The drone slid above the treetops through day’s last unsupervised minutes. Nothing down there held a hard edge: yards kept neat and yards nobody kept, people walking dogs, people walking nothing at all, outdoor lights buttering the world gray and cream while shadow pooled thick under the woods that ran beside the railroad tracks.
Eighteen years old, cross-legged in a chair, lit by her own screens and nothing else. She’d loaded the drone that afternoon with coordinates out to the tracks and home again, training mode on, teaching it the route the way she liked it flown. Her other hand plugged holes in code for White Dragon, the game she and a friend had built. Screen to screen to screen, hands quick, mind quicker.
Both hands stopped.
What was that?
Left monitor. She wrenched the drone out of its program, thumbed it to manual, banked it back around.
The camera zoomed. In a small clearing, a man rose out of a crouch. A young woman lay naked on the ground before him, her skin cream-in-coffee in the failing light, no tan lines anywhere. He started toward the tracks at a stroll, a man with nowhere urgent to be. The woman’s lips didn’t part. Her eyes didn’t follow. She did not move a muscle, not a twitch.
Him or her. Him or her. Her thumb chose: him.
The drone wheeled toward the tracks. He crossed them, threaded a stand of trees on the far side, came out on a street that dead-ended at the rail line. Left side of the road. He stopped beside a black (possibly navy) car parked under a tree, got in, started the engine, and rolled away at the speed of a man obeying every law he hadn’t already broken.
The drone kept every frame.
She flew it back and parked it fifteen feet above the clearing. Same sprawl. Same fixed eyes. Fifteen feet of evening between the lens and a girl who hadn’t moved an inch.
She placed the call from one of her computers.
“911. What’s your emergency?”
“There’s a girl h-hurt... or... or... d-dead in Wellesley Woods.”
Author’s Note
Drones don't use AI, but they can use AI technology to improve performance and create new applications. Sensors and cameras can aid AI algorithms in navigating, detecting objects, and deciding. We can program machines with AI to do tasks that require human intelligence. While drones can incorporate AI technologies, they are not AI themselves. AI can enable drones to recognize and follow objects, or to join forces with other drones. Combining drones and AI can open up new possibilities in aerial surveillance, search and rescue, and delivery services.
I wrote this short story as the beginning of a novel I had started some years ago. That novel still gathers digital dust bunnies.
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I was ready for the next chapter!
A good one to have dusted off. What a dilemma to fall into. Where will this go?! Great start, Caro!