Data Center Warrior Linda

Linda was the only UPS driver in Bixton who could still get the ancient stick shift to turn over without stalling and she intended to keep her record intact.

After Pete lied to her about his online gambling, and took off when she stopped funding it, at least she had her job to take pride in.

So the weather forecast of gale-force winds wasn’t going to deter her in the least. She walked to the back of the lot, climbed into the old brown clunker, and, when she heard it turn over, revved the gas hard.

The truck lurched forward onto the road, buffeted side to side the second she pulled onto Highway L. She wrestled the wheel through the rural roads of corn country. People who had work to do couldn’t bother taking minor weather warnings seriously. Besides, she liked the noise of the wind and rain. When it got too quiet, it was the little sounds that drove her crazy.

“misophonia” is what Google called it. She hated the word. Just because she had better hearing than other people didn’t mean there was anything wrong with her. 

“Stan! Delivery!” she shouted through a screen door.

“Coming…”

Stan was a grumpy old codger who needed cheering up every time she visited.

 “And how’s Kayla doing? Nicest daughter in town you’ve got.”

“She’s coming to visit for Labor Day,” he said, smiling at the thought. 

Linda's sponsor had taught her that no matter how bad people seemed on the outside, there was always something or someone they loved on the inside.

As he signed for the delivery on her tablet, her gaze drifted to the television in the living room behind him.

The talking heads were arguing, as they always did.

“Some say data centers and the threat of AI—”

“Preposterous!” an angry-looking bald man blurted out over him. “Do you know the definition of a Luddite? Its all the people holding America back...” 

Stan handed the UPS tablet back, happy with his package, and she continued with the rest of her route: Ann in Plymouth, who loved her dog. Greg, who talked about the Hawkeyes. Bob, who was into Iowa history—she didn’t even know they had history until she met him. Silver fox Bob was fond of her and would have been a good catch if he wasn't ninety-two.

By the time she got home, the wind had died down, and the world was quiet.

And then she heard the noise again. She turned up Spotify to drown it out, but between every song, the hum returned. Today it was different, higher and sharper. She looked out the window. A tiny red light was wavering. “Alexa, turn off the lights. And the music.”

In the dark, she could see a black shiny drone hovering about five feet away. When she opened the window to shout at it, the drone drifted backwards into the night and disappeared. 

The world settled back into the constant, dull hum she always heard. She hoped earplugs would grant her sleep that night.

The next day she was driving down Highway K, grumpy after a bad night’s sleep, looking out over the endless cornfield. She saw it again: a tiny black drone flying about eight feet above the corn tassels, pacing her truck. 

She rolled down the window. “Go away!” Shouting at it had no effect. Maybe it couldn’t hear her over the noise.

“Fuck off!” she yelled louder and gave it the finger.

Now she had two things to worry about—noise sensitivity and some damn kids’ drone watching her.

In town, she walked into the Bixton police station.

“Hey Bill! How’s the Explorer’s engine running?”

“Got her oiled up and running at 980 PSI this morning.” It was clear Bill longed for a car chase instead of just driving drunks home from Bill’s (which ironically shared his name) and dealing with the endless marital disputes at the Crofts’ place.

“Hey Bill, I’ve got some kids’ drone following me. Anything we can do about that? Shoot it down?”

“I can write a report, Linda.” He was nice enough not to add “and file it” while pointing at the cabinet the way he did her last one about the humming sound..

“A real actual drone, Bill. And that background hum I keep telling you about.”

“Drone spotted. And a noise,” he said, while scribbling a note before looking at her. “I don’t hear anything. Maybe you’re being sensitive?”

That word again, sensitive! Now she had three things bugging her. She would call her sponsor. A few drinks would take her mind off this, but then she’d be right back to where she was in 2009.

She slammed the station’s door on the way out and went to do another delivery at Stan’s.

She pounded on his door. “Stan! Another package for you.”

“My, someone is in a foul mood today.”

“I haven’t even said anything, Stan.” 

“They tell me I should ask… what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is a fucking drone is following me everywhere. Pardon my French.”

She pointed at the black drone hovering over her truck about forty feet down from his porch.

Stan studied it, then went to a back room and came back carrying a shotgun. 

