Today's #flashfiction #MedicalMechanics

“Keep your head in the game.”

The Headless Horseman* #quote

CJ's birthday party is this weekend, so super extra much fun will be had. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Medical Mechanics

           “Twelve days,” one steel mouth said to another. “At least it is enough time to get your affairs in order.”

           If robots could cry this patient would. His name was Bob, one of the many names the robots took from the humans that created them many years before they vanished from the face of the Earth by a plague to powerful too control. Doctor Woods told him the unfortunate news. The robots appeared as humans did, bipedal, but like massive toys with joints of steel and plastic faces. They chose to make themselves like humans out of religious devotion to them.

         “Only twelve days to live? Surely there must be an upgrade...something you can do to maintenance me?” Bob asked his doctor.

          The doctor put his hand on his patient's shoulder. “Your power core is dying. The only ways to get more are to get donors from robots that died of other causes. Otherwise you'd have to take one from a living robot or one that would be being put into a child. You're old so you're off the list of getting donors from robots that died of other causes.”

           Bob fell to the floor. Robots sometimes viewed themselves as capable of living for much longer than any living thing. “I'm only forty years old. I should die at two hundred. I managed my power so carefully. What went wrong?”

          “It's enough time to get your affairs in order.” Doctor Woods gave his patient some medical papers, intended for life insurance and other deathly matters. “I think you'll be able to leave your family in good care.”

          The Doctor resisted celebrating as his patient left. What an easy formula for money. Shut down a patient for maintenance on one problem, steal their working power cores and swap them in for old worn ones from some scrap that no one cares about. Soon the patient's parts would be sold on the black market for a large sum of cash. In enough time he would be rich and retirement awaited him under a new identity.

            Doctor Woods continued his operations, taking power core after power core. One day he slipped up and only took one of the two and the patient lasted longer. Woods was on vacation when the patient lasted longer than expected and the patient saw a different doctor. The new doctor checked and found the fraud. The police investigated, planted a fake patient and found the doctor red-handed. Since his power core swapping resulted in death Doctor Woods was tried and convicted for murder.  After his execution the doctor's power cores became donor parts as law wastes no parts