A sample (very short) of a more recent story i’m working on. Gotta watch out for those pesky drones….
PS yes i still need to work on those titles, i know.
———————————–
“No one knew for certain how or why the code allowed for the drones to read QR’s the way they did. The strongest rumour was that engineers had added it in the early stages of development as a quick upload system and that somehow the base code for it had never been removed. Alternatively; whether it was a coders back-door from the developers, who suspected where this would end up, is still hotly debated on forums” – g-star’s guide to livin’ off the grid – ©2036, G-Star. Licensed under the Creative Commons 12.2
Bos looked up, glanced off to the side to check the reflection from the glass tower, and then back to the 2 men working on the rooftop below him.
‘still clear, 2mins by my count’, he spoke at the men but did so quietly, the comms spike in his ear picking up the sound and carrying it over an encrypted short wavelength data network to similar gear on their heads. One of the guys on the roof below looked up at Bos and nodded. They knew they had to work fast, but the accuracy required to make sure the sign would work as intended meant it had to be quick and precise. If the code was laid out wrong or had a bubble under it that distorted the image; then the drone would see it but report the image, then the MSAI would start to dig into archived images and sec-feeds from the area. More than one team had been tracked down and “purged” by the security forces for everyone involved today to understand the cost of failure here.
The timer on his watch went off, a rapid tapping against his wrist. ‘Guys thats it, the drone is on approach, we only have seconds before its op-path is aware of us’
He could see the guys on the roof below nod without looking up; they had finished securing the custom printed vinyl-like sheet. Now they had to get clear of the area.
The drone would pick up their body heat if they stayed nearby, which could distract it from the QR code if it picked up the heat signatures before it read the code. The particular drone they were after had a very narrow window for a setup like this; luckily they found this particular roof. They had access to the sub roof area, above the ceiling of the top floor, so had been able to install a couple of heater units in one corner some weeks back. They had been slowly raising the back ground temperature of the roof in that area so that today, on a hot day, the thermal reading of a couple of human body would disappear in the area they had setup with a camo-panel.
Bos did one last check that the QR looked right, the camo-panel was in place and that he had a good view of where the drone would pass from the reflection of the building next door, and then crouched back down to finish the work on the bio-fuel cells water exchange that the work order had him up here to fix. This was their access to the roof area, and the reason the other couldn’t just leave once done, they had to wait for his rf-code to open the access door to get off the roof.
The drone passed overhead; Bos’ presence detected an AIFF from the surveillance device, querying who he was and why he was up there. His work order held up and no flags or alerts were raised.
They would have no immediate feedback on if the QR code worked or not. The program was set to run in 24 hours’ time. The first point in time they would know if it had taken would be in 18 hours when the drone would dip its left wing slightly as it passed over the target area; or if the team was captured in the next few hours.
With the drone passing off over head, Bos gave the all clear signal to the others. He reattached the access panel on the exchanger, grabbed his tool bag and headed for the access door. The 2 sign posters met him there.
‘All good Bos?’ one asked
Bos nodded ‘so far so good’