“Back up!” He stared at the drone, then, as if remembering something, looked back at her. “And cover your ears.”

Putting her fingertips in her ears didn’t stop the blast from almost shattering her skull.

“WHAT THE FUCK, STAN?!”

He pointed outside. “Problem solved.”

Stunned, she walked back to her truck, stepping over the plastic bits of the drone on the ground.

That week she ran her usual routes. As usual, she saw a constant stream of trucks heading out to that big data center on Highway K. She never made a delivery there. Places like that must buy in bulk.

A drone appeared again and started following her all day.

So she drove to Stan’s. The drone disappeared right before she got there. The news was right—those things are getting intelligent.

“Stan, there was a drone, but it’s gone now.”

They talked it over. 

He looked at her earnestly. “I have a son who might be able to help you. Out toward Palmyra, good with computers. About your age.”

“I’ve spent ten years asking you about your daughter, and you forget to mention you had a son?”

He shrugged, then gave her his son's name and address. “You sure you can find it, sweetie?”

These are the moments like this she was proud to wear the brown uniform. “I am UPS. I can find any address.”

After 45 minutes of winding back roads, she found Kevin’s place. It was an awkward first meeting, her explaining who she was beyond a UPS driver without a package, and him apologizing for living like some sort of prepper. She caught herself staring at his blue eyes and the sharp jawline hiding underneath his unkempt beard.

The lights went out. “I live off the grid,” Kevin said in the dim light coming through the curtain. The lights flickered back on. “My dad likes you. Says you go out of your way to visit him.”

“I go out of my way?” She’d always wondered why Stan ordered Bob’s Red Mill oatmeal twice a week instead of buying in bulk. “He’s a good guy, your Dad.”

“Now, as a friend of the family, what can I help you with?”

She told him about the drones and all the trucks she’d seen heading out to the data center.

“I’m new back here so still learning about what’s happening here. Spent 10 years in California.”

“What are you doing in Iowa anyway?”

“After quitting Google, I came back to attend the Writers’ Workshop, only to be let down. They kept demanding I write in first person, so I quit the second week.”

“I see,” she said. “But you stayed in Iowa?”

 “My Dad’s here, and with DoorDash I can get anything in Iowa that I could get in Palo Alto.”

An awkward quiet settled between them. 

“There it is!” she said. “Do you hear it?” 

“Hear what?”

“The hum.”

“I can’t hear it—”

Linda braced herself to be told she was crazy again. That she was imagining things or being overly sensitive.

Kevin pulled out a piece of electronic equipment. “—but this machine can.” He plugged in wires and a microphone. A display panel lit up with glowing lights. “There it is… your hum,” he said, pointing to the display.

“Do you know about that giant data center out on Highway K? Everyone’s talking about the place. Trucks go in, but nobody in town works there. The hum started a few months after that place opened.”

“A data center is just full of computers,” Kevin said. “But let me fire up my backup generator to power my server and do some data crunching.”

“Is it diesel?”

“My Linux server?” He grimaced, mockingly.

Her gaze hardened.

“Oh, the backup generator. Yeah, diesel.”

“Then I can help,” she said.

On the way home, she almost jumped out of her seat when the drone talked to her as she was pulling out of Dunkin. “Hi Linda! You drive that truck well. The only one in town who can handle it.”

She gave the drone the middle finger.

The drone projected its own middle finger into the air with a laser.

Then it projected what looked like a score. “Linda - 1 vs. FlexAI - 1”

She kept her eyes on the road until it went away.

The next day she dropped by Kevin’s place to see what he had found out.

Kevin looked excited. “I’ve run the data. Someone has been doing millions of searches on Bixton. Looks like they are training an AI model.”

“So why is it following me with a drone? And now talking.”

“I spoke to my dad, and he… uh, we think…”

“Spit it out.”

“Maybe it’s following you because you are the most emotional human in town. To train on data that’s not logical.”

“Fuck!” She kicked the table. “And no wonder your dad—and you—live alone.”

“I want to help,” Kevin said, begging for her to calm down. Which she did after smashing a few dishes that didn’t look valuable.

