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"I was perfectly satisfied to write science fiction knowing that it would pay very little, that it would be seen by only a very few people."
- Isaac Asimov

Machine Birds  
  Flock of mechanical winged birds.  

At the top of the hill, she stopped to recover her breath, but the boy didn't greet us or even look our way. He had in his hands a circular device, and was looking at the sky between the two houses where a group of birds was flying in formation, and I quickly realized these were machine birds. He kept his gaze on them and when he touched his control, the birds responded by changing their pattern.
‘Wow, they're beautiful,' Josie said, though still short of breath. ‘Are they new?'
Rick kept his gaze fixed on the birds, but said:
‘Those two on the end are new. You can tell they don't really match.'
The birds swooped till they were hovering directly above us.
‘Yeah, but real birds don't all look the same either,' Josie said.
‘I suppose. At least I've got the whole team taking the same commands now. Okay, Josie, watch this.'
The machine birds began to come down, landing one by one on the grass in front of us. But two remained in the air, and Rick, frowning, pressed his remote again.
‘God. Still not right.'
‘But they look great, Ricky.'
Josie was standing surprisingly close to Rick, not actually touching him, but with hands raised just behind his back and left shoulder.
‘What those two need is a complete recalibration.'
Technovelgy from Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2021
Additional resources -

Compare to tiny robot planes from Blood on the Sun (1942) by Hal K. Wells.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Klara and the Sun
  More Ideas and Technology by Kazuo Ishiguro
  Tech news articles related to Klara and the Sun
  Tech news articles related to works by Kazuo Ishiguro

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