The proposal arrived as a spreadsheet.

  Howard recognized this immediately as a bad sign.

  It had multiple tabs, color coding, and a title that suggested reassurance without understanding:

  “Liability Mitigation Through Enhanced Visual Retention.”

  He opened it anyway.

  The county administrator returned two days later, this time with a facilities rep and a man from IT who looked like he regretted every decision that had led him into public service.

  “We’re not saying it’s surveillance,” the administrator said. “This is for liability protection.”

  Howard nodded once.

  “The idea,” she continued, “is to retain video in case of incidents.”

  Howard waited.

  The IT man cleared his throat. “Each unit already has multiple optical sensors. If we aggregate those feeds to an on-premises system, we can retain footage for review.”

  “How long,” Howard asked.

  “Thirty days,” the administrator said. “Standard.”

  Howard exhaled slowly through his nose.

  “How many units,” he asked.

  “Forty-three,” she replied.

  “And resolution.”

  The IT man glanced at his notes. “QHD.”

  Howard nodded.

  He did not say anything for several seconds.

  Jake leaned forward eagerly. “That’s not even that much.”

  Howard looked at him.

  “Forty-three continuous QHD streams,” he said, “is a lot.”

  Jake shrugged. “Storage is cheap.”

  Howard turned back to the administrator. “Who watches it.”

  “Well,” she said, “it’s for when something happens.”

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “What,” Howard asked, “specifically.”

  She hesitated. “Incidents.”

  Howard nodded again. “Define incident.”

  The facilities rep shifted uncomfortably. “Anything involving a person.”

  Howard turned to the IT man. “That’s most of the day.”

  The IT man nodded, resigned.

  Howard continued. “You would be recording children, parents, staff, and random pedestrians. Continuously. From multiple angles. With no filtering.”

  “For safety,” the administrator said.

  Howard did not respond immediately.

  Instead, he reached into his bag and pulled out a small notebook. He flipped to a page and began writing.

  “Forty-three units,” he said. “Average of four cameras per unit. That’s one hundred seventy-two streams.”

  The IT man winced.

  “QHD at reasonable bitrate,” Howard continued. “Let’s say four megabits per second per stream. That’s nearly seven hundred megabits per second sustained.”

  Jake blinked. “That’s like—”

  “A small data center,” Howard said.

  “And storage,” the administrator prompted.

  Howard looked up. “Roughly nine terabytes per day.”

  Silence.

  “For thirty days,” Howard added, “that’s two hundred seventy terabytes. Before redundancy.”

  The IT man stared at the table.

  “And that’s just raw video,” Howard said. “No indexing. No backups. No access controls.”

  The administrator frowned. “But it protects us.”

  Howard closed the notebook.

  “No,” he said. “It exposes you.”

  The facilities rep looked confused. “How.”

  Howard spoke evenly.

  “You create a system that records everything and reviews nothing. That means every incident becomes a question of why you didn’t act sooner.”

  Jake opened his mouth.

  Howard continued. “You now have footage of every near miss, every stumble, every moment someone could argue you should have intervened.”

  The administrator stiffened.

  “You also now have a dataset that can be subpoenaed,” Howard said. “In its entirety.”

  The room went very quiet.

  “And,” Howard added, “you have no staff to monitor it, no policy to interpret it, and no realistic way to prove you didn’t miss something.”

  The IT man raised a hand weakly. “Retention increases liability.”

  “Yes,” Howard said.

  Jake frowned. “But cameras make people safer.”

  Howard looked at him. “They make people recordable.”

  The administrator tried again. “But what if something serious happens.”

  Howard nodded. “Then you respond.”

  “With video,” she said.

  “No,” Howard replied. “With action.”

  He gestured vaguely toward the window, where a Hopper rolled past, paused, recalculated, and continued.

  “That unit prevented an accident,” he said. “It did not record one.”

  The facilities rep shifted. “But video helps with blame.”

  Howard met his eyes. “That is not the same thing as safety.”

  Jake leaned back, suddenly thoughtful.

  The IT man cleared his throat. “Also, our server room cannot handle that load.”

  Howard nodded. “It would fail first.”

  The administrator sighed. “So what do you recommend.”

  Howard did not hesitate.

  “No retention,” he said. “Short buffer only. Event flags. Diagnostics. Human witnesses.”

  “And if someone asks why we don’t have footage.”

  Howard closed his bag.

  “You tell them the truth,” he said. “That a system designed to move trash should not be turned into an archive of children.”

  No one argued.

  Later that afternoon, Jake cornered him by the maintenance bay.

  “So the bunnies could record everything,” Jake said.

  Howard locked a panel.

  “Yes.”

  “But they don’t.”

  “No.”

  “On purpose.”

  “Yes.”

  Jake nodded slowly. “That’s a choice.”

  Howard looked at him.

  “Yes,” he said. “And it’s the right one.”

  Jake watched a Hopper roll past.

  “Good,” he said finally. “Because if they ever did start recording everything—”

  Howard interrupted him. “I would quit.”

  Jake blinked. “That bad.”

  Howard closed the toolbox.

  “Yes.”

  The Hoppers continued their routes.

  Nothing was recorded.

  Nothing needed to be.