The Security Camera Watched Me Back

I did overnight security at a large warehouse, one man, one booth, a wall of monitors, patrolling a dark empty floor the size of a football field. The cameras were the old kind that could pan and tilt, controlled only from the booth I sat in, or from a control room upstairs that was locked and empty all night. I had the only key to both.

One slow night, walking my rounds across the main floor, I glanced up at one of the ceiling cameras and saw it turn. Slowly, smoothly, tracking me, following me as I walked. I stopped. It stopped. I walked. It turned to keep me in frame. My stomach dropped, because I was in the booth-controlled camera and I was not in the booth, and the control room was locked, and I had the key in my pocket.

I told myself it was on an automatic sweep pattern, that the timing was coincidence. So I tested it. I walked to the far left. The camera panned left, all the way, staying on me. I walked to the far right. It followed, all the way right. It was not sweeping. It was watching me, deliberately, and something was controlling it, and there was no one in the building but me.