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plonqI found one of my old stories that I thought was lost for good - rather, it got lost but I had forgotten about it until today. I did a search in Google groups and it came up on the first try. Go me for not using the x-noarchive option in my posts.
I'll post it here behind a cut tag for anyone who hasn't seen it and is interested in reading some of my non-Plonq stuff.
I originally sent this story in to a furry zine which, alas, appears to
be out of production now. The story has been sitting on my hard drive
for the last 14 months waiting for me to decide what to do with it.
Not my best work, I admit, but not my worst either.
/db
The Guardian
------------
As the days run into weeks, and the weeks are lost among the passing
months I am given to reflect upon the fact that I probably have the most
boring job imaginable. I am a guardian. In the sultry heat of a humid
summer day, I sit here and I watch. Through the driving snows of winter,
I sit here and I watch. As the spring turns the landscape verdant and
the first robins sing their joyous songs - well, I think you get the
idea. The people here don't pay me much attention any more. Oh, there
were protests and marches when I first showed up, but now they treat me
like a part of the scenery. After all, I just sit here and watch.
This is a pretty boring neighbourhood if you ask me, but I suppose that's
a sign that I'm doing my job. After all, I'm here to keep it boring. By
the time they posted me here all of the riots and stuff were long past.
I am the product of a troubled time, becalmed in a sea of placid
contentment. The war is over and times are, well, comparatively good.
If you ask me, they put here because they couldn't think of what else to
do with me. I've talked to some of my mates, and they don't have it any
better. As odd as it may sound to you, I miss the war. It's not the
killing and destruction that I miss, but the sense of purpose that the
war gave me. I think that the ennui could eventually kill me as surely
as any of the uranium-depleted shells that I faced. So how does a bored
guardian pass his time? I watch the sunrise and write poems about it.
The sunrise here is beautiful; it comes up over the mountains, painting
them into a fiery tapestry of red and gold in the early hours of the
dawn. I sent a holo of the scene into one of those literary magazines,
along with one of my poems. They're going to print it, but due to some
bothersome technicalities they say they can't pay me for the work. I've
contacted a lawyer and he's making arrangements to accept the payment in
proxy. It's ironic that I'll never understand the politics that I fought
to protect. The professor has said that I am more of a doer than a
thinker. I don't know if that's meant as an insult or a compliment, but
I bow to his wisdom in such matters - though I'd be hard-pressed to
consider my current position as being anything akin to "doing".
My sole excitement in two years of watching this neighbourhood has been
to call the police once to break up a house party, and to call an
ambulance when old Mrs. Parker suffered a heart attack. She died. I've
seen a lot of people die in my time - many by my own doing. This one hit
me pretty hard, though. She was a dotty old mole, but very sweet. She
was the first one to talk to me after I moved in. Three times a week
she'd walk up to the corner bakery and she never failed to give me a
cheery "good morning" as she passed.
The people here are friendly enough, leastwise now that they're used to
having me around. At first they refused to look at me, and would even
cross the street to avoid me. Most still do, but there's a few who like
to stop and chitchat once in awhile. There's Mrs. Murphy, the nice young
racoon with the houseful of kits. Poor thing waddled around on swollen
ankles for months until she finally popped out triplets. She stops by
just about every day to fill me in on who's lost a tooth, who got sent
home from daycare for causing a ruckus, who's going to be a star ship
pilot when he grows up...
She's holding a big party for them next week when they all turn five.
She even invited me to the party. I said, "That's real sweet Mrs.
Murphy, but you know I can't come." She says that if the weather is nice
she'll hold the party in the back yard so that I can watch them run
around and play in their little party hats. I really like kids, so I'm
looking forward to that. I told her to keep the party in check so that I
wouldn't have to call the police like I did that for that party down the
street. She laughed kinda nervously about that. I don't think that she
realized that I was joking. Some people just can't tell a joke.
Bob is a retired university professor. He's not that old to be retired,
but he got peppered with shrapnel when the university got bombed during
the war. He got broke up pretty bad in that, and they had to replace part
of his brain with a positronic net. It's working just fine, and they've
adjusted it several times, but he ain't all there any more and they gave
him a medical pension. Most times he walks around, leaning on his cane
and talking to himself. Bob doesn't really need a cane - I think it's
just an affectation that he likes because he figures it gives him an air
of sophistication. The ol' honey badger is as sharp as a whip on his
good days, and he stops to talk to me when he remembers that I'm here.
