Puddles sat idly upon a yellowed landscape as Ray walked down his sandy footpath, barely wide enough for a single person to walk through at peak harvest. As he looked back across the horizon, he saw trucks and cars pass one another, each filled with individuals looking to get to work, school, or market, snaking along the CA-99. Some might be taking their final leg of their journey back home from the airport, some might just be driving back to their regular 9-5 deadend job in programming or consulting or service.
Ray somewhat envied them, but only somewhat. He had been here on his farm for his entire life, and his life as a farmer had been set for him by his birth. He knew he could have had something else, something better perhaps, but he knew farming well. He wasn't always great at it, and he lacked the engineering prowess of his father, Jerome. Still, he knew his way around his 1280 acre plot, the last individual-owned plot in California, and one of very few remaining on the continent, not counting the pot gardens and pot "gardens" that had come back into fashion over the past few years. Even then, those gardens typically restricted growers into specific contracts to buy specific fertilizers and seeds every month. Ray was different. He had his own farm and his own land, and he was planting his own seeds and using whatever fertilizer and pesticides and irrigation drones he needed.
As he walked back past watery plot and less watery plot, Ray pulled out his phone to check on his drones. Drones had revolutionized agriculture, providing easy access to aerial views and distribution of fertilizer or pesticides or water. It was an agricultural revolution like no other, just like all the other agricultural revolutions. Before checking his drones, he saw a notification from Rachel:
yo come help me with this one of the drones is ded
Ray unlocked his phone and checked his drones, and sure enough, one feed was dead. It seemed 44.36.9.9 was down, showing a black screen and 9999ms ping. Ray sent a response text:
sure, bring it back to the shed and ill take a look at it be there in 5"
it might be water damage. the drone was partly in the ground when i got to it
maybe. ill take a look
Ray hopped in his pickup and drove back over to his shed in the middle of his plot. Ray had built this shed with his dad when he was 16, replacing an older shed that had been built back in the 2280s. It was honestly quite impressive how long that shed stood up, and it had only been taken down by a 9.8 magnitude earthquake in 2365, and even then only because a semi truck careened onto it and spilled industrial solvents all over it. The cleanup had taken weeks and several insurance payments, and ultimately Jerome had to pay WM to take care of it. They then sent over a WM garbage truck and threw in everything they could, then blasted the rest with concentrated acetic acid. Altogether, they sent them a bill of around 20 million dollars, but fortunately insurance covered about 17.5 million. Still though, Ray and his family were in the red for a couple years before paying back the debt. After a year of annoyance, Jerome purchased 6 tons of lunar steel from a scrapyard and built a new shed, this one bigger and with all the tool boxes and circuit boards and quarter inch screwdrivers and 150Hz radios a farmer could ever need.
Ray hopped out of his truck and headed through the red painted wooden walls his mom had insisted on. Steel was a good material for structural integrity, she had said, but it bends easily and also reflects light into your eyes. You should use steel to reinforce a structure like with reinforced concrete, but you can't use steel as the only building block. She personally made Jerome order 8 tons of oak wood from New Hampshire, which were finally delivered by flatbed truck about 4 months later. She also ordered 4 large cans of paint from Benjamin Moore and painted the walls herself.
Inside, Rachel was tinkering with the drone. "Dad, take a look at this."
Rachel held up a circuit board caked with corrosion and oxidation, with light green copper covering the face of the dark green silicon and metallic circuit parts. "Yea, that's water damage alright.", Ray remarked.
"You think we should toss it?"
"Nah, I'll try the thermal camera and the sautering iron. If there's a short or something, we can replace the part. But honestly the whole fleet is probably gonna have to be replaced sometime in the next few years or so."
"I mean, that's fair, but are you sure? With damage this severe, is it worth trying to fix it?"
"Eh, my truck has been through worse and lived through a few fixes, this shouldn't be a problem. But for now you should probably configure the replacement drone."
"Alright sure. Uh- this one was 44.36.9.9/24, was it?"
"Yup, and it was running on row 36. Try 44.36.9.99."
Ray began by taking a brush to the board and brushing off any major debris or dirt that may have seeped through the casing before washing the board with rubbing alcohol and using an alcohol towel to rub gunk off of the worst offenders.
Ray brought the circuit board to his sautering station and turned on his thermal camera. He plugged in the board into his power supply and shorted the power pins with his screwdriver, and his thermal camera showed him the board springing to life. Ray watched heat transfer through the board and distribute along the wires, showing no signs of abnormal activity. Everything seemed fine after a good cleaning, so Ray simply screwed it back in and started the drone as normal. The drone sprang back to life, flying straight out the door on its original path.
"There we are! You know what they say, heaven helps those who help themselves!"
"Dad, you don't believe in heaven!"
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