soft daylight
slowly replaces
harsh security light
Tag: security
Fiction: The Wrong Tool
Bijou lay in the middle of the living room, exercising the principle of center control as a chess player would. Her humans sat on the couch in front of her. They exchanged occasional words, but the cat did not recognize any of them, nor were they in tones that attracted her attention. She stretched her legs out a bit more for comfort and to take up more space.
“Okay, let’s just see what happens,” the male human, Seamus, said. The female human, Ruri, sighed.
Fiction: Neighborhood Picnic
Sergeant Luckenstiehl wandered around the park, smiling at the children at play, nodding to their parents who were grilling hamburgers and brats and hot dogs – and the occasional steak – and setting the picnic tables. He would soon have to politely decline offers of food. “Regulations,” he would say with genuine regret; these people really knew how to barbecue.
He looked up; there were still a couple of hours before the sun would set behind the 25-story housing complex. The park was in the building’s hollow quadrangle, and Luckenstiehl respected how nicely the residents kept it.
A child ran up to her mother. “Mom! We can’t find Prissy and Janet anywhere!”
Luckenstiehl casually made a quarter turn away from the conversation.
Fiction: Security Breach
Arvid8 sat in the security room watching the monitors. The half-starved population outside the gates knew about Lord Grazorius’s food storehouse; Arvid8 looked for criminals who had slipped past the guards. Peasants could be tricky.
He was also vigilant for smaller intruders. Mice still plagued humanity in the late 22nd century. There hadn’t been any trouble since the Great Raid when more than ninety mice made off with an astonishing amount of food. Lord Grazorius had been furious, and security had installed hundreds of additional traps.
Arvid8 heard a motion alarm. He switched the view to the holographic tank, recreating the scene life size in his office.
A single mouse crept toward a box of food. The trap sitting by the box caught the mouse’s attention. As it should, Arvid8 thought as he magnified the view.
The trap’s enclosure was almost invisible. The mouse walked straight in and a little door folded down, sealing the opening. The mouse walked onto the platform and grabbed the bait. As the trigger tripped, the powerful spring propelled the titanium hammer onto the mouse’s back.
The hammer bent around the rodent.
Arvid8 gasped as he watched the unharmed mouse eat its prize. Then it backed out from under the hammer and one back leg kicked the trap’s door open. The mouse skittered out and looked directly into the hidden camera, making Arvid8 feel uneasy.
The mouse leaped to the box of foodstuffs, and its powerful jaws made short work of one corner of the steel box. Arvid8 dispatched a hunter-killer robot, but the mouse fled with its loot.
Arvid8 cleared the holoimage and turned to his hardwired communicator.
“Security Control, this is Security 2, Arvid8.”
“Go ahead, Security 2.”
“I need a probe team in here, armed and with extra robots for perimeter security. And tell Lord Grazorius the mice have evolved again.”
Fiction: Lost in Transit
“Where … is … my … daughter?” Thomas demanded yet again.
Harmonee, the ticket agent, tried to remain professional despite wanting to yell at the customer at her desk.
“We are still tracking her down, sir. Please have a seat and we will let you know as soon as we find out.”
“I will not sit down! I want to know where your airline’s idiots in Houston sent my daughter!”
Fiction: The Suit
The suit had never fit well. It bulged in odd places; it was too loose in some spots and too tight in others.
And it itched. That was the worst part.
But his days of wearing it were finally coming to an end. A couple of hours longer and he’d be able to ditch it permanently. There was just one more stop to make first.
Fiction: Frontier Security: An Allegory
Mayor Harvey Pendleton banged his gavel a dozen more times. “Order! Order! I said, ‘Order!'”
The sanctuary, the largest available room in town other than the saloon, came to something like a hush.
“Now I know everyone’s upset, and I know most of you have never been to a town meetin’ in your lives, but there are rules about how this works. First and foremost is you speak when you’re spoken to and not otherwise. If you want to talk, you raise your hand and wait until I call on you, just like back in school. That’s the only way this can work.”
He cleared his throat and lowered his voice just a little. “Now,” he said, and he paused, thinking of what to say next. “Now. I know that everyone’s still atwitter about what happened last Tuesday. It was a dark day when the Fu Shi Gang came to our town and burned the hotel and shot all those folks. Why, I’d known some of them for years myself.” He cleared his throat again. “It’s hard. Hard losin’ ’em to that rotten rabble of Chinese.”