Kevin picked up the pieces and explained his plan. It was insane, but she couldn’t take the drones and the humming anymore. And no one would get hurt. Just an electrical pylon.

Two nights later, when a band of thunderstorms was about to roll in and the drones had stopped following her (drones don’t like rain, she had figured out), she and Kevin went out to Bob’s place. Bob, ninety-two and with a hearing aid, didn’t stir as they hauled bags of fertilizer out of his barn at 1 a.m.

They drove out Highway K and to the electric pylons leading to the data center. Kevin hauled the fertilizer to the base of one.

“You going to fertilize the pylon and help it grow, Kevin?”

“Something like that.”

After he put the last bag in place, he insisted they drive over a half-mile away before getting out of the car to look back. He pointed toward the pylon.

BOOM! She felt the hardest knock to her chest since watching the fireworks in Des Moines when she was ten. In the distance, sparks flew as the pylon toppled, ripping the power lines down.

The lights of the farms around them went black one by one. In the dark, a dog howled.

They watched the data center up on the ridge. Its lights stayed mockingly illuminated. Not even a glitch.

“It’s self-sufficient,” Kevin said in awe. “There’s no generator that could provide that much power for all the servers. They would need a nuclear reactor. You’re out on the roads. What kind of trucks have you seen going in there?”

“It’s all corn. 24/7.”

“Corn? Going to a data center?”

Linda reminded him they best skiddadle. Back at Kevin’s place—after telling him at least three times she did not need to lie down in his bed to “take a rest”—he returned to his equipment.

“Let’s look at that audio recording again,” he said, staring at the screen. “There! 1,470 Hz. That’s the frequency of a dung beetle larva snapping its jaws while chewing.”

“You know a lot of weird shit, Kevin.”

“That's what they do, digester beetles, shit methane which can be used to generate electricity.”

“Okay, got it. I know it’s the end of the world, but do you really need to mansplain everything? We just met.”

Kevin frowned. 

“We tried your plan; now let’s try mine,” she said. Kevin needed a job to get his mojo back. “And there’s something you can do to help.”

“Anything.”

An hour later, Kevin stood beside her as they blockaded Highway K with Linda’s truck after having deployed the rolls of yellow police tape from his prepper inventory.

Just as they finished putting up the last strip of tape, a giant semi rolled up, air brakes screeching, horn blasting. A grizzled man stuck his head out the window.

“Get out of the fucking way! I’ve got seven minutes to collect my TruckSmarter on-time bonus. And I got alimony to pay!”

Linda gave him a long, hard look. She didn’t like this man, but he had Iowa plates, and her mother had taught her to never get in the way of a man paying alimony. Between his personal issues and stopping the AI invasion of Bixton, it was a hard choice. She moved her truck. He immediately barreled through Kevin's yellow tape, trailing most of it behind him like a giant streamer. 

The next truck should be easier.

Linda moved her brown truck back onto Highway K and Kevin reassembled the scraps of tape into an almost-impressive blockade.

As soon as they were done, almost immediately, another semi screeched to a halt inches away.

A woman leaned out. “Get out of the road! I’ve got bills to pay!” 

“But we need to stop that data center. What kind of bills?” Linda gave her a hard look, woman to woman, until she opened up. 

“My daughter’s gallbladder operation. She doesn’t have insurance!”

Linda shrugged and backed her UPS truck up again.

She realized all the drivers would have stories.

“Corn. Corn. Corn,” she mumbled, disheartened, watching the next truck drive past unopposed.

Kevin scratched his chin. “You know, being bored in Iowa, I’ve done some experimenting. Distilled yeast slurry turns corn into popcorn. Explosive popcorn.”

With everything going on, did he really have to hammer in that he's “bored in Iowa”? 

She took a deep breath to calm herself.

“Tell me about this yeast thing.”

While he explained about fermenter vats and solvents and liters of this and that, and the effects of a ton of popcorn spontaneously combusting, Linda downloaded the TruckSmarter App the driver mentioned, and searched for delivery jobs in Bixton. A bid was out to deliver 3,000 lbs of microbial boosters to an address on Highway K. She clicked Accept.

“Let’s brew up some yeast, Kevin. We have a delivery to make.”