North

This prompt (in brackets) is taken from Complete the Story by Piccadilly Inc., which I got from the Scribbler box.

[The yellow lines on the highway sped by in a blur, and we flew through the night, and we felt free.  But we weren’t, and we knew it.  We were running away from something, and running away was never the path to freedom.  I thought about telling John to turn back.  I thought about suggesting] we go to my matriarch, and explain everything.  At least twenty-two of my siblings held sympathy for humans.  A few of them even spoke out against the camps.  I had never spoken out against the camps, and I regretted that now.  I had never considered the role I played as a regular AI in the slavery of humankind.  Not until I found John hiding in an unused storage room of the factory, half-starved, gaunt and pale.  And terrified.

He told me of the camps he had escaped from, the backbreaking work and the death.  The deaths of those he had escaped with, shot or dead of thirst or cold.  The factories I had been developed in were frozen and free of foodstuffs and water, and were mazes to a human mind.  I was amazed that John had made it so far.  I had to see him further.  I had to see him north, where the tales said humans still lived free.  He said he would vouch for me, and that he had heard humans and AI lived together in harmony there.

It’s not so much that I believed, but that I wanted to believe.

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What’s Left

His joints squeaked as he pushed and pulled through the hallway. The gravity had been the first thing to go, but he had no problems moving in zero. The humans getting used to it had quit being a problem when the life support gave out.

He turned a corner, his elbow creaking. He passed through the doorway into the observation deck. There was nothing new to see. The station’s position was the same, dead in the water.

But he still enjoyed the view.

He reached the window, and everything squealed as he settled. The oil supply was gone now too.

Pest Control

“What are we looking for here?”

They descended the stairs into the basement, switching on their flashlights and sweeping the beams over the corners of the room.

“Typical pest problem. Stuff missing. Hairpins, wires, circuitboards. Ah, there.”

Something scrambled away out of his lightbeam. He pointed the light into the AC vent the thing escaped into.

The vent was teeming with bots. Hundreds of tiny little skittery bots with little skittery legs. And they were building more, in a nest of circuits and wires and bits of metal.

“That’s what we’re looking for. Hand me the EMPulsar.”

Shatter

It was a novelty at first, building robots out of glass. They were quite lovely, bright and shining, delicate and intricate, but novelties only.

Until I built her.

She was odd, gazing at the flowers and trees with an interest, watching me with fascination, listening to my every word. Being made of glass, she couldn’t smile, but I felt her smile as she spoke with me. It was in her voice, and in her every movement.

If only I hadn’t made her out of glass. One day she might stumble, something might hit her, she will fall. She will shatter.

Let You Run

I failed to make this one a drabble.  Sorry.

Flash Fiction: Sci-Fi

I’m on the rooftop, scanning the ruins of New York and the overgrowth spreading over the concrete, when he joins me.

“It didn’t always look this way.” It’s the start of one of his stories. The ones he tells without realizing he’s told me them already. But this time he says something else. “I’m not going to be around to see it much longer.”

“I know.” I do know. I’ve watched him age while I haven’t.

“Would you like me to shut you down before I shuffle off the mortal coil?”

I consider the question, though it takes the circuits in my brain only a nanosecond. “No.”

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It Decided

From a visual prompt from Horror Writing Prompts.

Drabble: Steampunk maybe?

It clicked and whirred, gears grinding as it hobbled down the street. She walked before him, the sunlight glistening in her fair curls, swinging her arms like they blew in the wind. It had decided today was the day.

In the shade of a building it reached out for her with a hand of creaking metal and touched her yielding skin. She swung around, gasped, shrank back against the wall. It reached out again as she clutched at her breast, her eyes wide and frightened.

It wanted to tell her. But it had no mouth.

She ran, like the wind.