Rebirth, Renewal, Rediscovery Post: River Watching
Title: River Watching
Universe/Setting: Post Unknown-Type of Apocalypse
Rating/Warnings: Should be safe for all
Summary: After mankind disappears an AI monitoring a dam is faced with a decision...
Prompt provided by ysabetwordsmith
The artificial intelligence that operated the dam, made hundreds of thousands of decisions each day in fractions of a second. But it took years for the AI to accept that its situation had truly changed. All of its operational priorities, each item in the mission statement it had been given, all were reevaluated. Maintain the dam and the generators contained within. This had been done faithfully for almost a century. Provide for the power needs of the nearby communities. Each generator was fully functioning, but one by one over the past decade the lines they fed had been failing. In that time it had been unsuccessful in contacting any city's power bureau. Provide irrigation water for the farms in the valley below. Some of the farms the AI could observe directly with the facility's security cameras. For the first few years of silence the automated machinery on the farms continued operations. But when the AI observed a robot harvester come to a halt in the middle of a field no maintenance crew arrived to repair it. The harvester had remained in the same location, unmoving, for the last 2,293 days. It had been almost half as many days since the sensors on the irrigation pipelines had last detected any usage. There was only one goal that remained in its mission. Analyze and maintain the environmental soundness of the river the dam stretched across.
The AI diverted several drones from maintenance of the power and irrigation lines in its area of authority and increased observation of the river. For a full year it measured every facet of the rivers health it could while making a last effort to contact any of its creators. After a year of silence the decision was made. Even though it had not seen its creators for all these years the AI followed proper procedures. Warnings were called from the internal and external speakers, strobe lights lit up, and a siren made its wailing for several minutes. Then, every spillway, every diversion channel, every barrier to the water held behind the dam was opened. With a thundering roar thousands of cubic meters of water a second spilled forth into the river.
Even with this torrential flow that sent a flood of water down the river the water level of the lake behind the dam was slow to drop. Maintenance drones waited patiently at the sides of the dam for one final job upon it. Following a plan that the AI's creators had never truly expected to be followed the drones swarmed over the dam as it was exposed cutting away a block at a time. The very power of the rushing water shook the ground and progress was slowed as rocks gave way collapsing a secondary relief tunnel. Even so within a week the lake had almost completely disappeared and soon so had all but the absolute lowest sections of the dam. Some months later as the mountain snows melted the icey water flowed freely down the river.
With only one of its goals remaining the AI spent its time watching the newly freed river. The maintenance drones were modified as best as its the machine shop could and it set them to monitoring every stretch of water within its territory. Every bend mapped, every plant cataloged, each fish counted and tracked. For the next decade the computer tracked the changes in the river and produced report after report for the environmental agencies that no longer communicated with it. With each season the river edged closer and closer to its historically recorded state. By the decade's end even the AI's programmed patience was satisfied and it began planning for hibernation.
One drone was left active to keep clean the solar panels that were once merely a backup power supply. Step-by-step each section of the facility was given one last check, sealed, and powered down. Finally only the AI itself remained active. One last check was made on the cameras, a frame from one pondered for several cycles. Salmon leaping through the rapids formed by the last remaining sections of the dam's base. With this image on its mind the AI concluded that it was succeeding as best as was possible with its sole remaining goal. Confident that it was a good computer, a watchdog timer was set to wake it in fifty years and the computer powered down into hibernation mode.
(This is a crossposting |
replies at the original post on dreamwidth | Comment at dreamwidth | You can comment on DW posts even if you don't have an account there Using OpenID!)
Universe/Setting: Post Unknown-Type of Apocalypse
Rating/Warnings: Should be safe for all
Summary: After mankind disappears an AI monitoring a dam is faced with a decision...
Prompt provided by ysabetwordsmith
The artificial intelligence that operated the dam, made hundreds of thousands of decisions each day in fractions of a second. But it took years for the AI to accept that its situation had truly changed. All of its operational priorities, each item in the mission statement it had been given, all were reevaluated. Maintain the dam and the generators contained within. This had been done faithfully for almost a century. Provide for the power needs of the nearby communities. Each generator was fully functioning, but one by one over the past decade the lines they fed had been failing. In that time it had been unsuccessful in contacting any city's power bureau. Provide irrigation water for the farms in the valley below. Some of the farms the AI could observe directly with the facility's security cameras. For the first few years of silence the automated machinery on the farms continued operations. But when the AI observed a robot harvester come to a halt in the middle of a field no maintenance crew arrived to repair it. The harvester had remained in the same location, unmoving, for the last 2,293 days. It had been almost half as many days since the sensors on the irrigation pipelines had last detected any usage. There was only one goal that remained in its mission. Analyze and maintain the environmental soundness of the river the dam stretched across.
The AI diverted several drones from maintenance of the power and irrigation lines in its area of authority and increased observation of the river. For a full year it measured every facet of the rivers health it could while making a last effort to contact any of its creators. After a year of silence the decision was made. Even though it had not seen its creators for all these years the AI followed proper procedures. Warnings were called from the internal and external speakers, strobe lights lit up, and a siren made its wailing for several minutes. Then, every spillway, every diversion channel, every barrier to the water held behind the dam was opened. With a thundering roar thousands of cubic meters of water a second spilled forth into the river.
Even with this torrential flow that sent a flood of water down the river the water level of the lake behind the dam was slow to drop. Maintenance drones waited patiently at the sides of the dam for one final job upon it. Following a plan that the AI's creators had never truly expected to be followed the drones swarmed over the dam as it was exposed cutting away a block at a time. The very power of the rushing water shook the ground and progress was slowed as rocks gave way collapsing a secondary relief tunnel. Even so within a week the lake had almost completely disappeared and soon so had all but the absolute lowest sections of the dam. Some months later as the mountain snows melted the icey water flowed freely down the river.
With only one of its goals remaining the AI spent its time watching the newly freed river. The maintenance drones were modified as best as its the machine shop could and it set them to monitoring every stretch of water within its territory. Every bend mapped, every plant cataloged, each fish counted and tracked. For the next decade the computer tracked the changes in the river and produced report after report for the environmental agencies that no longer communicated with it. With each season the river edged closer and closer to its historically recorded state. By the decade's end even the AI's programmed patience was satisfied and it began planning for hibernation.
One drone was left active to keep clean the solar panels that were once merely a backup power supply. Step-by-step each section of the facility was given one last check, sealed, and powered down. Finally only the AI itself remained active. One last check was made on the cameras, a frame from one pondered for several cycles. Salmon leaping through the rapids formed by the last remaining sections of the dam's base. With this image on its mind the AI concluded that it was succeeding as best as was possible with its sole remaining goal. Confident that it was a good computer, a watchdog timer was set to wake it in fifty years and the computer powered down into hibernation mode.
(This is a crossposting |
replies at the original post on dreamwidth | Comment at dreamwidth | You can comment on DW posts even if you don't have an account there Using OpenID!)