He's teaching me philosophy. Apparently that was his major when he was
teaching at the university; applied logic and philosophy. I love to
learn - I'm like a dry sponge for knowledge. It was after one of his
teaching sessions that he made that remark about me not being a thinker.
When he offered to teach it to me, I went out and read every text on
every philosophy that I could find online. If I thought he'd be
impressed, I was wrong. He said, "There's more to learning philosophy
than just memorizing texts. Tell me, why do you like the sunrise so
much?"
"Because it's very beautiful."
"Yup, it shore is," he said, hooking his thumb in his belt while he
leaned on the cane. He pushed his spectacles up his nose - another
affectation, he doesn't need them - and said, "There ain't no denying
that he have some of the most beautiful sunrises around here. Of course,
it's all that fallout in the air that makes them so colourful and stuff.
Tell me, why do you find the sunrise beautiful?"
"The mix of hues complements the scenery in a manner that is
aesthetically pleasing," I said, but as soon as I had uttered the words I
knew that it was the wrong answer. I am very good at reading body
language.
"Um... I see..." he replied slowly, nodding his head sagely. "And if the
sunrise was in shades of puce, would you still find it beautiful? Would
it still be pretty if it rose in greyscale? What constitutes beauty?"
I called up an image of the sunrise in my mind and ran it through a
series of colour morphs before I responded. I analyzed my feelings on
each image, but none of them really worked for me.
"It wouldn't be the same," I said at length - well, at length for me.
I'm sure that Bob didn't notice any appreciable delay. "Beauty is in the
eye of the beholder," I added lamely.
"An admirable textbook answer," he said with what I perceived as a touch
of sadness in his voice.
"I don't know why I find it beautiful," I admitted, "but I do. The
graffiti on the wall behind me employs many of the same colour
combinations as the sunrise, but I find it ugly. I can't reckon why I
the two should be different to me, but they are."
He wrinkled his whiskers at me in amusement and gave me a reassuring pat.
"Much better," he said approvingly. "Maybe there's hope for you after
all. You think on what makes one thing beautiful and another thing ugly.
Consider it your homework assignment for today. To tell you the truth, I
think the graffiti is kinda pretty in its own way."
I had my answer for him before he had taken two steps away from me, but
Bob doesn't like it when I do that so I just held my tongue and waited
for our next chat. I don't know if we'll get our chance to talk, though,
because two days later John Bartlett went berserk.
John and Tina live two doors down and across the street from my post.
They're a model couple, always holding hands and making eyes at each
other in public. They're an odd couple though, for sure. He's an hyena
and she's a roo. I don't know much about them outside of the gossip from
Mrs. Murphy. They moved in about a year ago and they never talk to me.
All I know is that Mrs. Murphy complains about how they frolic around
doing inappropriate things with the drapes wide open. I can't see it
from my angle - not for lack of trying. Excuse me for being bored.
Anyway, I heard some shouting coming from their house one day, almost
like they were fighting or something. I turned up the gain, but by then
it had gone all quiet again, so I figured it was nothing. Sounded like
they were moving something around, so I guessed that maybe they had been
arguing over where to put the sofa. Turns out I guessed wrong, because a
few minutes later John came tearing out of the house like he'd got
SouthAm ripper-bots hot on his tail. He was all covered in blood and he
was waving around a hand-held Razorgun - military issue no less. I dunno
where he got his hands on one of those, but sure as heck he was planning
to use it. He blasted a hole clean through Mr. Kibrowski's parked car -
poor old rabbit hadn't owned that car but a week. All the while he was
screaming out nonsense like,
"They got to her! They got to us all! The machine is everywhere! Woe
the children!" He ran down the street in my direction, screaming more
stuff like that and waving around that gun. He shot at a passing car and
missed, knocking the corner out of Al's Grocery. Hell, he was totally
out of control. If I didn't do something he was surely gonna kill
someone. I guess it was time to earn my keep. I placed a hurried call
to the police, and then put on my most authoritative voice,
"YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF ORDINANCE 4217B FORBIDDING THE USE OF CONTRABAND
FIREARMS. DROP THE WEAPON AT ONCE AND REMAIN MOTIONLESS OR I SHALL
NEUTRALIZE YOU!"
I can yell pretty loud when I want to, and I sure wanted to get his
attention. Well, I most certainly did. He stopped in his tracks and
looked right at me with his hyena mouth hanging open, drool spilling from
the corner of his muzzle. You know, I think he'd forgotten that I was
even here. Like I said, most folk here considered me a part of the
scenery by now.
