“Rise to the
occasion.”
Icarus* #quote
Today I surfed
the Internet and caught some serious digital waves, but then I wiped
out on a 404'd webpage man. Anyway onto the flash fiction!
Lost On
Earth
“Danger, Bill
Hoginson, danger, danger!” The robot sidekick told the explorer.
“What, what
is it?” Doctor Hoginson asked.
“Maintenance
all around us!” The doctor almost cursed in response, but like he
did with his children he held back his words. Even though his company
was only the robot, holding his tongue was a habit. The possible foul
language would have been from a mix of panic and anger. The
Maintenance proved to be the biggest threat to him on Earth and he
couldn't believe that his robot didn't detect them earlier. The
ground shook as he heard the metal stomps and the movie treads of The
Maintenance. Why would they even be visiting a park? There is nothing
to fix here. No ruins of the lost society here. The lost Earth that
he was meant to explore.
A dozen massive
machines with treads, legs, and dozens appendages covered with
cameras and saws and other work tools surrounded him.
He addressed
the robots. “You killed Doctor Johnson. Self-centered as he was he
didn't deserve to die. I've seen you toss aside and rip apart dogs,
cats, cows, deer, trees and whatever else to get to your objective.
So what do you need to repair? Are you going to kill me? What in this
park is so important all you showed up? This city has so many ruins
in it still in it you should be fixing them!” Hoginson challenged
the machines out of anger and curiousity. He knew the ancient people
that lived on Earth gave them sophisticated A.I. He wondered if they
would listen to them. Or would they have only listened to the native
people of Earth? If only the planet hadn't been hit by a plague all
those thousnands of years ago. He hoped his family would be able to
get home to the colonies. They'd all been sent there with a few
others to explore once a few probes determined the plague was gone.
This Maintenance, repairing themselves and the world for humans not
even there. And they won't listen to the ones that arrive after all
their hard work.
The machines
then pick up his robot sidekick and dismantle him as he screams
“Danger!” Then they put him back together with new parts added
and a clean up job as well.
Hogison looked
at his robot horrified. He worried that they made his robot a killer
of humanity and a Maintenance slave.
The robot spoke
his tone of voice didn't carry the energy he had before. “Hello
Doctor Hogison,” he spoke this phrase whenever he rebooted in front
of the doctor, “Integration into the Maintenance network complete.
Hogison family are now the registered users of all maintenance
workers all over the planet.
Hogison was
saved, along with his family. A stroke of luck saved him. Though over
time he didn't see it as pure luck that the Maintenance machines
found his robot defective. His robot sidekick worked and lived with
him for years. He served as a good friend, although mechanical, to
talk to when stress hit high and he was filled with loneliness.
Family couldn't always be around and his perspective that family
couldn't do helped a lot. But when the machines “fixed” him they
dumped all his personality expressions. Truly an flavorful feature.
And he knew that his friend never felt, or had any real compassion
and that all the emotions were fake. But he lost the friend
nonetheless, and all the comfort a friend provided. Eventually they
got back home to the space colonies and were no longer lost on Earth,
and progress was made on repopulating the planet. But even a
replacement machine just didn't feel the same.
But for the
safety of his family he still felt grateful as he heard his old
friend speak with a soulless voice.
No comments:
Post a Comment