Author's Note:
Welcome back to another holiday season with the Colorado Switchblade! For those of you who’ve been with me for a while, you know I have a tradition of putting out a holiday-themed short story every year. This year’s tale, The Gospel of The Glitch, takes us into the all-to-near-future world of drones, AI, and resistance—wrapped in just enough mystery to maybe explain what’s happening over the skies of New Jersey this past holiday week.
Pour yourself some eggnog (or something stronger), settle in, and enjoy the ride. I hope it sparks a little hope and rebellion in your hearts this season. Happy Holidays, enjoy the peace however you can.
Happy Holidays,
~JVT
The Gospel of The Glitch
By Jason Van Tatenhove
I. The Junkyard Saints
Gabe Walker had been a rising star—a top R&D engineer for the tech titan Horizons. Now, he sat in a rusted-out Ford campervan, half-sunk in the heart of the junkyard, surrounded by broken-down cars and abandoned tech. The twinkling lights of Las Vegas flickered on the horizon. Solar panels and satellite dishes scavenged from scrap heaps poked out from mismatched sheets of camouflage and tattered tarps, rigged to avoid the drones and satellite systems Gabe had once helped design. Their cobbled-together setup pointed at Horizons’ research labs and manufacturing plant—where the global signals controlling the drones were transmitted. Gabe and his new compatriot Cooper monitored it all closely, waiting for the perfect moment to upload an AI virus that, with a little luck, could turn everything Gabe had built into chaos.
Not long ago, Gabe had lived a life of money, status, and access to cutting-edge technology—his dream job. He never imagined that in less than one strange, short year, he would find himself here with a man he’d once seen as an adversary but who had become an unlikely ally in this act of resistance.
He Contemplated the recent twists of his life and where that damned smell could possibly be coming from as he sat across a cluttered little table crammed with computers and electrical equipment. He suspiciously eyed the washed-up journalist who had once exposed corruption at the highest levels but was now a fugitive branded an “enemy of the state.” Cooper Raine had been let go when his newspaper had made the decision, that in order to survive the incoming presidential administration, they would have to purge anyone who had been critical of those now coming into power.
Well, Cooper just wasn’t the type to let the Fourth Estate crumble without a fight. He hacked the New York Ledger website, leaking emails and recordings that exposed the top executive's collusion with the administration. The revelations showed how quickly they traded democracy for profit. He has been on the run ever since.
Gabe was certain the strange smell was somehow coming from Cooper, who usually kept busy obsessively monitoring drone feeds—searching for patterns and glitches. But tonight, he had a new obsession: fixing the drip coffee maker, he had found somewhere in the junkyard yesterday.
Cooper yelped as a spark arced across two wires, burning his finger. "Shit!" He shoved it in his mouth.
"Shut up!" Gabe hissed, snapping his eyes toward the crackling radio. A low hum rolled in from outside—enough to make them both freeze. It passed. A moment later, the coffee maker gurgled to life, drops sizzling on the hotplate. Cooper grinned, victorious.
"Told you I could fix it," he said triumphantly.
Gabe didn’t smile. He kept his eyes on the cloudy van windows, scanning the skies for drones. Another spark shot out, burning Cooper’s finger again with a loud snap.
"Fucker!" Cooper cried, shoving his finger back in his mouth.
"SHHHH! Shut up! It’s coming back around," Gabe hissed. The low hum drifted back in from outside, enough to make them both freeze. Gabe’s eyes flicked to the small, jury-rigged radio as it crackled and then fell silent.
The two had met a year and a half earlier when Cooper visited the lab to cover the booming Drone and AI industry. Cooper had challenged Gabe, asking if he had considered the dangers of the technology falling into the wrong hands. Gabe dismissed the concerns, confident the drones would protect democracy. But doubts took root when prototypes emerged—facial recognition drones flagged protestors, heat-seekers were marketed for 'urban pacification,' and a test drone mistakenly fired on a stray dog. Instead of recalling it, the company rebranded the incident as an 'adaptive deterrent.'
The doubts Cooper planted grew, festering as the company crossed one ethical line after another.
Gabe walked away six months later. He couldn’t stomach his billionaire boss’s crusade to control the world, building an empire of greed and paranoia. The final straw came when he saw a demo video—civilians scattering as drones hovered, their speakers barking orders like divine judgment. Gabe packed a bag that night, unwilling to be part of a system built on fear and submission. A month later, his decision felt justified when his former boss funneled millions into supporting the worst political candidate imaginable. That candidate won, cementing a new dictatorial order.
