*
"Sunlight," Santino spoke aloud, holding his voice steady, trying not to tremble in response to the persistent cold nor the waiting drone. He carefully watched as the drone slowly turned over its light, the purple beam faded to the back of the box and a glowing yellow-white light emerged in front. Like transports with headlights, drones were typically built with illumination capabilities from the straight-line beam of a flashlight, to the unraveled cone shaped rays mimicking a child's drawing of the sun. Around Santino, the intense darkness was sliced off at the edges, brightening marker 56, the tower, the ladder, his clothes, the trees, and even the stars shining in the night sky above. Santino adjusted his eyes, blinking repeatedly. Slowly the brightness broke his fear, and made him feel as if the sense of abnormality of the last hour had only been a flare of ignorance. Drones, he knew, responded to specific voice commands. But when he dared to look back over his shoulder, he saw darkness again, and stillness. The simulated sunlight he was receiving was only the limited offering the box was programmed to deliver. Restricted to the instructions on his com, Santino had no choice but to accept the words and carry on. Instinctively, he held his com to the light even though the added brightness to read the screen was unnecessary. The device continued to display an error message for marker 56, but provided no further pinpoint location accuracy. As steadily as his senses stabilized, Santino felt nervous feelings returning. If the drone had been dispatched to check the error, a pointed light should have been directly aimed at the reported problem, instead the machine hovered, waiting. Santino held his com up over the marker, and selected the 'Locate' icon for the error. The device narrowed its light, Santino stared in the direction of the beam, looking up and down and around, but the entire frame appeared exactly as he had already observed.
"This is ridiculous," he declared, abruptly pulling back his com and shutting off its light. No updated instructions appeared on the screen, and no further report was generated. "Okay..." he continued aloud, "...this is the error." The idea made him shudder, but he could not imagine another explanation. No visible problem could be seen, and neither the drone nor the com was pointing to an exact location he should review. Even the tower's status lights, illuminating only in green, confirmed his assessment. Santino looked in all directions for red or yellow warnings, but none were visible. Sinking further into distress, he considered that if his suspicions were correct, he had another problem. 'How could he tell The Network, the error message was wrong?' The Network had sent for human intervention and was stuck on an instruction. Without a human taking action to repair the reported error, The Network would not react. If Santino tried to leave Sector 2G without fixing the error, he would need manual control of the Rider. But with no override code for the transport, if he wanted to return to the Control Room, he would be forced to claim an emergency.
On the average workday at an industrial site, there was no human emergency that could not first be analyzed by The Network. The Network had to view or detect incidents, and review the data to determine whether to authorize an override code. Emergencies had to be specific, a human had to be in physical danger or be suffering from a sudden ailment requiring human intervention. But at this point in the 22nd century, most diseases were rapidly eradicated. When unknown illness symptoms manifested, blood samples could be extracted at an automated biolab, located in shopping malls, large office buildings, on university campuses, at residential high-rises, or even the hydro complex, and sent for analysis to World Health Organization certified labs. Data about every reported ailment was being collected and processed every second, and global health labs produced antidotes, vaccines or other cures based on collated information from around the world. A broken bone would not help either. A com could detect the status of bones in the body, and an onsite medical drone could perform a laser-soldering stabilization procedure before ambulance transport arrived at the facility. Failed internal organs were typically the only option left for obtaining immediate medical contact with another human, but he would actually need an organ to fail, the diagnosis had to come first from The Network.
An employee at the largest hydroelectric complex in the middle of North America could not use the excuse of a medical emergency to obtain an override code for transport to take him back inside, because he was cold and confused, and unable to find an error The Network had been reporting for over an hour. Other types of emergencies would have to be verified with video from a camera feed or sensor data on The Network. If he tried external help, no employee at any monitoring station would understand a disruption instigated by a human, and not The Network.
Desperately he tried to imagine other statements he could make or ask The Network that would trigger an override or response to, at least, allow him to go back to the Control Room. If The Network had detected an unfixable error, and the detection was actually also an error, maybe reporting, 'no visible issue,' would prompt The Network to recognize a human action, and change its instruction. Deciding the possibility was worth a try, Santino held up his screen and entered the code for a human action resolution. The detail screen appeared and he stared at the features. Using a drop-down selection for previously used standard reasons for required human intervention actions, he searched for the simplest option, 'Unable to fix.' Although he doubted his attempt would be successful, he added 'no specific location for error indicated, no problem visible,' in the comments box, and touched, 'Submit.' The screen read 'Resetting,' but a second later the message returned to, 'Error - Employee Intervention Required.' Sadly, Santino conceded his idea, as he suspected, had not worked. He wondered if a human monitor on the other end would see his message, maybe he should have entered more information. Quivering in the brisk air, he contemplated his options again. If he contacted a monitoring station, he assumed the other end could view only the same instructions, and probably tell him he had to find the error. He thought about walking back to the facility, but he was on the opposite side of the complex, maybe ten miles or more from a human entry point. Humans could only use their com, face or hand scan to enter doors on the south or west side of the building, he was to the northeast with only transmission towers around him. He would not be able to use the Rider entrance on that side either, because the garage doors were only programmed to open for transports with entry instructions.
Santino struggled in the sinking cold, 'what to do?' he wondered. He kept looking at the com hoping the screen would suddenly display another instruction. He hit the manual 'Refresh' icon again to see if the information would change, but it was the same. After another minute, he began to speculate about touching the wire and casings at marker 56, to determine if there was an issue he could feel, even if he could not see an obvious problem. Or he could simulate a fix to trigger a Network reaction. In his subconscious, he knew the idea was ridiculous. The Network was precise. If he reached out to shake the wire, sensors would register the movement had taken place at the touch of human fingers or a tool. But the system would not register a fix unless the error was genuinely fixed. Still he was out of ideas and getting colder. If his approach did not work, he would brace for questions he could not answer and contact a monitoring station. He turned back to marker 56, looked again at the area where the error had been detected, and shined the com light back over the spot. Since all of the wires were high voltage, he would not directly touch a line. Instead, he would shake the edges of the frame connected to the wire. Although the action seemed trivial, sometimes there really was only a hair out of place. Slowly removing the glove from his right hand, he decided to use his bare fingers to initiate The Network's cross-reference of his fingerprints with the authorization records. If an unauthorized person touched the equipment with bare hands, sensors would trigger an alarm and the pre-determined security response, dispatching camera drones to the site. But his prints should only create an authorized notation.
As Santino's skin came into contact with the frame in front of
him, a whirring sound of a slowly revving jet engine rose from the drone. His hand stuck to the tower, Santino froze again. Civilian drones operated silently, gliding through the air without engine or machine noise. 'But this sound…' he questioned, '…first talking and now…noise? Who operated civilian drones that made noise?'