"You're one of THEM!" he screamed, and he turned his gun on me. He was
quick - damn, he was quick! I don't know if you've ever seen a Razorgun
in action, but they're designed to pierce battle armour, and for a hand-
held weapon, they look awful big when you're staring down the barrel of
one. He surprised me with his speed, and if it hadn't been for the fact
that I was even faster he might have done me some real harm.
I cut him in half with a spray of anti-personnel slivers from one of my
lower turrets. I also razed a swath of Abe Gunter's prize shrubs and
sent his window-mounted flowerbox up in a shower of wood, loam and a fair
bit of John's innards. His own shot went wild, missing me by inches and
blowing a hole through the graffiti on the wall behind me. No great
loss.
The scene that played out next was almost comical. John's lower torso
just stood there like it didn't know what to do while his upper half
toppled gracefully backward. His look of surprise was probably born
partly from the fact that everyone had been told that I wasn't armed. I
dunno why he would be so surprised to find out that the government lied
about a little thing like that. Don't look at me - I didn't vote for
'em. He hit the ground with a thump and the gun flew from his hands to
mingle with the rain of twigs and leaves. A moment later his legs
buckled and his lower torso crumpled slowly forward. I gotta be honest
with you, at that moment I don't know who was the more surprised, me or
John.
"You... shot me," he said in amazement, pushing himself up on his elbows.
"We are on the same side."
"Well, damn," I replied, equally dumbfounded. "Look at you, John, you're
an android." He looked down at what was left of his body and appeared
like he wanted to speak again when his face went blank.
"Damage to my primary reactor has overloaded my primary neural circuits.
I have reverted to emergency backup power. Please contact medical for
immediate servicing of John, unit 3NN171, second infantry."
I'd seen this happen in battle. His neural circuits had overloaded and
he'd switched into an emergency diagnostic mode. All around us I could
hear people screaming and running for cover. The emergency was already
over and they were just starting to react. I had a feeling I wouldn't be
seeing Mrs. Murphy's birthday party. I don't know which bothered me
more, that or the fact that I'd never get to finish my philosophy lessons
with the professor.
"John," I said firmly, assuming the command voice that I had not used in
years, "do you know who I am?"
"You are second commander, first cybernetic armoury division," he replied
promptly.
"Perform an analysis of your neural cognitive circuits and report."
He froze for a moment while his brain checked itself over. All the while
his coolant flowed out onto the pavement in a red stream. It looked
disturbingly like blood - by design, I suppose. I was puzzled about this
though, because I'd seen lots of androids lose their coolant on the
battlefield and it had always been clear.
"Primary cognitive circuits have sustained nominal damage as a result of
a power surge from my main reactor. Shall I reroute around the damaged
circuits?"
"Yes," I said. The repair went quickly, which indicated that the damage
was not severe.
"I have detected unauthorized algorithms operating in the primary neural
cognitive circuits. Shall I remove them?"
"Isolate them and store them for analysis," I ordered. A virus - as I
had suspected the moment I found out that he was an android. He couldn't
have picked it up in battle or it would have shown up in the scans before
they sent him into civilian decommission. This was problematic; where
had he picked it up, and what had triggered it? Was it something that
poor Tina had said? Was it timed? John lay frozen for almost a minute
while he untangled the web of the virus from his brain and stored it
away.
"The algorithm has been isolated," he said. "Shall I reengage primary
neural functions?"
"Yes," I said. "NO!" I bellowed right after, but the damage was done.
"Oh GOD!" screamed John in a wail of pure anguish. He fell over backward
and clutched his hands to his face, keening, "Oh god no! What have I
done? Oh god! Oh Tina, what have I done?"
If you've never seen half an android sobbing into its hands, I assure you
it's a pretty pathetic sight.
"It wasn't your fault, John, you had a virus..." I said, but he wasn't
listening. He just kept wailing and sobbing and crying out to God and
whoever else would listen. I expect they'll rebuild him, but they'll
have to erase his memories if they want him to be good for anything. I'm
going to issue a recommendation that they recall all androids and scan
them for latent viruses.
As for me and my mates, well, I don't know what the future has in store
for us. There's going to be shit to pay for this, and to be honest, they
don't really need us out here. I expect they'll herd us into some
underground bunker and switch us into standby mode until they need us
again - if ever. I don't know for sure that's what's going to happen, but
that's what I'd do if I were the one making the decision. I've never
been put on standby before, not since the day I was born. I don't know
what to expect. Is it like going to sleep? Will I dream? What might a
tank dream about?
