Prompted Fiction

#14 - Traffic Signal (Week 5 No. 3)

Tuesday

The little circuit board and the accompanying speaker were both scorched and blackened, emitting the smell of burnt rubber and something poisonously vile. Jim coughed and handed the sooty mess to the summer student. She was a placid, round-faced girl who always looked slightly surprised.

"And there's the last one," Jim said. "Every single APS at the bloody intersection, all burnt out at once. The Accessibility Committee will have our heads."

"It's just a stupid tweeter," the student grumbled. "Who needs all that noise every time the light changes, anyhow?"

Had the student been a boy, Jim would have cuffed the kid's ear over that one. Instead, he resisted the urge, and said, "How's a blind person supposed to know the light has changed without the sound changing, too?"

The kid shrugged, her mouth hanging open, an unflattering red hole. Jim sighed.

"Look," he said, "We've only got one signal light in this town; the least we can do is get it to work right."

Wednesday

Jim flipped through the timing plan that was kept in the locked controller box.

"How long was that amber?" He asked the student.

"Um. I think I missed -"

"You were supposed to be timing the phases!" Jim spat out. "Why did I lend you that stopwatch?"

The girl made a sour face, but looked up at the light again. Jim waited, and waited, and waited. Finally the amber light turned on, and then off.

"Five seconds!" the girl announced.

"That's not right!" Jim complained. "Way too short a time to be safe, and not what's in the plan at all." He stuffed the timing plan back into the cabinet and went to fetch his laptop from the pickup. Time to reset the controller. Again.

Thursday

Jim was late; he had an 8:30 meeting with a Councillor, the Deputy Mayor, and one of the 'frequent flier' residents. Something about not liking the Town's Council-approved Traffic Calming Policy. It was already 8:25. He could see the office, but he couldn't get there. He was stuck at the only signalized intersection in town, and the light just wasn't changing.

Jim waited. He waited some more. It was 8:26.

There was no traffic on the cross street. He rolled the car back and forth, wiggling it around in the lane, in case the sensors hadn't picked him up. It was 8:27.

At 8:29, he got out of the car, and pressed the pedestrian signal button. The light turned green at once. Jim had to run to make it back to the car before the light went amber again.

The Deputy Mayor reminded Jim that residents are on a schedule, too.

Friday

The electrical technician made a face. "Well," he said, "There's your problem. A virus."

"A virus?" Jim was bewildered.

"Sure," said the technician. Controller gets infected, thinks it runs the place, lights go haywire."

'I knew it all along," the summer student announced.

"Kid, you're fired."

The girl's mouth dropped open. Then her nose began to twitch, and tears began to pool in her eyes.

Jim kicked the light pole. "Reformat the bloody thing. It deserves it."

Prompt: A computer that controls a stoplight in a small town becomes drunk with power.

Source: www.writepop.com/science-fiction-story-ideas/1001-story-ideas-part-9-man-machine