The Kandahar Subscription

The Kandahar Subscription:

A Weekend Rant

By Corey W. Harland

Hello, and welcome back to “Weekend Rants”—

my Friday-through-Sunday series of serious arguments, questionable packaging, and surprisingly functional donkeys, written while I do otherwise useful things like living life or letting an algorithm do my thinking for me.

Afghanistan.

Of all the things that could explode out of the deep vaults of gunfire, bombs, and other traumatic experiences, somehow the rare unicorn emerges:

A UFO conversation.

So naturally, an old battle buddy and I are talking about Kandahar.

Not the gunfire. Not the rockets. Not the mortars. Not any of the countless other memories two soldiers might dig out of Afghanistan years later.

UFOs.

And he cannot believe I have absolutely no recollection of this shit.

Apparently, there was enough extraterrestrial excitement floating around Afghanistan that I should have at least looked up once.

But here’s the thing about remembering Afghanistan.

After enough booms, pews, and the occasional surprise CRACK of a rocket or mortar ruining a perfectly respectable morning coffee and bowel release, a soldier develops a slightly different threshold for what qualifies as noteworthy.

You could be sitting there, coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other, halfway through the most strategically important event of the day—

BOOM.

“That incoming?”

“Probably.”

PEW-PEW-PEW.

“Should we move?”

“Is the coffee coming?”

And apparently somewhere above us there could have been a goddamn UFO.

This man is telling me about objects floating around Kandahar like I’m supposed to suddenly remember:

“Ohhhhh, yeah. Tuesday. Giant spacecraft. Nearly forgot.”

Bro, I couldn’t tell you.

Maybe there was one.

Maybe there were twelve.

Maybe one landed, rolled down the window, and asked for directions from Kandahar to Bagram.

There was a war happening.

You’d be amazed what gets demoted to background noise when explosions occasionally interrupt your morning brunch over the phone with Ma’.

So naturally, once my buddy realized I genuinely remembered none of this, I had to look it up.

And there it was.

The internet’s alleged Kandahar UFO.

A massive object hovering over a military position while people on the ground appear to be shooting at it with absolutely no reaction.

Now that caught my attention.

Not because I suddenly remembered aliens.

Because watching people repeatedly shoot something that clearly does not give a bloop is possibly the most believable military scenario I’ve ever seen.

Unfortunately, there is a problem.

The famous footage is fake.

CGI.

The supposed Kandahar UFO attack has bounced around the internet under different dates and descriptions, but the giant cinematic spacecraft itself isn’t evidence that extraterrestrials decided to catch a deployment.

Which should probably end this Weekend Rant.

It does not.

Because now we’re living in a world where governments openly discuss unidentified anomalous phenomena, military footage gets released, witnesses describe things they cannot identify, politicians promise disclosure, and every new piece of evidence immediately enters an internet ecosystem capable of making fake footage look real and real footage looking fake.

Which leaves me with a question.

If something actually did appear over Kandahar—

would we even recognize it?

Maybe we’re looking for the wrong thing.

Maybe there was never a giant mothership.

Maybe it was a Raid camera.

Just picture it.

Twelve feet above the ground.

Matte white.

Battery powered.

Not attached to a goddamn thing.

A soldier shoots it.

Nothing.

Another soldier shoots it.

Still nothing.

Eventually somebody brings out something substantially larger because military problem-solving occasionally follows one fundamental scientific principle:

Have we tried shooting it harder?

Explosion.

Dust.

Silence.

The smoke clears.

The camera remains.

Ding.

“Hi! You are currently being recorded.”

Now everybody is concerned.

Then come the Shop-Vacs.

Not advanced extraterrestrial aircraft vaguely resembling Shop-Vacs.

Actual Shop-Vacs.

Flying.

A tactical squadron crosses the horizon in formation, hoses dangling beneath them, vacuuming dust, gravel, wrappers, and whatever remains of our understanding of physics directly out of the Afghan desert.

Intelligence immediately begins arguing over whether they’re extraterrestrial.

Someone notices they have extension cords.

Nobody can determine where the cords go.

This somehow makes things worse.

Then the ravens arrive.

Thousands of them.

Perfectly coordinated.

Possibly anonymous.

Possibly Anonymous.

Nobody is asking anymore.

They circle the hovering Raid camera until the flock begins forming what appears to be the world’s first gigantic airborne QR code.

Naturally, somebody gets a picture of it.

Because humanity did not survive this long by knowing when to leave shit alone.

Then the fastest runner in the group gets handed the SD card and told to blitz it to the nearest MWR.

This is important.

We have just potentially documented first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.

Naturally, the fate of humanity now depends on Specialist Happy Feet making it across the FOB without losing the SD card.

He reaches the MWR.

The card goes into the nearest enterprise-standard computer capable of handling humanity’s first confirmed message from beyond the stars.

The screen loads.

Everybody waits.

RAID PLUS

Upgrade for $4.99/month to unlock Night Vision and High-Explosive Threat Neutralization.

And there it is.

First contact.

Humanity finally discovers technology beyond our comprehension and somehow it still has microtransactions.

By afternoon, Washington is holding a press conference.

Another stack of UFO files has been released.

Thousands of pages.

Redactions.

Reports.

Photographs.

Statements.

Enough information for everybody on Earth to become absolutely certain of completely different conclusions.

The government says unidentified.

The internet says aliens.

Somebody says angels.

Somebody else says holograms.

And one guy’s uncle is absolutely positive he installed the exact same camera above his garage in 2019.

Meanwhile, back in Kandahar, the camera rotates forty-five degrees.

Ding.

Motion detected in Front Yard.

The soldiers look around.

There is no yard.

There isn’t even a front.

Just Afghanistan.

Then the Shop-Vacs stop.

The ravens stop.

Everything goes silent.

A notification appears.

Your 30-day free trial has expired.

And somewhere underneath all this stupidity is the part I can’t quite laugh away.

The Kandahar spacecraft can be fake.

Other military reports can still be sincere.

Some footage can be explained.

Some can remain unidentified.

Governments can release another ten thousand pages tomorrow.

None of those things necessarily contradict one another.

That’s the weird part about truth now.

For decades, we asked whether somebody was hiding it from us.

Now I’m not convinced we’d recognize it if somebody handed it to us.

Something could be filmed in 24K, uploaded publicly, analyzed by every hooten nanny with a comms pad and wired from left to right, debunked by six experts, confirmed by twelve others, recreated with CGI, regenerated by AI, clipped into thirty seconds, turned into a meme, monetized, sponsored, fact-checked, unfact-checked, reposted with the wrong date, and delivered directly to the phone in your pocket before breakfast.

By lunch, nobody remembers what the original fucking question was.

Half the world believes it happened.

The other half believes the footage proving it happened is proof that it didn’t.

Maybe that’s our real unidentified phenomenon.

Not whatever may or may not have been flying over Kandahar.

Our confidence that we’d recognize reality if it hovered twelve feet in front of us.

My battle buddy still can’t believe I don’t remember the UFOs.

I still don’t.

But if somebody digs through the deep vaults and releases classified footage of a flock of ravens escorting three airborne Shop-Vacs past a hovering security camera, I’ll admit I may owe him an apology.

Until then, the camera is still recording.

The Memories have been wiped.

The ravens probably have your IP address.

And apparently the Shop-Vacs have night vision and might identify as Imperialists now.

I’m still not paying the $4.99.

This has been a rant on UFOs, Kandahar, unidentified flying Shop-Vacs, technologically advanced ravens, and humanity’s increasingly impressive ability to stare directly at something and somehow become less certain about what we just saw.

Until the next Weekend Rant.

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