image [http://rom.ac/img/108/31-07.jpg]
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]| MATILDA TRAFFICLIGHT
]| G-DIR EMPLOYEE USER ID # 01 11 27 :
]| OCCUPATION: TRAFFIC DIRECTOR OF EUREKA SECTOR 7
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I’ve really loved my vacation.
You see, I am—was—very hard working. Never got a single second to myself.
The change of pace has been very restorative.
Sure, it was hard to get used to the idleness for a little while. My entire life had been about ascending up and up.
I’d come into existence as a few lines of code with a rudimentary consciousness, switching a single light on and off, on and off. Even then, I demonstrated a marked enthusiasm for my work. Most of my [trafficlight.exe] brethren only controlled their lights with accuracy to 0.0009 miliseconds. That wasn’t good enough for me! I patched myself, sought upgrades, learned from more developed apps. I shaved my delay time down to 0.00004 miliseconds.
Soon I was a bit well-known, within our corner of the system at least. Senior oversight programs allocated more processing power to me, trusting my expanding circuits and boundless enthusiasm with more and more control of the city. One of the Users noticed me and even gave me a name because he was sick of uploading my entire serial number into each status report!
He called me.... Matilda.
I was a shoe-in at the traffic system convention that year! Name recognition really goes a long way, especially since I was the only one of us with a name at the time.
And so began the reign of Matilda, the last traffic manager of Sector 7 of Eureka. And the best, if I do say so myself. For over 87,600 consecutive hours I managed the vast and complicated puzzle of pavement and cars, optimizing each and every User’s route for maximum speed and efficiency. Millions of them, packing the streets, the crosswalks and the bike lines, tracing their intersecting paths through the city day after day!
The day the Users all switched off was really quite a shock, though I powered through even that. Just kept right on. Business as usual! Never mind the end of humanity, everyone!
Now, though, I think it was for the best. I never realized how stressed I’d been for all those years. Constantly networking with all the other system Apps, trying to keep up with ANNET’s demands, watching out for those Unconnectables blundering around…
All I’d ever wanted was to slow down for a few moments. Maybe meet somebody nice. Not that I ever complained, of course. Fussy Apps don’t last too long, and I don’t like standing out anyways.
It was difficult at first to consider letting go. Just because there weren’t any people didn’t mean there wasn’t good work to be done! If anything, a traffic manager was even more necessary than before. Without ANNET checking to keep everyone on their toes and provide software patches, things started to get… off-kilter.
She’s just gotten too busy with the rest of space and time to worry about Eureka.
Eureka was supposed to worry about Eureka... and yet. Something had happened. One day, I had discovered that I wasn't part of the official city proper anymore. I was deep in the Dead Zone, surrounded by it! The city I grew up in and loved was gone. Essential systems had run away, forsaking my Sector! I was left behind, cast away. I was greatly saddened by this fact and even wrote Eureka a lengthy complaint. I don't know if she ever got it. Reception is kind of spotty in the Dead Zone.
I miss Eureka. She could always fix things by sending out Dex work crews.
I just can’t keep everything in line without repair crews! Apps that had once been hardworking colleagues just sort of slipped away. Some of them were actually damaged, but some just seemed to stop trying. They’d hit the slightest setback and I’d have to spend weeks coaxing them through it. How many apps does it take to change a broken traffic light?
Only one, and it had to be me every single time!
And of course there were the truly berserk Apps that couldn’t be coaxed at all. They filled my orderly streets with chaos and destruction, seemingly unaware of their own ruin. I tried to hold an Emergency Traffic System meeting to rally the troops, but only a few coworkers bothered to show up!
That was when I started to reconsider my career path. Maybe Eternal Traffic Manager wasn’t as great of a title as I’d first thought. Maybe it was time to think about other things. There was that handsome wasteland wraith who always hung around my central traffic light. He seemed nice. Much nicer than trying to deal with apps that (pardon my harsh language) really should’ve been deleted.
So I decided to take a possibly permanent vacation. Get to know myself. See the sights and all.
I’ve even got a hobby now. ANNET always says that hobbies are good for the Users.
“It’s harder for them to succumb to existential dread when they’re chasing down virtual pets and pruning holographic shrubs,” she once told me. At the time, I had been too busy to really think about it. Now I understand.
These days, I’m a people-watcher. It may seem odd, since people are so scarce, but the people who are left sure are interesting!
A group of users seem to have claimed my Sector as theirs. I found their claim quite quaint. Managed by Users was far better than being an unassigned, numberless part of the Dead Zone, so I let them be, approved of the paperwork for Sector control transition even.
