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Saturday, September 26, 2015

Today's #flashfiction The Happiness Directive

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
Colonel Sanders* #quote

Imagine if we were offended by shapes. That'd make politically incorrect comedians total squares. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

The Happiness Directive

         “Card one million,” robot JR-7899123 reported to an imaginary human in the warehouse it filled with the house of cards. JR was among the many robots that continued to live on after humanity. The nature of robots was to follow directions. War machines, comedy bots and various other things. JR existed as an entertainer. A magician. But no human existed to watch its show. All the robots knew how tricks worked. And every robot, when humanity passed, ran out of orders to follow.
          Except at the end of humans when one of the last humans blasted a command through the network of robots. “Be happy and live peacefully.” So JR the magician stacked cards. That's what he knew how to do. He, felt happy, or at least calculated he might be feeling happiness, doing this thing. A million cards high he invited robots in to see his stack of cards for the fee that would support him in the robotic economy the robots invented to live together. All robots tried to invent ways to live to happily. War machines pounded mountains with their weapons. JR heard them making sculptures in the landscape.

          Being commanded to find happiness led to strange existence. Every hundred years the warehouse filled and he knocked the cards down and began building again. A few nights while he charged, JR wondered how humans figured out the ways to find happiness.

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