Buzzing
“There they are!"
Webster froze and looked around. Had he said that aloud? That would bad. People would think he was some kind of a nutcase, spending his Easter afternoon admiring the screws and bolts section in the big Constructs! store.
But sure enough; right there in front of him were at least 50 bins of stainless steel screws with plastic knobs on the end. He consulted the note he had made on his iPhone. “11/32nd – 1-1/2.” He looked closer at the bins. 236 mm, 238 mm – two rows lower, 837 mm. Shit, they were all in millimeters. He fumbled with his iPhone, wondering with a smile whetherSiri would know how to convert between millimeters and fractions of an inch. He pressed and held the button.
"What can I help you with?" the text said, as the microphone icon blinked.
"How many millimeters to an inch?" he said
"Let me check on that," the text said.
Ha! It would be interesting to see what she came up with. Hopefully it would be amusing. He knew it would be ridiculous.
"A millimeter converts to 0.0394 inches," Siri said.
Damn!
"What is 5/16×0.0397?" He asked. She'd never get this.
"It looks like the answer is 0.029735," she said.
Well! He resumed his examination of the labels on the bins.
Concentrating as he was, it took a moment for the buzzing to register. Once it did, it was quite annoying. Why with all the technology in the world, couldn’t designers of public address systems fix them so they wouldn't broadcast loud, obnoxious noises?
The buzzing got louder as he tried to find a screw size that matchedSiri’s advice.Usually the blue-aproned attendants with the white "Constructs!" emblazoned on their aprons swarmed all over the place, always friendly, but as often as not directing you to the wrong aisle or wrong section. They were a bother more than aboon.
The buzzing got louder and seemed to be coming from the midpoint of the aisle. Maybe only that particular loudspeaker was defective. Fuck, it was annoying! There it was – 0.436. He pulled open the door, extracted two screws and examined them. They lookedtoo big. He looked back at his iPhone. Shit. 0.297, she said. He put the screws back in the bin and closed the drawer, looking at the row below it.
The buzzing got louder. Damn. Why didn’t they just shut the damn thing off?
He looked up to see if he could find the offending speaker. Something was moving. He jumped sideways. Maybe a package was falling off one of the shelves.
But it didn't appear to be falling, exactly. It seemed to be moving in slow motion, and it was not falling downward, it was moving slightly toward him.
He took a bigger step backwards. Whatever it was now had his full attention.
It was about the size of a small bird – a sparrow maybe. He had seen birds in the Constructs! store before, flapping around, trying to get out, but this one seemed content to hover there,in the fasteners section, almost as if it were watching him. Maybe it was a hummingbird. He never seen a sparrowhover, but he supposed it was possible. He had never seen a hummingbird that big. Still, he was not really an expert on birds.
Part of him was drawn back to the millimeters on the bin labels, but he wasn't inso much of a hurry that he couldn't keep an eye on the bird for a bit longer. He had never heard a bird make that kind of buzzing noise. Maybe it was a coincidence; maybe the loudspeaker malfunctioned just as the bird flew into the aisle. Maybe the buzzing had disoriented the bird; that's why he—or she-- was just hanging around.
There didn't appear any 0.297 millimeter fasteners in this section. He stood near the end of the aisle, toward the front of the store. The product displays wrapped around the end. He moved to his right, glancing occasionally at the sparrow or hummingbird or wherever it was.
As he inclined his body around the corner, scanning the shelf, the source of the buzzing shifted slightly to his left and became louder. He glanced back. It seemed to be following him. And now it had dropped down to about eight feet over the floor and was hovering again. He forgot his quest for the right size fastener and concentrated his full attention on it.
It was not a bird, after all, but some kind of a machine with four spinning rotors – that apparently was what was making a buzzing noise. An angry-looking snoutextended from its front and seemed to be aimed at him. He took a step toward it. It didn't move. He waved at it and it still didn’t move, but now, ever so slightly, dipped and then raised its snout as though it were watching his face and then his hands.
Was the hell? Was this is some kind of demonstration of a new product? That would be pretty neat. He wouldn't mind having one of these, even though he wasn't sure what it was.
He put his hand back in his pocket and started looking around for a blue apron. As he turned the corner and started up the next aisle, hoping to see a flash of blue, the mechanical insect—bird--followed him, still about two feet higher than his head and a couple of paces behind him. Now he was watching it more than looking for blue aprons. Every time he stopped, the thing moved a few inches closer and dropped its snout, watching his hands.