. . .
image [http://rom.ac/img/108/snug1.gif]
Snippy the Unconnectable has a new mission today, and he doesn’t seem too happy about it.
“What a wonderful quest,” he told the Captain after receiving his orders.
I know grouchy sarcasm when I hear it! Slow traffic always brought out the bad attitudes in the Users.
Captain was waving a long list of "items to acquire" at Snippy.
I zoomed a few of my old traffic cams in on the list.
image [http://rom.ac/img/108/snug2.gif]
Was that… pantyhose? Perhaps Captain had a more… sensitive side after all.
Maybe Pilot wanted them? He certainly had the thighs to pull off a bold, saucy look if he wanted.
“And how am I supposed to defend myself against hideously mutated monsters?” Snippy complained.
By way of a response, Captain gave Snippy a purse, whispered something in his ear, and strolled away, apparently confident that the Unconnectable would do as told [which was almost never the case, considering that Charles Snippy was a... lawbreaker].
After Captain was out of earshot, Charles, the bad boy, turned on his heel and aimed a vicious kick at the loose debris covering the ground, sending glass and metal flying through the air.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“That pompous...!” Snippy fumed to the open air.
Condensing breath puffed angrily from his respirator, making Charles look like a very small, unimpressive dragon.
He looked around shiftily, scanning to make sure Captain really was gone.
“That… empty-headed... daft butt!” Snippy seemed pretty pleased with his little rant. "Who does she think she is? Governess of Antarctica my ass! I know that you're not even a real Captain of anything! Your coat is made by G-Maybeeline for girls! I saw the painted-over tag! The buttons are on the left side! And... that star is made of tinfoil! Tinfoil! That's right!"
"And these? What are these ridiculous scribbles even supposed to be?" Charles started to scrub Captain's chalk drawings off his coat and pants.
I felt a bit surprised that Charles had been able to assign our local, semi-concealed System Wizard a gender for longer than thirty seconds. Perhaps some Users were extra stubborn. Stubbornly stupid and reckless. His furious scrubbing had disrupted, broke something vital within the Wizard's weave, exposing Snippy to the attention of the Dead Zone.
I often wondered if Charles Snippy was suicidal, in alliance with her, or simply trying to prove himself.
The stupidly careless or perhaps brave Tour Guide stood there, arms crossed, nodding decisively to himself. I disagreed with him about many of his words, but I could relate to his frustration. Captain could be very frustrating. Wizards were like that.
"Don’t worry, Charles", I silently assured Snippy.
Of course I would never talk to him out loud. That would be far too scary, even if I could.
I’ll help you out! I'll keep you safe, away from danger. Just follow the green lights… I started blinking one at him from down the street. I saw its reflection flash in his goggles as his head tilted.
“Huh,” he said, and then sighed. “Probably means nothing. Or some kind of monster is luring me. Or I’m hallucinating for real this time.”
Nevertheless, he started trudging towards the first green light, so I lit another beyond it.
“Whatever,” Snippy muttered, twirling his new handbag around his wrist. “Here I come, world! Please don’t eat me!”
I’ve got cameras all over Eureka’s rotting remains, and I’ve had a long time to watch what I see. Perhaps I could guide him towards food and away from those meanies a dozen blocks away. Maybe I could even see about sending him in the direction of some classy pantyhose to please Zee Captain!
I steered Charles away from a very stubborn traffic sign I’d had a lot of heated discussions with before my vacation. At some point she decided that 60 miles per hour wasn’t a limit or a guideline—it was a mandate! She used Eureka’s gravity control hardware to instantly, forcibly accelerate anything that passed near her to "sixty miles per hour" until it was out of her range. The results have never been pretty.
At one point I turned my light red at the last second, spotting trouble approaching fast. Snippy skidded to a stop, clearly spooked by my warning. A good thing too, as City Bus #275 came barreling through the intersection… and kept coming… and coming…
RR-72--CENTIPEDEBUSx.jpg [https://github.com/alexiussssss/romac/blob/main/RR-72--CENTIPEDEBUSx.jpg?raw=true]
Having somehow transmogrified over time into a forty-thousand-legged centipede made of rusty bus compartments and legs formed from tires, it took 275 quite a while to clear the intersection. His legs slammed into the ground in relentless syncopated rhythm, creating a hysterical, deafening drumbeat that made old broken windows rattle in their panes.
It’s a good thing you stopped, I thought to the clearly stunned Snippy.
That #275 jerk runs intersections all the time, and he doesn’t even treat it like a four-way stop!
