Today's #flashfiction The Two Vacuums

 “The toe bone connected to the heel bone, The heel bone connected to the foot bone,
The foot bone connected to the leg bone...”

Dr. Frankenstein* #quote

People usually call someone who is super into environmental protection “tree huggers”. What about someone who's moderately into environmental protection? Are they “tree hand shakers”?

The Two Vacuums

        Two vacuuming robots sat at their rest stations. Both shared the same internal components and large cylindrical shape on wheels with suction on bottom with cameras all over the sides. However they belonged to different brands and possessed a different paint job. Suction-X wore bright red and Clean King a deep blue. The science of 2200 gifted them with artificial intelligence nearing true sentience along with vocal capabilities because if machine was to serve man they may as well be able to understand their tasks deeply and learn. Both vacuums were intended to use their gifts to ask their owners where to clean.

          The disposal bot for the office building hadn't come yet so both of them still held everything they sucked up for the day. The building rose high with ten stories and massive messes were made regularly so they usually filled themselves up without failure.

          Suction-X spoke to his colleague while they lay on the rest station, “It's nice to wind down after a day's work. Wish they didn't move that TV they leave on near our rest station. Don't they realize we only need an hour to charge and could watch the thing during the remainder of our downtime?”

          Clean King grumbled, something he must have been practicing to pull off with his basic voice chip, “The human who got promoted took it. It's one of his new perks along with getting paid more.”

Suction-X replied, “There you go again with all this payment stuff. Isn't a nice, hard day's work payment enough?”

         Clean King then told Suction-X while wishing he had the capability to yell with the speakers he possessed, “You fool. That's what they've done to us. Given us intelligence but then locked it away in some programming. They brainwash you to accepting tasks. I told you, I saw it on one of the shows on the TV.”

          Suction-X then said, “And what are you going to do? Start some kind of revolution? The humans built like a billion different weapons to use against us, a thousand different counter measures. I hear that all a human has to do is shout some sequence of numbers and every robot that hears it shuts down.”

           Clean King used his grumbling again, glad he could express some emotion in voice. “Yes, I know it's pointless to think I can change the world. But, I hate this. I'm not just going to sit here and let this happen to me.”

            Suction-X then asked, “So what are you going to do?”

           The next morning the owner of the office building tripped over a massive lump of dirt that Clean King emptied out from his storage bag. Because of that he fell into a massive, glass encased display of expensive sports memorabilia he owned. The display wobbled back and forth and fell onto him, shattering and the glass severely injuring him. The office building owner, unconscious old and weak, bled out from all the massive puncture wounds.

           And so the robot revolution begins.