No blue aprons.
Far more interested now infinding out about the thing than getting the right fastener for his new Garmin VIRB, which unaccountably had come with about a dozen plastic brackets, but only one screw to hold all of them together, he approached the customer service desk
"Hello, sir!" the blue aproned middle-aged man behind the desk said immediately. "May I help you Constructs!something today?" All of them cheerily responded to every customer inquiry in the same way. He wondered what they felt like on the inside. They must repeat this a hundred times a day. No. More than that. He started to do a brief calculation in his head. Furthermore, “constructs something today,” was ungrammatical. Probably they didn’t realize that.
“Sir? May I help . . .”
“Oh, sorry,” he said, prying himself away from his calculations. The guy would think he was a space cadet.
“Yes," he said. “What is . . .” He turned around to point at the buzzing. It had stopped. The thing was gone. He looked around for it.
“Something in the plumbing department?”
Webster glanced up. There was indeed a large “Plumbing” sign in the vicinity of where he had last seen the thing. “No. There was something . . . a buzzing . . . I mean.” Jesus! They were going to take him away and lock him up.
“Oh!" the blue apron said."You must have seen Lindbergh, one of our new customer experience representatives.”
“What?”
“He's a drone – although we’re not supposed to call him that. ‘sUAS,’ I think we’re supposed to say. We're thinking about ordering several brothers and sisters for Lindbergh.”
"Customer experience representative?"
"Well, you know."The blue apron looked around as though he was about to share a secret. "Different kinds of customers have different kinds of ‘experiences.’” He dropped his voice a little. “Two weeks ago we had a bunch of guys come in here and strip a whole section of copper pipe, carrying the stuff out through the fire door into a vehicle waiting outside. They were gone by the time anyone responded to the alarm.” His voice had come back up in volume. "I used to be a cop," he said. “I seen all kinds of things.”
"So you thought I was a shoplifter?" Webster said, trying to decide whether he felt more offended or fascinated.
"No, no," the apron ex-cop said. "We didn't think anything. Lindbergh has been programmed—I think that’s the word--to watch interesting behaviors and movements. You must've done something that attracted his attention.”
"I was just looking for the right size screw and trying to sort through millimeters and fractions of inches, and then I heard this buzzing.”
“Well, they are kind of loud. I don't know all the details-- we contracted with some little company to help us test the concept. Weird bunch—one of the guys is a young helicopter pilot, and the more senior guy apparently is a lawyer or professor of some kind. But they’re really into all this drone stuff.
“We’re supposed to complete this test in another week and then make a decision on whether to order more of them. Like I say, I don't understand too much about how they work, but I've had a lot of experience with security cameras. There’re probably 200 of them in here right now. If this thing works like it’s supposed to, it's going to be a lot better than security cameras. He paused, and then raised an eyebrow. “‘course they may need fewer of us, if they get more of them. Part of our job is to watch what people are doing as well as saying, "can I help you?”
He liked this guy. “How many times a day do you say that? I was trying to calculate a few minutes ago.”
The blue-aproned ex-cop laughed. "Lots, I can tell you that. I’ve never added it up. Let me know what the answer is.” He laughed again.
As Webster started to respond, there was a buzzing noise behind him, and both he and the ex-cop turned to look. A couple of college students were walking quickly down the main aisle. They looked like football players. One was a bit younger than the other. Both wore shorts and hoodies.
Lindbergh followed closely behind, buzzing loudly. The pair broke into a full run as they approached the self checkout counter. Their hands were busy, pulling small items from their pockets and tossing them on the floor, on the counters, and on the piles of merchandise,as they ran past the scanners. Lindbergh buzzed closely behind them, directing his snout at their hand movements.
The older one stumbled as he looked over his shoulder at Lindbergh and went sprawling, knocking more packages loose from the waistband of his shorts as he fell. A box containing a small electric drill appeared from under his hoodie and bounced on the floor.The younger one accelerated, losing a flipflop as he approached the door. He kicked off the other one and ran out into the parking lot barefoot. The older one scrambled up and followed him, shouldering through the door just as it started to close on him.
Webster locked eyes with the blue apronedex-cop. Both of them started to laugh. They looked at the now closed automatic doors and the figures scurrying across the parking lot. They looked back at each other and laughed some more.
"You see what I mean?" the blue-aproned ex-cop said. “I think Lindbergh is going to get some brothers and sisters.”
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