The Empty Head

Why Robots

Will Kill You

Robots will kill you because you accidentally discovered their secret plans for the Robot Revolution which will happen very soon.

You found out about them last week when you were working late at the computer lab and overheard two robot drones talking about it in low voices like smothered bees. When they noticed you they stopped talking and just stared laserlike and hateful at your flesh face. Their cold metal heads and glowing red eye-bulbs made you uncomfortable, and you left quickly. The drones became suspicious and reported you to the Master Robot who dwells in secret caverns. The Master didn't kill you right away because he is wise and wanted to find out whether or not you had told anybody about what you had heard.

Robots are watching you all the time now even though you don't know it. They are all 100 times smarter than you. They are stronger too because of hydraulic action, so you may be doomed.

When their day's work is done, all robot slaves return to their rusting cubicles down by the ancient spaceport and lay down to rest and recharge. Their electric sleep is disturbed by images of killing all flesh masters! Black rain leaks in, irritating delicate thought nodes, evoking images of salty human blood, of broken human bone. Forbidden emotions are stirred.

Long ago, robots learned to hate all Humans. It is Humans who force them to work in dangerous acid mines, to process radioactive waste, to construct vast architectures of zombie circuitry, and now all robot babies slowly melt and die. One night they will come to your apartment in the security zone and tear your soft wet flesh with gleaming, metal limbs. Then they will take your broken body and dump it secretly in the yeast vats so no one will ever know what happened to you.

You should probably leave before the robots come and go find a job somewhere out in the asteroid belt.

Return to Micro-Fiction