The yard felt wrong before anyone said anything.

  It wasn’t empty. That was the problem.

  Forty-three bunnies sat parked in neat, deliberate rows across the gravel, aligned nose to tail, their shells clean, their indicator lights dark. No wandering paths. No gentle collisions. No quiet, accidental choreography. Just stillness, arranged with care.

  They looked less like helpers and more like equipment waiting for inspection.

  Marisol from Parks and Rec stopped short at the edge of the gravel, clipboard tucked under her arm. She took in the rows in one long look, then glanced at Howard.

  “They locked out?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Howard said.

  “Planned?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded once, already flipping a page on the clipboard. “Okay. That’s going to push the north loop cleanup.”

  “For today,” Howard said.

  She looked back at the bunnies. “Tomorrow too?”

  Howard considered that. “Probably.”

  Marisol made a note without comment. “We can reroute crews. It’ll be slower.”

  “Yes.”

  Jake shifted nearby, arms crossed, clearly dissatisfied. “You’re just… fine with that?”

  Marisol glanced at him. “I’m not happy with it. I’m scheduled.”

  She turned back to Howard. “Same envelope as last time?”

  “Yes.”

  “No partial assist?”

  “No.”

  She sighed, but it was the sigh of someone recalculating labor hours, not a person demanding answers. “All right. I’ll tell the crew not to plan around them.”

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  She paused, then added, “They didn’t do anything weird, did they?”

  Howard shook his head. “They did exactly what they were told.”

  Marisol nodded again, satisfied in the way professionals are when the problem is real but bounded. She walked off toward the maintenance shed, already calling out adjustments to someone on her radio.

  Jake watched her go. “That was it?”

  “That was it,” Howard said.

  “She didn’t even ask why.”

  “She asked what she needed to know.”

  Jake gestured at the rows. “Forty-three autonomous machines are parked like they’re in timeout and nobody’s curious?”

  Howard looked at him. “She was curious. She just didn’t need a story.”

  People came through the yard over the next hour. County staff, contractors, a supervisor who wanted confirmation that nothing was broken. The questions were consistent and grounded.

  Are they locked out?Is this a safety pause?Do we need to tag them?

  Howard answered every one.

  “Yes.”“Yes.”“No.”

  No speculation. No theories. No drama.

  Jake hovered, restless, the rows of bunnies pressing against his nerves. If they’d been gone, he could have told himself this was temporary, a glitch. But this looked intentional. This looked like a decision that wanted explaining.

  He tried again. “So is this a reset? Or a pause? Because those are very different—”

  “It’s a stop,” Howard said.

  “And then?”

  “And then we decide what comes after.”

  “That feels very open-ended.”

  “It is.”

  As the afternoon wore on, the yard settled into a different rhythm. Crews worked around the parked machines. Tasks took longer. No one complained out loud.

  Howard walked the rows once, slow and methodical, checking nothing in particular. He made a note on the pad clipped to the workbench, then another beneath it. Jake glanced at the page. Short lines. No diagrams. No emphasis.

  “This is a big deal,” Jake said finally. “People are going to start asking what really happened.”

  Howard nodded. “They already are.”

  “And you’re just not going to explain it?”

  “I am explaining it.”

  “You’re explaining around it.”

  Howard met his eyes. “Right now, explaining more would make it worse.”

  Jake opened his mouth, then closed it again. The urge to fill the silence pressed hard against his chest. The rows of bunnies felt like a challenge, daring him to invent something dramatic enough to justify them.

  Howard locked the shed, shut off the lights, and picked up his jacket.

  “Tomorrow?” Jake asked.

  Howard looked once more at the aligned machines. “Tomorrow we’ll still be in the middle.”

  “The middle of what?”

  Howard considered that, then shook his head. “We’ll know later.”

  He headed toward the office, leaving the yard exactly as it was.

  Jake stayed behind a moment longer, staring at the orderly rows, feeling the story forming in his head.

  For once, he let it stay there.