I wish professor Bob were here; I think he'd find that a worthy question.
I'll post it here behind a cut tag for anyone who hasn't seen it and is interested in reading some of my non-Plonq stuff.
I originally sent this story in to a furry zine which, alas, appears to
be out of production now. The story has been sitting on my hard drive
for the last 14 months waiting for me to decide what to do with it.
Not my best work, I admit, but not my worst either.
/db
The Guardian
------------
As the days run into weeks, and the weeks are lost among the passing
months I am given to reflect upon the fact that I probably have the most
boring job imaginable. I am a guardian. In the sultry heat of a humid
summer day, I sit here and I watch. Through the driving snows of winter,
I sit here and I watch. As the spring turns the landscape verdant and
the first robins sing their joyous songs - well, I think you get the
idea. The people here don't pay me much attention any more. Oh, there
were protests and marches when I first showed up, but now they treat me
like a part of the scenery. After all, I just sit here and watch.
This is a pretty boring neighbourhood if you ask me, but I suppose that's
a sign that I'm doing my job. After all, I'm here to keep it boring. By
the time they posted me here all of the riots and stuff were long past.
I am the product of a troubled time, becalmed in a sea of placid
contentment. The war is over and times are, well, comparatively good.
If you ask me, they put here because they couldn't think of what else to
do with me. I've talked to some of my mates, and they don't have it any
better. As odd as it may sound to you, I miss the war. It's not the
killing and destruction that I miss, but the sense of purpose that the
war gave me. I think that the ennui could eventually kill me as surely
as any of the uranium-depleted shells that I faced. So how does a bored
guardian pass his time? I watch the sunrise and write poems about it.
The sunrise here is beautiful; it comes up over the mountains, painting
them into a fiery tapestry of red and gold in the early hours of the
dawn. I sent a holo of the scene into one of those literary magazines,
along with one of my poems. They're going to print it, but due to some
bothersome technicalities they say they can't pay me for the work. I've
contacted a lawyer and he's making arrangements to accept the payment in
proxy. It's ironic that I'll never understand the politics that I fought
to protect. The professor has said that I am more of a doer than a
thinker. I don't know if that's meant as an insult or a compliment, but
I bow to his wisdom in such matters - though I'd be hard-pressed to
consider my current position as being anything akin to "doing".
My sole excitement in two years of watching this neighbourhood has been
to call the police once to break up a house party, and to call an
ambulance when old Mrs. Parker suffered a heart attack. She died. I've
seen a lot of people die in my time - many by my own doing. This one hit
me pretty hard, though. She was a dotty old mole, but very sweet. She
was the first one to talk to me after I moved in. Three times a week
she'd walk up to the corner bakery and she never failed to give me a
cheery "good morning" as she passed.
The people here are friendly enough, leastwise now that they're used to
having me around. At first they refused to look at me, and would even
cross the street to avoid me. Most still do, but there's a few who like
to stop and chitchat once in awhile. There's Mrs. Murphy, the nice young
racoon with the houseful of kits. Poor thing waddled around on swollen
ankles for months until she finally popped out triplets. She stops by
just about every day to fill me in on who's lost a tooth, who got sent
home from daycare for causing a ruckus, who's going to be a star ship
pilot when he grows up...
She's holding a big party for them next week when they all turn five.
She even invited me to the party. I said, "That's real sweet Mrs.
Murphy, but you know I can't come." She says that if the weather is nice
she'll hold the party in the back yard so that I can watch them run
around and play in their little party hats. I really like kids, so I'm
looking forward to that. I told her to keep the party in check so that I
wouldn't have to call the police like I did that for that party down the
street. She laughed kinda nervously about that. I don't think that she
realized that I was joking. Some people just can't tell a joke.
Bob is a retired university professor. He's not that old to be retired,
but he got peppered with shrapnel when the university got bombed during
the war. He got broke up pretty bad in that, and they had to replace part
of his brain with a positronic net. It's working just fine, and they've
adjusted it several times, but he ain't all there any more and they gave
him a medical pension. Most times he walks around, leaning on his cane
and talking to himself. Bob doesn't really need a cane - I think it's
just an affectation that he likes because he figures it gives him an air
of sophistication. The ol' honey badger is as sharp as a whip on his
good days, and he stops to talk to me when he remembers that I'm here.
He's teaching me philosophy. Apparently that was his major when he was
teaching at the university; applied logic and philosophy. I love to
learn - I'm like a dry sponge for knowledge. It was after one of his
teaching sessions that he made that remark about me not being a thinker.
