Lower Wombley Pigeons Install Their Own Cloud Infrastructure
The birds have reportedly replaced traditional cooing with password resets and are refusing to land anywhere without two-factor authentication.
LOWER WOMBLEY, Residents woke on Tuesday to find the town’s pigeons had built a cloud computing centre inside the clock tower. Breadcrumbs were serving as servers. Stolen knitting wool, in quantities nobody had previously considered plausible, had become the cables. The system began broadcasting a wireless network called COO-SECURE, though no one has connected because its password appears to involve a complicated wing movement.
Odelia Crumb, senior feather-based systems architect at the Lower Wombley Office of Unrequested Technology, announced the project. She said the pigeons started planning it after learning that a statue could function as a charging station. “They were tired of being described as low-tech,” Crumb said. “One bird now has a smartwatch, though it mostly displays the weather in a different town.”
The clock tower now has power. According to the office, 4,000 pigeons fly in a continuous circle above the bus shelter to generate it. This allegedly runs the tower, three vending machines and a small indoor waterfall. The technical diagram released with the announcement contains several arrows pointing at a loaf of bread. Underneath, somebody wrote “probably important.”
“They were tired of being described as low-tech.”
The birds have also issued a software update called WingWare 2.0. It provides encrypted cooing, automatic breadcrumb sorting, and the ability to appear in two streets at once. Residents who tried to download it were told to place their phones on the pavement and wait for a pigeon to approve the terms and conditions by standing on the screen.
That has caused some administrative issues. Merrick Sprocket, chair of the Town Hall’s Temporary Committee for Birds Who Know Too Much, called the arrangement broadly convenient, except when a pigeon forgets its username and takes the network down. “We have not seen this level of confidence from a bird since one of them walked into a bakery and left with a receipt,” he said.
Other species have noticed. Foxes are reportedly testing a subscription service for premium bin-lid opening. Meanwhile, the squirrels of Orchard Crescent have formed a startup promising to store acorns in a virtual tree. The town’s park benches declined to comment, citing their longstanding policy of remaining furniture.
At press time, the pigeons were preparing facial recognition technology to identify people who owe them crisps. The scheme has stalled because every test subject was classified as “large, suspicious pigeon.” The clock tower has also begun sending calendar invitations to the moon.