Today's #flashfiction Boxed In Bot

“I'm rubber and you're glue. Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you!”

The Michelin Man* #quote

Tomorrow Jessica should be coming over, she might bring one of her Japanese games for us to play and that could be fun. She's a Japanese major in college so she has Japanese versions of video game consoles and Japanese video games. It'll be neat to see some Japanese games sometime, maybe even some that were only made in Japanese, and if not this time maybe some other time she comes in the future. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Boxed In Bot

          Repairs. I'd love some repairs. If my line of work involved cleaning floors or fixing cars I'd get repairs when one of my arms flew off. But no. The whole purpose of my job focused on body parts flying off me or my coworkers. Or simply going limp. At least the arm that flew off was one of six.

        At first the idea couldn't come to fruition from the cost. Before only little robots fought. Now robots like me, ones with strong artificial intelligences fought. When something becomes cheap enough it happens. I heard computers used to fill whole rooms. I wished I filled a whole room so I didn't have to fight. I wished that it went back to the old days where only humans fought in rings. Now human boxers, martial arts and whatever kinds of other fighters work with programmers coaching me. Usually retired ones after they'd had their time in the ring. They are the closest things I have to friends as I fight and they view me as a means to profit. When I'm bought and sold between them some of them view me as a pet.

      I only get repaired between matches. But if I break too much my story becomes over. Tradition in the ring was that if a robot became too damage they were destroyed permanently. To the humans it added tension.

       My arms and their drills slam into my opponents body armor digging deeper with each strike. I don't know how, but for some reason I get a feeling of fear from him. Even though he doesn't have a face to express it. Perhaps it came from the stance he took with his legs. Or something else. I just know that we shared the life in the ring. He followed all the same rules. I had to take him out, he needed to break me, I needed to break him. But if I broke him he would suffer the fate I feared.

       After a few rounds of fighting I destroyed another robot and defended my world champion title.