Robot

A Story by Pitbull1000

The sunlight fell on her neck, revealed a handsome woman with long hair. She wore a red floral dress that would have been appropriate a hundred years ago, in one of those John Wayne movies; left overs from a past-life that she herself had sewn together. Now, she looked out the window, and, not for the first time, marvelled: here it was, the new world: a mixture of gunslingers and criminals; the new economy...a veritable wasteland, blown half-way to hell. She looked around the carriage, a robotic eye, scanning, summarising, providing the data: an old man passed out, packing a Walther pistol; two Jewish priests, identical in white beards; a woman trying to calm an angry child; the rest of the carriage, empty; the same old tired scene, people heading to the new encampments, cities in the midst of repair, everyone searching for water and food.

And then, all of a sudden, a carriage door was thrown open, and a metallic figure dressed in a human’s police uniform stood, scanned the room and spotted her. A hand reached for a weapon, and, in the next moment, pointed a gun directly at her. She delved into a hand-bag containing everything she owned and grabbed the gun that lay heavy inside, pointed it at the machine, cocked it, and aimed it at the head. A shot rang out and blew out one of its eyes, and then, she put the gun back in her bag and made her way for the back door of the carriage, realising that it wasn't enough, the thing was still moving...

When she opened it, she stepped out onto a metal gang-plank, the air and landscape threatening to swallow her whole, then opened another door to another carriage and stepped inside and sat on the only empty seat and waited. She pulled out the heavy pistol and fished in her bag for the remaining bullets, loaded them and breathed, waited for it to come, and then, the door opened and there it stood, heavy and complete and she aimed again at the head and fired, hitting the thing dead on, took out its main-frame, and watched it collapse and crumple to the floor. She stood and walked over to it and stood over it, cocked the gun and fired, and blew the thing to hell or wherever else it came from…

Watching these things explode, she always wondered if there was something unholy about destroying them, if she was killing some remnant of a human-being contained within, but she could never be sure… after all, she herself was part cyborg, wasn’t she? But to what extent, she didn’t know…

The rest of the carriage didn’t bother to watch, for they had seen this sort of thing many times before; if the machine was offering something of value then that would have been a different story, but these things were only ever sent out to attempt to police the people, but always, ultimately failed; still, these the latest versions were getting more adept...