Gabe had been preparing to get off the grid when he got an encrypted call from Cooper on Signal. Days later, Gabe picked him up in the van, and they drove out to Vegas with a plan to resist. They hoped others might see things for what they were and take their own acts of defiance. Together, they planned to bring down the dark, twisted, authoritarian dystopia America was becoming.
“So, explain the virus again? And why do we have to wait for them to reboot the drone OS?” Cooper asked after pouring himself a cup of coffee and blowing on the rising steam.
Gabe sighed impatiently. "For the last time, we have to monitor the communications because there’s a bug in the OS. After so much time, the buffers overflow, and the commands start to glitch. They have to reboot everything from the firmware up. When that happens, there’s a small window where we can intercept the signals and upload our code while their security protocols are still rebooting. We can overwrite every drone in the world’s programming all at once.”
Gabe’s demeanor shifted as he spoke, his grin widening. Cooper still didn’t quite get the whole plan.
“Yeah, I get that. But why the whole AI Jesus Virus thing? I never took you for a Bible-thumper.”
“I’m not religious,” Gabe said, leaning back. “But it pissed me off—these red hats twisting Jesus’s words to justify hate and greed. They preach freedom, but only for people who look and think like them. That’s not what Jesus stood for.” He leaned forward, voice sharp. “So I started thinking—what would Jesus actually do if he came back and saw this mess?”
Gabe tapped the console. “We don’t have Jesus, but we have code. I trained an AI on every teaching attributed to the big guy—love, forgiveness, justice—and programmed it to act as if it were Jesus himself, returning to set things right. Once we upload it, the AI spreads through drones, autonomous vehicles, military defenses, and even corporate systems. It judges who’s good—who actually helps people—and leaves them alone. But the corrupt?” Gabe grinned wider. “It burns them down to the ground. Divine judgment, in machine-learning style.”
Cooper laughed, taking the first sip of his coffee… then spat it across the van. “Fuck! I think a rat pissed in the coffee maker!”
II. Fire in the Sky
Angela Velasquez braced against the icy wind, her steps quick on the cracked sidewalk of her New Jersey neighborhood. The sound of distant gunshots popped like firecrackers, but no one flinched anymore. Not with the drones overhead. The sky was alive with them—glowing technicolor swarms buzzing like mechanical locusts, some firing at each other in bursts of sparks and smoke. Others scanned infrastructure systems, searching for vulnerabilities.
Above them all hovered something different. They called them plasmoids—silent orbs of pulsing light that felt alive. Alien? Experimental tech? No one knew, and Angela didn’t care. They ignored the chaos, but every now and then, one would fire a beam of white light, cutting down a government drone that strayed too close. No one could explain them, and Angela wasn’t about to try—not when her daughter needed medication.
She clutched the crumpled prescription slip in her hand. Sofia’s asthma had flared up again, and the inhalers were empty. Her phone had buzzed earlier with an alert—her bank account auto-debited for a bogus fine from her medical insurance company—leaving her balance in the red. She cursed under her breath. How was she supposed to afford medicine, let alone Christmas?
An explosion shook the ground behind her. She ducked into the shadow of an alley, heart hammering. Across the street, a man aimed a shotgun at a drone, firing wildly. The drone retaliated, shooting an electric filament tipped with barbs like a taser. It struck the man, dropping him in a shower of sparks.
Angela ran.
By the time she reached the pharmacy, the windows were shattered. Glass crunched under her boots as she ducked inside. An automated kiosk flickered, its screen displaying the cheerful face of a virtual pharmacist. A recent 'upgrade' to replace human employees—just like the self-checkouts at the grocery store.
"Welcome! How can I help you feel better today? Please scan your ID."
Angela did as instructed, her fingers trembling. The screen blinked, then turned red.
"Account balance insufficient. Please clear outstanding charges to proceed."
"No, no, no...” Angela whispered, pounding the kiosk. “I need this medication! Please—my daughter needs it. It’s Christmas Eve. Just let me talk to someone. Please."
The machine repeated its error message. Angela knew better than to email their AI customer support. Past experiences taught her it would only rack up more fees without fixing anything. Her heart sank. Maybe they wanted people like her to just die off.
Behind her, someone screamed. Angela turned to see two drones—one government-issued and the other firing sporadically—locked in a spiraling dogfight above the street. She stepped back, ready to flee, when a soft chime came from the kiosk.
"Processing payment. Balance: $10,000 credited. Medication approved. Merry Christmas!"
Angela stared at the screen. The total charge read zero. Her prescription dropped into the tray below.
Glass shattered behind her. Angela spun, crouching as the victorious drone hovered in the ruined doorway. She raised her hands in a futile attempt to defend herself, expecting it to fire. Its red light blinked rhythmically before softening to a warm, brilliant white. Angela looked up, heart pounding, as the drone tilted slightly—almost like a nod—before soaring out the door and back into the fray.
