The first thing Howard did was draw a box.

  It wasn’t a diagram. Just a rectangle on the whiteboard, about the size of a sheet of paper. Inside it he wrote one word.

  DEPENDENCIES

  Jake watched, arms folded. “That’s… ominous.”

  “It’s accurate,” Howard said.

  He added a second box beneath the first.

  POWER

  A third.

  NETWORK

  A fourth.

  TELECOM

  Jake squinted. “Wait. Telecom?”

  Howard capped the marker. “The hoppers talk to each other.”

  “Yeah, over the mesh.”

  “And the mesh rides on backhaul.”

  Jake stared at the board. “You’re telling me the thing that cleans park trails depends on the phone system.”

  “I’m telling you we don’t bring machines back online without knowing who they can talk to,” Howard said.

  That was how the phone guy arrived.

  His name was Trent. He said it immediately, loudly, like it was part of the job. He wore a polo with a vendor logo on it and carried a laptop that already had too many stickers.

  “I hear you’ve got a weird one,” Trent said, grinning as he set the laptop down. “County said you wanted telecom sign-off before reactivation.”

  Howard nodded. “Yes.”

  Trent looked past him at the rows of parked machines. “Those the units?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh.” Trent crouched, peering at one like it might bite him. “They look friendlier than most of what I deal with.”

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  “They are,” Howard said. “Within scope.”

  Trent straightened. “Okay, so what are we talking? SIP? Cellular fallback? Local loop?”

  “Verification,” Howard said. “Not changes.”

  Trent blinked. “Oh. That’s new.”

  Jake liked him immediately.

  “Finally,” Jake said, stepping in. “Someone who admits this is weird.”

  Trent laughed. “Buddy, everything is weird if you zoom out far enough.”

  Howard ignored both of them. “We need to confirm isolation when the units are locked out.”

  “Easy,” Trent said. “If they’re powered down—”

  “They’re not powered down,” Howard said.

  Trent paused. “Okay. Then if they’re network-isolated—”

  “They’re not,” Howard said.

  Trent stared at him. “So what exactly are they right now?”

  “Stopped,” Howard said.

  Jake grinned. “See? He does that.”

  Trent chuckled. “All right. I get it. Semantics.”

  Howard didn’t respond.

  They spent the next hour walking through network maps. Trent was good at his job. He knew where the county lines ran, which cabinets were ancient, which ones had been upgraded quietly two years ago. He talked fast, confident, occasionally drifting into explanations that went just past what he’d been asked.

  “Honestly,” Trent said at one point, “if you wanted to tighten this up, you could just—”

  Howard held up a hand. “We don’t want to tighten it yet.”

  Trent froze, then laughed. “Man, that is not a sentence I hear often.”

  “It’s accurate,” Howard said.

  While Trent typed, Marisol came in with a folder. “Facilities wants clarification on the department name,” she said. “Apparently ‘ICT Integrated Maintenance’ doesn’t fit on the new forms.”

  Jake groaned. “Of course it doesn’t.”

  Howard looked at the paper. “What are they proposing?”

  Marisol read. “Valeroso Information, Communication, and Technology Integrated Management.”

  Jake blinked. “That’s… longer.”

  “Yes,” Howard said.

  “And worse.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why are we doing it?”

  Howard pointed at the whiteboard. “Because maintenance implies fixing broken things. Management implies responsibility for systems that work.”

  Marisol nodded. “Facilities says it also lines up better with liability language.”

  Jake sighed. “So we’re renaming the department because lawyers need more vowels.”

  “Because words matter,” Howard said.

  Trent glanced up from his laptop. “You guys acronym that yet?”

  Marisol smiled thinly. “No.”

  Howard erased the board, one box at a time, leaving TELECOM for last.

  “Can you verify isolation paths by tomorrow?” he asked.

  Trent nodded. “Yeah. That part’s straightforward.”

  “And nothing else?”

  Trent hesitated. “I mean, I have opinions.”

  Howard met his eyes. “I’m sure you do.”

  Trent grinned. “Fair.”

  As the afternoon wound down, the name change went through like most bureaucratic changes do. Quietly. A couple of emails. A shared document updated. No one celebrated.

  Jake watched Trent pack up. “So,” he said, “you think this whole thing is overkill?”

  Trent shrugged. “Depends. You planning to be wrong in a way that matters?”

  Howard locked the cabinet. “That’s what we’re checking.”

  Trent nodded slowly. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  When he left, Jake exhaled. “I like him.”

  Howard didn’t look up. “He’s competent.”

  “And loud.”

  “Yes.”

  “And a little wrong about things outside his lane.”

  Howard paused. “We’ll address that later.”

  Jake smiled to himself. Outside, the rows of hoppers remained exactly where they were.

  Still stopped.

  Still waiting.