Dan Clymer is a hero - at least that's what the billboards say. His face is on cereal boxes. His name is branded onto the newest drone fleet. And Reverend Elijah Hightower has a government seat waiting for him. From behind a screen, Dan delivers remote strikes far from the ruins of the Sacrificial Zone - what's left of America's destroyed cities - and is rewarded with Patriot Points, digital confetti, and televised praise. The war is nearly won, or so the story goes-streamed, sanitized, and sold to a nation hungry for closure.
But when an overeager colleague, Marcus, brings his childhood friend and unrequited crush, Sarah Bishop, to Dan's latest celebration, everything begins to unravel. Sarah isn't like the others. She doesn't flinch at Dan's fame. She questions the war. The regime. The very foundations of the story they've all been living inside.
Soon, Dan finds himself hunted by the very drones that once made him a hero. As President Knox and Reverend Hightower scramble to contain the breach, Dan must decide whether to keep running-or become the symbol they never meant to create.
"Valor Flakes" offers a timely and unsettling critique of the alliance between nationalism, religion, and capitalism-a world where belief is branded, grief becomes currency, and heroism is sold in a box with a free prize inside.
Fans of "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel, "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro, "Severance" by Ling Ma, and "The Warehouse" by Rob Hart will appreciate this slow-burn, character-driven narrative of a hauntingly plausible near future shaped by the forces already fracturing our present.