When he offered to teach it to me, I went out and read every text on
every philosophy that I could find online. If I thought he'd be
impressed, I was wrong. He said, "There's more to learning philosophy
than just memorizing texts. Tell me, why do you like the sunrise so
much?"
"Because it's very beautiful."
"Yup, it shore is," he said, hooking his thumb in his belt while he
leaned on the cane. He pushed his spectacles up his nose - another
affectation, he doesn't need them - and said, "There ain't no denying
that he have some of the most beautiful sunrises around here. Of course,
it's all that fallout in the air that makes them so colourful and stuff.
Tell me, why do you find the sunrise beautiful?"
"The mix of hues complements the scenery in a manner that is
aesthetically pleasing," I said, but as soon as I had uttered the words I
knew that it was the wrong answer. I am very good at reading body
language.
"Um... I see..." he replied slowly, nodding his head sagely. "And if the
sunrise was in shades of puce, would you still find it beautiful? Would
it still be pretty if it rose in greyscale? What constitutes beauty?"
I called up an image of the sunrise in my mind and ran it through a
series of colour morphs before I responded. I analyzed my feelings on
each image, but none of them really worked for me.
"It wouldn't be the same," I said at length - well, at length for me.
I'm sure that Bob didn't notice any appreciable delay. "Beauty is in the
eye of the beholder," I added lamely.
"An admirable textbook answer," he said with what I perceived as a touch
of sadness in his voice.
"I don't know why I find it beautiful," I admitted, "but I do. The
graffiti on the wall behind me employs many of the same colour
combinations as the sunrise, but I find it ugly. I can't reckon why I
the two should be different to me, but they are."
He wrinkled his whiskers at me in amusement and gave me a reassuring pat.
"Much better," he said approvingly. "Maybe there's hope for you after
all. You think on what makes one thing beautiful and another thing ugly.
Consider it your homework assignment for today. To tell you the truth, I
think the graffiti is kinda pretty in its own way."
I had my answer for him before he had taken two steps away from me, but
Bob doesn't like it when I do that so I just held my tongue and waited
for our next chat. I don't know if we'll get our chance to talk, though,
because two days later John Bartlett went berserk.
John and Tina live two doors down and across the street from my post.
They're a model couple, always holding hands and making eyes at each
other in public. They're an odd couple though, for sure. He's an hyena
and she's a roo. I don't know much about them outside of the gossip from
Mrs. Murphy. They moved in about a year ago and they never talk to me.
All I know is that Mrs. Murphy complains about how they frolic around
doing inappropriate things with the drapes wide open. I can't see it
from my angle - not for lack of trying. Excuse me for being bored.
Anyway, I heard some shouting coming from their house one day, almost
like they were fighting or something. I turned up the gain, but by then
it had gone all quiet again, so I figured it was nothing. Sounded like
they were moving something around, so I guessed that maybe they had been
arguing over where to put the sofa. Turns out I guessed wrong, because a
few minutes later John came tearing out of the house like he'd got
SouthAm ripper-bots hot on his tail. He was all covered in blood and he
was waving around a hand-held Razorgun - military issue no less. I dunno
where he got his hands on one of those, but sure as heck he was planning
to use it. He blasted a hole clean through Mr. Kibrowski's parked car -
poor old rabbit hadn't owned that car but a week. All the while he was
screaming out nonsense like,
"They got to her! They got to us all! The machine is everywhere! Woe
the children!" He ran down the street in my direction, screaming more
stuff like that and waving around that gun. He shot at a passing car and
missed, knocking the corner out of Al's Grocery. Hell, he was totally
out of control. If I didn't do something he was surely gonna kill
someone. I guess it was time to earn my keep. I placed a hurried call
to the police, and then put on my most authoritative voice,
"YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF ORDINANCE 4217B FORBIDDING THE USE OF CONTRABAND
FIREARMS. DROP THE WEAPON AT ONCE AND REMAIN MOTIONLESS OR I SHALL
NEUTRALIZE YOU!"
I can yell pretty loud when I want to, and I sure wanted to get his
attention. Well, I most certainly did. He stopped in his tracks and
looked right at me with his hyena mouth hanging open, drool spilling from
the corner of his muzzle. You know, I think he'd forgotten that I was
even here. Like I said, most folk here considered me a part of the
scenery by now.
