Chapter 2

unlike the rest of her relatives Cindy usually slept in till noon but the beeping noise was not coming from her alarm.

Sitting up sleepily she realised that the noise was coming from her father’s room down the hall, the computer system was programmed to wake her father in case of a problem and from the sound of the shrill beeping there was definitely something wrong.

Swearing under her breath she got up rubbing sleep out of her eyes and threw on her red dressing gown and slippers. Heading outside she noticed with disgust that it was still dark, the cold night wind whipping around her bare legs and cutting through her dressing gown and the flimsy negligee she had on underneath it making her shiver and hurry towards the farm sheds.

Ignoring the log in desk she opened the door and dashed inside, the giant barn was heated to keep the stock comfortable and despite the strong smell of a large amount of livestock crammed into a limited space it was a welcome relief from the biting cold.

Hurrying to the control room she saw a single blinking red light labelled ‘intake pen’ on the board and taking a seat she tried to bring up a view of the problem.

‘Bertha identify the problem in the intake pen’ she commanded.

‘UNAUTHORISED ACCESS IN CONTROL AREA’ the computers voice was a deep synthesized feminine drawl that set Cindy’s teeth on edge, her father had jokingly nicknamed the system Bertha and the name seemed to oddly fit the deep synthetic female voice.

‘Bertha I’m not unauthorised its Cindy quit messing around’ she snapped ‘don’t tell me you have another bug dad will think I broke you.’

‘USER ID NOT FOUND, YOUR ACCESS IS NOT AUTHORISED’ Bertha droned.

‘I’m right here you stupid computer’ she snapped back at the machine attempting to type in the code manually.

‘CINDY IS NOT LOGGED INTO THE SYSTEM’ Bertha replied her screens flashing up access denied.

Cindy realised that she hadn’t stopped to log herself into the system because it was so cold in the entrance and her ID tag was sat on her bedside table, the stupid computer was programmed to recognise her voice but only it appeared if she was logged in.

‘SYSTEM ERROR IN INTAKE PEN SYSTEM WILL PROCEED TO THIRD STAGE ALERT IN EIGHT MINUTES’ Bertha announced making Cindy wince.

If the system logged an error it sounded an alarm in the control room for fifteen minutes and then moved to stage two sounding an alarm in the house, at stage three the stupid computer would call her father’s mobile phone no doubt getting her into deep trouble but it would take at least that long to get her ID and log back in and she would never turn off the alarm in time so she reluctantly hurried out to the intake pens to see if she could find the problem.

Unlike the rest of the building the intake pen was partially open to the elements with a long corral designed to funnel new cows from the trucks into the barn where the automated machines would log them into the system and lead them inside, unfortunately it was also the only place without concrete flooring and as her father had only taken a delivery of new stock a couple of days ago and it had been raining steadily since the muddy pen was a treacherous morass of muddy slurry.

Almost immediately she saw the problem, one of the mechanical arms that processed new stock was sliding aimlessly back and forth as it attempted to return to the ‘ready’ position its track blocked by what looked like a dead bird stuck in the mechanism.

‘Damn stupid machine birds must have been roosting on the track again’ Cindy muttered fetching a long handled broom from a storage closet, unfortunately the malfunctioning machine was stuck right in the middle of the pen and she would have to wade through the muck to fix the problem.

Taking off her expensive slippers she climbed over the fence and gingerly put her foot down into the mud her toes sinking into the icy cold black mess.

‘Eeeeew daddy you are so going to give me a raise on my allowance for this’ she squealed squirming in distaste as she reluctantly put her other foot down and started to carefully edge her way into the pen. The thick mud crept up over her ankles and half way up her calves before she got more than three feet into the pen forcing her to pull against its sucking grip with each step.

Remembering how much time she probably had left she tried to hurry but she only managed to overbalance herself and with a shriek she fell face down into the sticky black glop.

Struggling upright she dragged off her ruined dressing gown and used it to wipe the filth off her face, she struggled to her feet and using the broom like a walking stick managed to squelch her way over to the malfunctioning mechanism.

Using the head of the broom she dislodged the dead bird from the machines track and stood leaning on the broom and shaking with the cold as the freed arm trundled off into the darkness, she was a complete mess her once red silk negligee torn and covered in filth one strap fluttering free and smeared head to foot in filth she stood there gasping in air so chilled by the icy wet mud that she felt almost frozen to the spot.