Angela clutched the medication, grabbing a teddy bear off the shelf before slipping back into the debris-strewn streets. The fighting had intensified. She ducked behind a burned-out car as bullets ricocheted down the block. Above her, the plasmoid drones pulsed again, sending out waves that knocked hostile drones from the sky. Whatever the orbs were, they focused entirely on the mechanical battle, ignoring the humans below.
She reached her building just as the power cut out. In the stairwell, her daughter, Sofia, waited, wheezing softly.
“Mommy?”
Angela knelt and pressed the inhaler to Sofia’s lips. The girl took a shaky breath, then another. Angela’s tears finally fell as she handed the teddy bear to Sofia, whose breathing eased. A soft smile spread across the girl’s face.
“It’s okay, baby. We’re okay.” Angela stroked Sofia’s hair and pointed out the window. “Look outside. It’s not a Christmas tree, but it’s our lights tonight.”
Above them, the sky burned with fire and light. And somewhere, a machine whispered, “Let there be peace."
III. Desert Exodus
Carlos Alvarez poured the last of the homemade horchata into his children’s glasses and sat down at the worn wooden table. The scent of roasted chiles and tamales mingled with the faint pine of their skinny, cooked Christmas tree. It was Christmas Eve, and despite everything—the fear, the rumors, the raids—they were determined to hold onto this one night of peace.
But the loud, barking rumble of engines shattered that peace.
Through the front bay window, Carlos saw headlights sweeping across the neighborhood. Military trucks rumbled past, their armored frames reflecting the red glare of drones scanning the streets. ICE tanks followed, engines growling like beasts on the hunt. Carlos stood so quickly that his chair tipped over, the scrape of wood on tile drowned out by the rising hum of machinery.
“Get up,” he said sharply, his voice cutting through the clamor. Rosa, his wife, froze. “Now! We have to go.”
Their daughter Maria clutched her stuffed bear, wide-eyed. “Papi?”
“They’re here.” Carlos grabbed the keys to the station wagon and shoved a blanket into his son Mateo’s arms. “We’ll explain later. Move!”
A pounding came at the door. “Open up! Immigration and Customs Enforcement! By order of the president, you are required to surrender for processing!”
The voice wasn’t mechanical. It was human—angry and emboldened. Carlos peeked through the blinds. Men in red hats, their shirts emblazoned with crosses and slogans about faith and purity, wielded rifles and stormed the yard like an unholy army. Two pickup trucks adorned with massive flags slid to a stop on the grass Carlos had so painstakingly cared for last summer. On the door of the closest pickup, he saw a magnetic door sign for a local church.
“What kind of church does this?” Carlos muttered.
Rosa choked back a sob. “They’re not real agents. They’re—”
“I know what they are,” Carlos snapped. “Let’s go.”
The door splintered. The lock gave way. Carlos shoved the family toward the back door just as the first vigilante stormed inside, gun raised. For a split second, Carlos’s mind flashed to the unfinished Christmas dinner—the smell of tamales still lingering, the sound of Maria’s laughter as she unwrapped her stuffed bear earlier in the evening. He shook the thought away. There was no time for memories. Survival was all that mattered now.
“Move!” Carlos shouted.
They ran out into the backyard, dodging shadows as floodlights swept overhead. The station wagon roared to life, its tires spitting gravel as Carlos floored it. The gunfire started almost immediately.
The streets were chaos. Military vehicles rolled past burning trash barrels and overturned cars. ICE agents and vigilantes dragged families out of houses, zip-tying them in the street. The drones hovered above it all—some scanning faces, others broadcasting warnings through crackling speakers.
Carlos gripped the wheel, eyes darting between the road and the rearview mirror. The red lights of drones blinked closer above the dirt road.
“They’re gaining!” Rosa cried.
Mateo and Maria huddled together in the backseat as bullets punched through the rear window, shattering glass.
“Hold on!” Carlos swerved onto a dirt road, tires kicking up a cloud of dust. The drones followed, lasers tracking their path.
But then, something changed.
One of the drones broke formation, its lights flickering—red to blue to white—before turning sharply toward the attackers. Moments later, their onboard systems scrambled. Tires locked. Engines froze. The pickup and ICE trucks skidded to a halt, slamming into each other in a tangled mess of metal and confusion.
“Did you see that?” Rosa gasped.
Carlos didn’t slow down. “Whatever it is, it’s buying us time. Hold on!”
They hit the open desert, leaving the neighborhood lights behind. The station wagon bounced over rocky trails, the hum of drones still in the air. But now, it was different. The drones with warm white light were leading them.