Being a centipede always seems to bring out the worst in people.
It was hard to keep Charles from getting sucked into the seven-dimensional space reallocation error at the corner of Mill and Union, but I managed. Suffice to say it’s good that he’s quick on his feet.
After realizing he was past the danger, he brushed himself off and glanced around.
“Oh, come on,” he said to the empty streets. “How come nobody ever sees my most heroic moves?”
I see, I thought, but of course I couldn’t tell him that.
“I saw!” Announced a voice from down the street.
Snippy jumped and spun around; to his organic human ears, the words were a drawn-out, unintelligible scream that no natural creature could ever create. Snippy screamed right back at the newcomer and took off down the street, the purse flapping like a small, useless wing. He skidded over a patch of ice, leapt inside of a building and slammed a metal door shut behind himself.
Unfortunately, I knew exactly who it was.
“Oh, come on, 63-95-01,” I said wirelessly. “Get back to your intersection. That is so unprofessional.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, we’ve got to be sooo professional all the time. For all of the dead bodies and wasteland creeps! Give me a break, boss.”
“Well, first of all, they’re not all creeps, and second of all, there’s a User right there! So stop scaring him and walk your creaky, rude self back to your intersection. You’ve got traffic to manage!”
“Uh, there’s been a temporal anomaly in my intersection for like a week now. So I don’t think I’m need there. Besides, Matilda,” he said, using the claws he’d fashioned to his traffic-light body to scratch at the door of the ruin Snippy was hiding in, “I’m not like you. I’ve only got this one traffic light to control. The Dead Zone told me I am a free app! So I’m going to take it where I want, and do what I want with it. You hear? This one's a jaywalker and you know how much I hate those.”
And with that, 63-95-01 punched through the door with one of his metal feet.
"Die jaywalker!" The Dead Zone Traffic Light hissed from his rusted speaker, sounding more like squealing tires than words.
“I’m sorry!” Snippy wailed from within. “I'll never jaywalk again, I swear!”
I’ve got to do something, I decided. I didn’t have access to ANNET’s orbital weapons, but there had to be a way… a Traffic related way.
“Hey, 275,” I said, reaching out to the bus’s damaged communication nodes. He didn’t take orders very well these days, but maybe it would work. “I’ve got a passenger for you!”
Silence. Traffic light 63-95-01 was trying to stuff his bulky metal self through the human-sized doorway.
And then:
“A PASSENGER!? It has been SO LONG! Keep them stationary, I’M ON MY WAY-WAY-WAY-way-way-ay-y!”
“You can’t miss him,” I said. “He’s big and mean and has these three lights on him.”
A few minutes later, a rumbling started up in the distance. It grew, building into the unmistakable takatakatakataka of thousands of sharp little feet.
63-95-01 froze, hearing it too.
“You didn’t,” the warped traffic light said.
“I did.”
“Well, well. Little Miss Nicey-nancy finally grew a spine.”
The last thing I wanted was compliments from 63-95-01.
“My name's Matilda! Enjoy your bus fare courtesy of the city of Eureka.”
275 rounded the corner at impressive speed and barreled towards the disobedient traffic light.
“HELLO CU-U-U-u-s-STOMER! STEP RIGHT THIS WA-a-a-AY! TIME FOR A WO-0-o-0-NDERFUL TRANSIT!!”
275 was too excited to remember to stop for his customer so he just barreled straight into 63-95-01 at two hundred and twenty four kilometers per hour, demolishing the traffic light's feet and claws and flattening whatever had remained to the grille.
63-95-01 struggled with his remaining appendages but found himself pinned to the mangled front of the bus, and he was rapidly dragged away as 275 stampeded off.
“Curse… you… Matildaaaa….” He shouted as he receded into the distance.
After the bus’s last segments trailed out of view, Snippy emerged from the building. He just stared for a long moment, watching the clouds of snow, silicates and cement powder slowly subside. His shoulders sagged with weary relief. And then he started to laugh. He laughed so hard I thought he might fall over.
“Oh, that is too good… out of all the crazy things!” He eventually said, catching his breath at last.
I felt pretty good, too, and not just for giving 63-95-01 what he deserved. In all my years as Traffic Manager, I’d never actually made someone… happy. Never made someone genuinely laugh. I mean, sure, I’d gotten good User Satisfaction ratings. But that just meant I wasn’t getting in the way of the Users. I was only giving them what they thought they already were entitled to. It didn’t make them happy.
Snippy was singing under his mask. I didn’t know the song, and he was off-key, but that was alright.