Intruder Alert: Part 1

A Sci-Fi/Fantasy story
Part 1
It appeared to be a typical morning, the sky over the distant hills to the east were just beginning to be lit up by the rising sun. The air was biting cold the day after Christmas. A glum cluster of early morning customers were waiting outside the main entrance for the manager to open up so they could return the items they didn’t want. A tall broad shouldered, handsome, apparently, young man wearing the company vest of purple streaked with red lightning-like embroidering strolled up to the inside of the door and unlocked it. As the doors opened, he said, ”Good morning, good morning, welcome to the largest home improvement store in this part of the world,”
A few people grumbled about having to wait in the cold. That wasn’t the manager’s fault, they could have waited in their cars until he opened up. ‘What was the big hurry?’

Sometime later in the manager office, the beginning of what was not usual was beginning to develop. “Tell me again why you want to come in on the night shift” Fred asked.
Fred couldn’t be more different from Blake in appearance. Whereas Blake was not exactly built like an elite football player, martial master, or military policemen he was physically impressive, agile, coordinated and graceful. Fred on the other hand was of average height, thin, a little paunchy, near sighted, awkward with dark stringy hair and an sinister aura that people often wondered about. Fred never did or said anything of a sinister nature so there was an incongruity between his appearance and his behavior.
Blake stopped typing up the morning report and tried to assume an attitude of patience. This was a question he wasn’t expecting, because he thought he had made his reasons clear the day before. Deciding that further elaboration on his part was the best diplomatic response he could muster, Blake decided to give it another try. He looked closely at Fred to make sure he had his attention and he was really listening this time.
He would approach the subject from a different angle, and see if Fred arrived at the same conclusion he did.“There’s been some odd things happening during the graveyard shift,” Blake said.
“Please go on! Yes?,” Fred replied.
“Let’s see, there appears to be evidence of a human presence,” Blake ventured, offering only a little bit of the story at a time, with the intention of not losing Fred. After all, Fred was assistant manager of this mega store. They had worked together on the day shift for nearly a decade. That was a long time in this chaotic world of rapidly changing work and sales environments. The store was, to put it simply, bigger than a small town. How much bigger, let’s say a very small town, 200,000 square feet. It was primarily staffed by people. However there were dozens of robotic machines actively helping customers and employees to find merchandise and move heavy items, like fridges, stoves, etc. The current method of restocking was accomplished with robotic equipment at night. Normally, there were no human beings needed or wanted on the night shift. Mainly, because the robots could detect a human presence and would slow down, and move much more slowly and carefully in order to avoid hurting the human, therefore taking much longer to restock the shelves, a task that took all night even at the breakneck, untiring pace of the AI machines.“One of the hardware robot has been intermittently slowing down and speeding up practically all night in response to a human presence,” Blake said, “barely getting the work done before the store is opened in the morning.”
“Cameras! Have the cameras spotted anything?” Fred asked. Before Blake could reply, Fred went on.“Maybe it’s an animal. You remember that time a bunch of rats were running around. Could be a cat, remember the cat. It was black and didn’t register in the video. Oh, and the birds, remember when there was a flock of birds flying around in there.”
“No, I don’t think it’s animals this time. I haven’t seen any evidence of animals during the day. The clean up machine would have reported feces. Remember, we programmed that in, to check for animal debris. I don’t know what’s causing the problem. That’s why I want to be here during that shift and see for myself.”
“Well, okay. So if you hang out during the graveyard shift, does that mean you won’t be here during the day tomorrow?” Fred asked.
“Yeah, actually true. In order to maintain adequate sleep requirements, I’ll have to get some rest during the day.” Blake said. Sleep deprivation on the part of employees was one of the justifications for a graveyard robotic workforce. The insurance claims filed by human workers had been exorbitant. Employees were having so many accidents, running into each other, other equipment or merchandise, corporate decided it was cheaper to enable a robotic restocking task force. It turns out, after redesigning the shelving system to accommodate an AI robot, that inventory on hand could be more accurately tracked while merchandise was restocked.
“Also, have you considered that whoever or whatever shows up at night might be a danger to you. Are you bored, and just want some excitement of facing the unknown alone? …I don’t believe you have suicidal tendencies, do you? ….I know: you want to try out your martial arts on some unawares intruder. . We could summon a police bot to accompany you for backup,” Fred timidly suggested.
“I really don’t think there’s any danger. I’ll let you know how it goes. Okay?, until later.” Blake said as he walked out of the office. Misgivings and some anxiety began to creep into his mind. Fred had a point there, maybe I should be more cautious and call for police accompaniment. But that requires corporate approval and that could take weeks. I’m tired of running to mother corp every time there’s a decision to be made. Blake pondered for a while the other renegade decisions he’d made and how well things had turned out. His track record had been pretty good, except for that one time. And that was a fluke and no one had really gotten hurt. Blake didn’t feel that there was any real danger ahead and decided to push ahead.
To be continued…