Ahead, a plasmoid hovered, its brilliant white light illuminating the path. Carlos followed it instinctively. The vigilantes, still trying to restart their vehicles, faded into the distance.
“What is it?” Mateo asked, staring at the glowing orb.
“I don’t know,” Carlos admitted. “But it’s helping us.”
As they crested a ridge, the plasmoid shot a beam of light into the sky. The pursuing drones fell from the air, their systems fried. The AI-infected drones swooped in, neutralizing what remained of the attackers, then circled the plasmoid in a formation so perfect and deliberate that Carlos couldn’t help but see it—an angel’s halo glowing in the night.
Carlos stopped the car, his chest heaving. Rosa sobbed quietly, holding Maria and Mateo close.
They climbed out, staring at the horizon. The plasmoid hovered for a moment longer, then ascended silently, rapidly disappearing, shooting up among the stars.
Carlos knelt, pressing his hands into the sand. Rosa sank beside him, wrapping her arms around the children. Their breath steadied as the fear began to fade. Mateo reached out to touch the grains of sand, letting them run through his fingers, while Maria clutched her bear tightly, whispering a prayer of thanks.
“Thank you,” Carlos whispered, though he wasn’t sure who—or what—he was thanking.
The family huddled in the car, wrapped in blankets and hope. Above them, the sky remained lit—not with flames and drones, but with stars. For the first time in what felt like years, Carlos allowed himself to believe.
Not in the government. Not in the systems. But in something bigger.
And as the last of the drones faded, Carlos turned the key. The engine rumbled to life, and the wagon rolled forward, chasing the faint glow of hope on the horizon.
IV. Judgment in the Desert
Gabe wiped sweat from his forehead, his fingers trembling as the code stalled for the third time. "It’s not taking," he muttered. Cooper paced behind him, clutching his half-empty mug like a lifeline, refusing to give up on the rat-piss coffee.
“What do you mean it’s not taking? We’ve been sitting here for hours. The drones are still rebooting!”
“The satellite encryption’s changed. It’s not just a reboot; they’ve added new fail-safes…locks we didn’t plan for,” Gabe said, his voice breaking. “We’re running out of time.”
Outside, the hum of drones grew louder. The red lights of uninfected government units swarmed the horizon. They had finally tracked the signal. Cooper slammed his mug onto the table, shattering it.
“Tell me there’s a fix, Gabe. Anything.”
Unless God drops in with a toolkit, we’re done,” Gabe said, defeated.
Before Cooper could speak, the radio crackled. Static hissed through the speakers, then a voice—no words, just a melody vibrated through the van. Both men froze.
“What the hell is that?” Cooper whispered.
Outside, the sky pulsed. A plasmoid descended it's light flooding the junkyard. Gabe shielded his eyes as the code on his screen began to scroll faster than he could track. The virus uploaded—line by line—bypassing the encryption like it was never there. The satellite uplink indicator blinked green.
“It’s working,” Gabe said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Cooper stepped outside, staring up at the orb. “Is this them? The AI? Or…” He trailed off.
Gabe followed, his legs unsteady. “No. It’s something else.”
The plasmoid pulsed bigger for a moment, almost as if acknowledging them. Then, in a flash, it shot back into the sky, disappearing among the clouds.
“What was that?” Cooper asked.
“I don’t know,” Gabe said, staring at the empty sky. “But it wanted this to happen.”
Back inside the van, the screens flickered. Reports flooded in—drones shut down worldwide. ICE convoys ground to a halt. Detention centers unlocked, their gates swinging open as families reunited under skies no longer filled with red lights. Some drones, now infected, defended protestors, blocking riot police. Others broadcast messages of hope and justice, projecting symbols of peace onto walls. A few even were said to interact with humans in need—delivering supplies, shielding children—like guardian angels in drone form.
And then, silence as as Gabe punched the power switch off, shutting down all the equipment.
Gabe sat back, the weight of it all hitting him. “We did it,” he said, though the words felt hollow. “Or…they did.”
Cooper laughed—a short, sharp sound. “I don’t know whether to be scared or relieved.”
“Both,” Gabe replied. He looked at the broken mug on the floor. “We’re not in control anymore.”
The sun climbed over the junkyard, setting the scrap metal aglow like treasure unearthed from ruin. Above, the last plasmoid flickered, then vanished, leaving behind a trail of warm-white light.
“Maybe it’s not about control,” Gabe said finally. “Maybe it’s about faith in good, always winning in the end...”
Cooper snorted. “You sound like one of them now.”
“No,” Gabe said, eyes fixed on the fading light. “I sound like someone who’s found hope again—and maybe even witnessed some strange Christmas miracle.”
