Kandoth's Obnoxious Surveillance System

I came up with this story as an application for a project that I'm currently working on. It's about a video surveillance system with fully rotatable cameras. How can it maximize coverage of an interesting event while still maximizing coverage of the total area? With the algorithm that we plan to make for it, the cameras are going to behave exactly how I expect them to - obnoxiously.

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Marico had been putting in a lot of extra hours lately. Her boss was bugging her about the upcoming visit from their most important client - Buy n Large. It was around 10pm as she finished up the plot line for the presentation on their newest WALL•E series of cleaner robots. Now, it would literally take her office computer a whole half hour to generate the presentation from the plot line. Her little laptop could have done it faster. The company’s under-funded IT department was obviously trying to get their point across. It was best to just go home and tweak the final presentation tomorrow.

She folded up her laptop and snuck it back into her handbag. Why do they still call it a laptop? No one really puts it on their lap. And it’s not like anyone uses a keyboard anymore. As Marico got up to leave, she spotted Lyse still at her desk. Lyse was the friendly intern that everyone took advantage of. You’d only have to wave at her, and she would get you a fresh cup of coffee with a big smile on her face.

“Hey Lyse, did you hear that BnL is thinking of buying us?”
“Wow! Is that good or bad?”
“Well… after they buy Texas Instruments, they’re going to be our only client. So it really makes no difference if we merge or not.”
“I heard that they monitor all their employees for suspicious behavior. And anyone who steps out of line doesn’t just get fired… They disappear!”

Lyse had been reading too much news off the undernet. It was a well known haven for crazy conspiracy theories ever since BnL acquired most of the world’s undersea cables and bought major stakes in communication companies, literally taking over most of the internet’s infrastructure. This had brought about concern on the neutrality of the internet. Of course, this was quickly forgotten. But stories on the undernet continued to circulate - about people who got low credit scores because they criticized BnL in public chat rooms. Or stories about how competitors of BnL complained about constant connectivity failures. But this was all just paranoia, mostly among the youth. BnL couldn’t possibly be that evil.

“I’ve never heard that one before. Anyway, don’t stay up too late.” said Marico, the diplomat.
“I won’t.” and Lyse beamed her giant smile. Marico couldn’t help but smile back.

The car was in the basement garage - the ugliest part of this aging building. At 10pm in the night, the enormous garage was empty, completely void of life, and unnervingly quiet. The elevator swung open and let Marico in. It then began its journey down from the 95th floor. There was a new camera installed in the elevator. The earlier one could identify employees and make sure that they get off only at their authorized floors. It would also warn people who accidentally got off at the wrong floor. This new camera was installed straight up on the ceiling rather than at a corner, which was odd because it wouldn’t catch faces as easily. But it was pointing straight at Marico. As she moved to the back of the elevator to sit on the railing, the camera turned to keep her in view. Curious as always, she moved to the front of the elevator and the camera turned again to point at her. Then she quickly ran to the back of the elevator and to the front again. It didn’t miss a beat. This camera was pretty quick. The lens rotated and seemed to zoom in at her. Then it sounded like it snapped a picture.

“Cool!” She didn’t think that her company could afford this kind of technology. Maybe it was from all that money coming in from BnL.

The elevator finally opened at B8, the garage. The lights closest to her flickered on automatically. The rest of the garage however, was still pitch dark. The energy crisis had forced the company to cut down heavily on power usage. Marico noticed more of those cameras on the garage ceiling. Two of them were already focused straight at her. One of them turned to view a car driving away. But as the car moved out of view, the camera turned back to look straight at Marico. At this point, it was just getting silly. Why couldn’t they just use fixed cameras that covered the whole area? Surely, it couldn’t be more expensive than these.

Still curious, she dodged into the dark and behind a pillar to see what the cameras would do. They simply turned away and pointed elsewhere. But a few more lights flickered on near Marico, revealing a camera straight above her, and wildly snapping pictures. This wasn’t good. The guys at security might already have been notified by the surveillance system.

“Hehee… Automated Surveillance Systems - That makes a cool acronym.” Before causing any more trouble, she walked up to her car. It seemed like there were more cameras looking at her this time. She tried her best to act casual, finally got into her car, and drove off.

She pulled the car up to Frank, the security guy at the garage exit.
“Hi Frank. New security system, eh?”
“Yeah. Installed yesterday. This one up here is getting on my nerves. But here’s a tip ma’am - don’t act suspicious!”