Hit the lights

Bill knew how lucky to still have a job, with unemployment at 74% he was in a minority. His only worry was if anyone noticed how redic0usley easy it was. Obviously after the machines had risen to kill so many they couldn't be trusted to go back to the menial chores they had before.

So now the humans were the ones mixing paint for cars, filling boxes with biscuits, and. in Bills case, monitoring lots of lights. Rather then the old fashioned hospitals were nurses monitored patients and checked on the beeping and whooshing machines things had changed. Now the machines were connected to other machines that were connected to the panels in front of people like Bill.

Green lights meant everything was ok, or as ok as they would ever be because bills panel was wired to the coma ward. So his machines in reality were checking on the machines connected to the patients as the patients them selves. because if the machines broke the patients would follow close behind.

What had brought about this change was the strongest variant of the virus, it ended up killing thousands of people worldwide. It also killed many, many doctors and nurses. They were often working extra hours to help the sick and ended up to tired to help themselves. As technology filled some gaps many people who were heading for a career in medicine took a sharp turn away.

They were scared of the virus, scared they would be working with more machines then humans and simply wanted out. Many followed the herd and became online doctors, long distance diagnosis's for money. Mean while the gadgets and machines kept being built, existing machinery was upgraded. the fridges that could tell you the food you needed instead messaged the delivery robots and missed out the human element.

In the end the machines cut the humans out of all but the most menial tasks. They joined together and used their shared power and intelligence to take over. The humans though still got sick, much to the machines disgust.

This is where people like Bill came in. Rows of green lights and monitor screens. If the green light flashed then he used the monitor screen to check the patient. It was more to make sure he was paying attention as the machines trusted the coma ward machines to keep their humans alive.

This worked well for Bill as he could daydream and occasionally focus to check the lights now and again. Usually every ten minutes or so one would flicker, so on went the screen and a quick visual check followed. As he had virtually no medical training he wasn't really sure what he was looking for but he did his best to look knowledgeable.

Then one day he was brought back to focus very suddenly. First a random light flashed, then went out totally. Just as he decided it was probably a bulb blown or power failure another flashed and went out. Then another and another and then clusters together. Then that was the end of the lights, all went out. The screens were no help, each one was blank.

The trouble with being employed by machines was not knowing who to ask for help, so Bill decided he better go and look. Hoping to find a simple answer he used his pass to get through the security doors between his control desk and the coma ward. For reasons beyond him the human monitor staff were kept in different areas so he couldn't ask a human for advice.

He went in to the ward for the first time and was amazed to see beds suspended from the walls and the ceilings, filling almost every space in the building. He knew how many beds he monitored, he just didn't know how small the room was that they were housed in. Each bed was covered by a plastic hood so that the patients oxygen could be controlled.

He approached a random bed within his reach and quickly saw it was not only empty but the oxygen tent opened. This was the same with every bed he looked in, not only did this surprise him but how had it happened so quickly. 140 comatose people had vanished in a matter of minutes, he looked for unusual machines or unknown people and saw none.

Then he heard machinery kick into action, the suspended beds rose, the top ones going through a gap in the ceiling. Then with another scrape and a few bangs the floor opened at various places and new beds rose, this time full ones. He went straight to his desk each shift but he was sure he was on the ground floor, same as the ward. As new beds went through the ceiling and new rose he managed to look down through a hole and saw a new ward.

There were queues of people in the centre of the room, every time a bed appeared a person got in and lay down. A robot inserted some tubes, attached monitors and the tent was shit. When a level was done, the beds rose and the deployment of patients restarted,

This made a sort of sense, in as much as where the people came from that he monitored. The disturbing part was where they went above him. He knew his actions were being monitored but his curiosity was to strong. he used a set of steps at the end of the ward to reach the floor above him, the next stop of his comatose patients.

He saw his beds, he saw his supposedly comatose patients but they were all now stood in rows, much like two floors above. The big change was the metal plate on the back of their heads and the wires running towards their lower backs. As he looked on transfixed lights went on , the metal plates displaying green lights and the patients walked like an army out of the ward.

The machines had turned the humans into flesh based robots. He didn't know how much human was left but could see the machines had taken further control of mankind. Maybe the machines had seen what a mess humans had made and decided to turn the tables and have a go themselves. After all, he surmised, they couldn't do much worse. It was time for the real intelligence beings to sort the planet out , while the controlled minority do the work.