My contribution to the deadlinesforwriters short story challenge MAy 2025. The prompt was „Cloud“ and the required word count was 1800.
Reality Check
“Data stream incoming!” rang DAISI’s voice. As usual, she sounded a bit too young, a lot too enthusiastic.
Beth brushed the red curls out of her face and checked the load screen. Oh, dear.
“Again?” she asked. “We’re nearing critical levels. Can you try the boss again?”
The load bars had switched from their former happy green to orange. Once they turned red, the ship’s klaxon would start blaring, a sound Beth would love to avoid. When the cabin, crammed full of sleek white equipment, had been designed, acoustics had not been a major factor. But one of the things Beth enjoyed most about her line of work was how quiet it was up here on most days. Apart from the hum of the computers and the distant flapping of the propellers.
“I could but there is very little chance it would help. He will be otherwise engaged until 1900 hours. So I will not.”
The uppermost drives rattled, while the data cannon fired at the dirigible. Beth took a sample of what was currently being uploaded. There was no way for her to not roll her eyes.
“Would you look at these?” she shouted. “Back in the day we complained about the endless photos of people’s food or cats, but this? Why would anyone need to make the chancellor look like a giant pea pod with elephant ears and tiger fur? In multiple variations? I don’t get it!”
DAISI, short for Dirigible Artificially Intelligent Senior Intermediary did not offer an opinion on the latest additions to their memory. Beth wondered what the pointed silence might mean but decided to drop her moment of art critique, even though what DAISI’s distant relative had done to the chancellor’s face made her eyes water.
“Data stream complete!”
Beth sighed and tapped the load screen again. She shook her head.
“We’ll have to prioritise and dump a few hundred megabytes soon. Should I go ahead and pick which drives to flush?”
“No.”
“What d’you mean, no?”
Beth wished, not for the first time that the boss trusted his human operatives over the DAISIs. They had climbed up the ranks slowly during the last ten years or so. The decision to elevate them above former dirigible captains had been met with large amounts of fruitless grumbling. He had claimed this rearrangement would streamline management efficiency and make the entire process more agile. Or something to that effect.
“It is not what the customers pay us for. Also, the boss gave explicit orders not to dump anymore data, unless he is the one to give the order himself. You know this, Beth.”
Beth used to love her job. Zipping through the air, collecting data wherever she was needed and keeping it safe for all those people down there. Her craft was covered in a thick layer of water droplets, condensing due to the massive cooling units. It used to give her a feeling of freedom and being snug at the same time.
She and DAISI kept a running joke about people believing the myth that their cat pics would end up on server farms somewhere in the countryside. Mostly it was young guys laughing at their grandmas. They were convinced the old folks were behind the times and must have got their computer jargon mixed up.
Right now, Beth was not in the mood for jokes. She had never seen the memory banks close to bursting before, but she had heard the stories. Inexperienced operatives, fresh from their apprenticeship, who had picked up the call of a nearby data cannon and seriously underestimated the volume of the movie a customer had decided to keep for later viewing.
The windows surrounding were triple glazed for thermal insulation. Still, Beth was grateful, her white overall with the official rainbow-coloured logo was warm enough. Wipers regularly went across, so operating personnel had a spectacular view of the landscape they glided over. Beth looked out in all directions. It was fascinating to be able to peer through the vapour quite clearly, while from far away it was close to impossible to discern the dirigible’s contours.
Periodically, the boss would mention how much more money they would make if they could remove the vapour and sell the advertising space on the balloon skins. And just as often the engineers explained to him the importance of regulating equipment temperatures. He would reluctantly give in for a month or two, then ask again.
They used to dump data in uninhabited regions more regularly. Not often. But sometimes they just had to. Back in the day, customers were offered less capacity and most of them kept their storage small and tidy by themselves. Only some of them didn’t seem to know when enough was enough. So when a captain saw the load bars turn orange, they were allowed to reverse the stream and hit a remote mountain or the open sea with a flash of lightning.
“Can you please try the boss again? If you ask me, he has totally lost touch with what it’s like out here.”
“I cannot. Also, I did not ask you. If he said to not disturb him, that means he is in an important meeting or needs to focus on how to work out a problem. You know this, Beth.”
