The dove is dismissed. The other hand remains on staff. The peacock happened. There is paperwork.
