robot
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.”
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.