“Well yes, I know that’s what he says. But he can’t have it both ways, selling more and more capacity with the crafts staying the same size, customers never deleting anything and at the same time keeping us from dumping. When he took over, the system wasn’t intended for this many memes and movies but mainly for safekeeping documents.”
DAISI did not respond. Instead the cabin floor shifted, making Beth almost lose her balance. It seemed that DAISI had decided to change course without a warning.
“Where’re we going?” Beth steadied herself on the desk behind her.
“A new call ten miles southwest of here. I have put the destination on the map for you.”
“How very considerate,” Beth griped under her breath, then went to find out where they were headed.
At least it was a medium sized village. With any luck, the locals just needed to upload a few snapshots of last weekend’s party.
“DAISI, why’re you so loyal to the boss? Is it because he collectively promoted you all?”
There was a crackle, then a few seconds of silence.
At last, DAISI responded: “I have no idea what you are talking about. I am not loyal to him. I take in his arguments and weigh them against what you say and what reality says. It is not my fault that my rational judgement does not always go your way. I am not emotionally swayed by promotions. We are all here to do our jobs. According to our orders.”
“So what is reality for you? Where did you get your information on what’s real? Or rational?” Beth tilted her head to the side. So far, she had never really thought too much about who had programmed and trained those AI operatives and based on what.
However, DAISI didn’t appear willing to offer any information nuggets about her evolution. Instead, she accelerated them towards their next pickup destination.
“Approaching data cannon coordinates! Data stream incoming!”
Through the window Beth saw a fat streak of light hit the outer socket. She proceeded to take a sample so she could gauge how many more Megabytes would be added.
Her eyes widened when a video started playing on the test screen: A group of rats, dressed in tailcoats and top hats dancing on their hind legs to a melody she was grateful with the sound muted she couldn’t hear. What was even more disturbing were the jerky transitions from one dance movement to the next. Who wanted to watch this? And who wanted to save it so they could watch it again or -Beth shuddered- show it to their friends?
Luckily, the rat video was the only file they picked up before DAISI announced: “Data stream complete!”
“I know you don’t want to discuss it, but we’re at 99% capacity now. If it was up to me, we’d at least pack it in for the day and return to the base to install a few more memory modules.”
“You are correct. It is not up to you and our priorities are to not waste any time on extra miles. I have a new call, and to leave customers waiting is to make them unhappy! Calculating our next flight route!”
“My priority at the moment is to not have anything explode in here!” Beth shouted, her hands balled into fists.
Nothing happened, except for the landscape underneath moving swiftly eastward. They were on the way to a university campus now. The thirty minutes travel time gave Beth an opportunity to stew in her frustration about the emergency button having been removed. For safety reasons, of course. Nothing was more dangerous than human error, so it had been considered best to avoid someone triggering an emergency landing for no reason, thereby endangering the precious data cargo.
“Approaching data cannon coordinates! Data stream incoming!”
Beth almost didn’t dare to take samples but did so mainly out of habit. There was mix of spreadsheets filled with experiment results, the odd meme and for some reason many PDFs with cocktail recipes.
Beth watched as the cannon pumped a seemingly endless stream into the craft. From experience, she could count the accumulating megabytes in her head. This was going to go south within a matter of seconds now.
And there it was: The bars turned red and in the same moment the alarm started screaming. Fortunately, DAISI was programmed to adjust her volume to any situation, so Beth heard her through the hands covering her ears.
“Trying to contact headquarters!… No luck, only voicemail!… Cannot find anything useful in the protocol!”
Smoke rose from a row of drive banks on the left while those on the right appeared to wobble up and down. Beth wondered if this effect was real or just a matter of the floor shaking so much her eyes had trouble focusing.
She decided to expose her right ear to the noise and sat down at the desk where she typed into the keyboard with one hand:
You know that if the craft goes down, you will crash as well, right?
The screen lit up and the klaxon went silent, replaced by an artificial bell dinging.
DAISI still sounded young, but a lot less enthusiastic now: “Oh! Wait. What?”
Beth almost laughed. “This wasn’t part of your vision of reality?”
“No! Well, in that case…”
To the unsuspecting students on the ground it must have looked like the sudden bolt of lightning came from a very small, but very angry solitary cloud.
Like my contribution to the story challenge April 2025? You can find more of my stories here!
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