Job Security

“Why is it that the turrets I’ve already purchased aren’t good enough, Travers? Five should be plenty for the north field.”

Sir Alec Fontaine looked at John Travers with such disdain that the older security head swallowed and shifted uncomfortably before explaining further. “Well, Sir, these turrets have a low rate of fire. It’s common with...” He could see Fontaine reddening as he prepared for the word cheap, true as that may be. “...consumer-level defense options. With the warnings we’ve been getting from other land-owners and the signs we’ve seen in the surrounding area, I figured-“

The aristocrat cut him off with a pompous scoff. “I pay you to watch and protect, not to ‘figure’, Travers. Figuring is my job, where I consider your needlessly expensive recommendations and compare them with the needs of the rest of the work equipment. Make do with what you have. Every other field has done so with less. Why should the north field be any different?”

Travers could have brought up the fact that the north field was broader, flatter, and more open than the other fields. He could have mentioned his engineering experience in the military, working equipment for years against waves of various faceless enemies that would have killed him and his comrades if he’d gotten his job wrong. He could have spoke at length of the wasteful parties that the Fontaine family had thrown and the excessive spending that each indulgent gathering had caused.

But he didn’t. After a decade, he knew Alex Fontaine’s mannerisms and he knew that this debate was already over.

“I’ll make it work, Sir.”

As the noble huffed off, Travers loaded five clay targets into the launchers for the target calibration system. He launched them and the turrets shot them cleanly out of the air. The same result occurred with six targets. When he launched seven targets, all of them were shot, but the last was a near thing. He launched eight targets.

The eighth floated untouched towards the horizon and John Travers took a sip of whiskey from his flask and prayed.

The night after his conversation with Sir Fontaine, Travers began to make preparations. Part of him felt as though he were being ridiculous, but he just had a feeling. He carefully disconnected the security cameras to the estate gatehouse where he lived, opened the trapdoor in his floor, and began reconfiguring the ground cooler inside. The pump, light, and sensors, he disconnected, and he modified the door so that it could only be opened from the inside. He layered it with blankets, placed an oxygen tank and rations inside, and once it was finished a couple of days later, he began sleeping in it with the door open, a rope tied to the handle so that he could quickly yank it shut at the first sign of trouble.

A week had gone by, with no sign at all. Just an eerie, uneasy quiet.

He’d again broached the matter of security with Sir Fontaine, but the gentleman had a party to plan and would not be bothered.

Travers quietly sent his few assistants off-world for a vacation.

He just had a feeling.

The machines came in a wave, in the dark of the night, across the north field.

It started as a low vibration in the floor and grew into a rumble, at which point Travers pulled his rope and enshrouded his world in pure darkness. He stared wide-eyed at nothing and listened.

Through the walls of his makeshift panic room, he could hear and feel the muffled stampede of mechanical limbs, sweeping above him in a cacophonous wave, tearing through the walls of his home. He knew the machines could and would interface with security systems and he hoped beyond hope that disconnecting the cameras had been enough to keep his refuge hidden. He held his breath, his death feeling like a definite and impending thing, waiting for the door to be wrenched open, waiting for his body to be pulled screaming from his shell. His pulse thundered in his ears and he waited.

And then they were past.

The stampede went on into the distance and Travers pretended that he couldn’t hear the screaming as they breached the main compound, that he didn’t notice the silence that fell unnervingly quickly several minutes later.

Hours passed and still the silence ran steady on. He opened and ate one of the rations then put the oxygen mask over his face and closed his eyes.

It was around noon the next day when Travers finally, warily pressed the door open.

He panicked momentarily, imagining the door not moving, buried forever beneath a mountain of debris, but it swung easily out on its hinges, and he was surprised to see no debris at all. He stood slowly, dumbfounded.

There was nothing. No rubble, no walls, no evidence that there had ever been a structure in this space. He looked into the distance, where the rest of the estate had once stood, and saw the same: a barren plot with no sign of the decades of human history that had occurred there, just dust drifting on the wind.

His communicator chirped, with a message from his (former) assistants, letting him know that they were incoming, and several moments later a craft landed in a plume of dust. He climbed in the door and squeezed into the crowded space full of craning necks and dropped jaws.

Travers sat, laid his head back, and found his train of thought turning wearily to other avenues of employment.