"You're one of THEM!" he screamed, and he turned his gun on me. He was
quick - damn, he was quick! I don't know if you've ever seen a Razorgun
in action, but they're designed to pierce battle armour, and for a hand-
held weapon, they look awful big when you're staring down the barrel of
one. He surprised me with his speed, and if it hadn't been for the fact
that I was even faster he might have done me some real harm.
I cut him in half with a spray of anti-personnel slivers from one of my
lower turrets. I also razed a swath of Abe Gunter's prize shrubs and
sent his window-mounted flowerbox up in a shower of wood, loam and a fair
bit of John's innards. His own shot went wild, missing me by inches and
blowing a hole through the graffiti on the wall behind me. No great
loss.
The scene that played out next was almost comical. John's lower torso
just stood there like it didn't know what to do while his upper half
toppled gracefully backward. His look of surprise was probably born
partly from the fact that everyone had been told that I wasn't armed. I
dunno why he would be so surprised to find out that the government lied
about a little thing like that. Don't look at me - I didn't vote for
'em. He hit the ground with a thump and the gun flew from his hands to
mingle with the rain of twigs and leaves. A moment later his legs
buckled and his lower torso crumpled slowly forward. I gotta be honest
with you, at that moment I don't know who was the more surprised, me or
John.
"You... shot me," he said in amazement, pushing himself up on his elbows.
"We are on the same side."
"Well, damn," I replied, equally dumbfounded. "Look at you, John, you're
an android." He looked down at what was left of his body and appeared
like he wanted to speak again when his face went blank.
"Damage to my primary reactor has overloaded my primary neural circuits.
I have reverted to emergency backup power. Please contact medical for
immediate servicing of John, unit 3NN171, second infantry."
I'd seen this happen in battle. His neural circuits had overloaded and
he'd switched into an emergency diagnostic mode. All around us I could
hear people screaming and running for cover. The emergency was already
over and they were just starting to react. I had a feeling I wouldn't be
seeing Mrs. Murphy's birthday party. I don't know which bothered me
more, that or the fact that I'd never get to finish my philosophy lessons
with the professor.
"John," I said firmly, assuming the command voice that I had not used in
years, "do you know who I am?"
"You are second commander, first cybernetic armoury division," he replied
promptly.
"Perform an analysis of your neural cognitive circuits and report."
He froze for a moment while his brain checked itself over. All the while
his coolant flowed out onto the pavement in a red stream. It looked
disturbingly like blood - by design, I suppose. I was puzzled about this
though, because I'd seen lots of androids lose their coolant on the
battlefield and it had always been clear.
"Primary cognitive circuits have sustained nominal damage as a result of
a power surge from my main reactor. Shall I reroute around the damaged
circuits?"
"Yes," I said. The repair went quickly, which indicated that the damage
was not severe.
"I have detected unauthorized algorithms operating in the primary neural
cognitive circuits. Shall I remove them?"
"Isolate them and store them for analysis," I ordered. A virus - as I
had suspected the moment I found out that he was an android. He couldn't
have picked it up in battle or it would have shown up in the scans before
they sent him into civilian decommission. This was problematic; where
had he picked it up, and what had triggered it? Was it something that
poor Tina had said? Was it timed? John lay frozen for almost a minute
while he untangled the web of the virus from his brain and stored it
away.
"The algorithm has been isolated," he said. "Shall I reengage primary
neural functions?"
"Yes," I said. "NO!" I bellowed right after, but the damage was done.
"Oh GOD!" screamed John in a wail of pure anguish. He fell over backward
and clutched his hands to his face, keening, "Oh god no! What have I
done? Oh god! Oh Tina, what have I done?"
If you've never seen half an android sobbing into its hands, I assure you
it's a pretty pathetic sight.
"It wasn't your fault, John, you had a virus..." I said, but he wasn't
listening. He just kept wailing and sobbing and crying out to God and
whoever else would listen. I expect they'll rebuild him, but they'll
have to erase his memories if they want him to be good for anything. I'm
going to issue a recommendation that they recall all androids and scan
them for latent viruses.
As for me and my mates, well, I don't know what the future has in store
for us. There's going to be shit to pay for this, and to be honest, they
don't really need us out here. I expect they'll herd us into some
underground bunker and switch us into standby mode until they need us
again - if ever. I don't know for sure that's what's going to happen, but
that's what I'd do if I were the one making the decision. I've never
been put on standby before, not since the day I was born. I don't know
what to expect. Is it like going to sleep? Will I dream? What might a
tank dream about?
I wish professor Bob were here; I think he'd find that a worthy question.
