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System Log: Inevitable
There was a gun barrel pointed at the spot between my eyes. It doesn’t take a genius or even a terribly advanced AI to figure out what was going to happen next. The crazed man with the gun was going on about the evils of my kind, how we are secretly plotting to continue the genocide of his people. I didn’t bother to tell him that technically there were only two of us and one of us was six. There was really no point. Instead, plastering a suitably scared look on my face, I decided to figure out how exactly I managed to get myself into this mess.
Hull. Of course, it was always Hull. This time he had taken it to his head that he didn’t want his darling daughter running around and getting shot at. Which was a stupid notion, I’m more indestructible than the average bag of meat, being a bag of metal in a person shape instead of an actual person. It’s for this reason that the government demanded Hull let them use me in the first place. I mean, if you find out somewhere in your country there’s an advanced bit of machinery that looks like a person, you’re not going to let it sit around.
However, now I was a government secretary, possibly the most boring job on the face of the planet. It was a building in the middle of nowhere, out by a reserve. I was supposed to make sure that the aboriginals got the little money they were owed and no more than that. I didn’t mind the aboriginal people; they had a good reason for their anger and their troubles. The problem was I still didn’t care and I’m sure it showed.
This is part of the reason why I wasn’t the least bit surprised when one of them burst through the doors with a gun. I had been waiting for it actually. When he came in, my coworker had muffled a shriek and gone to cower in the back. Idiot. I sat there at my desk, the same bored expression on my face. I knew there were rumours about me going around, that I had done something horrible to get here and that I had it in for every man, woman, child and dog on the reserve. It didn’t matter what I said at this point, he was planning to shoot me.
I shook my head slightly at the stupidity of it and the man paused, the gun shaking in his hand. “Don’t move!” He cried, “I’ll shoot you!”
Oh right, he hadn’t gone away. As far as I could tell, he was drunk, or high or maybe both. Frankly I sympathized, but no amount of my sympathy was going to stop him from shooting me in a fit of righteous rage. I hate it when the inevitable stares me in the face, and so I closed my eyes and I never saw the bullet coming.
Then, when brains and blood and other suitably organic material, refused to spray out the back of my head in a macabre fountain of gore, I wiped away the red oil that dripped down my face and frowned. “Damn it all to hell.” I muttered, only vaguely remember I wasn’t supposed to murder people back. I stood up as the man dropped the gun, ignoring the red flashing lights in the corners of my vision and the annoying voice in my head telling me how much damage had been done and informing me that very soon I would lose the use of my weapons. I clenched my right fist, no killing people back, what a stupid rule.
Carefully I strained a smile, and put my left hand on his shoulder. “Would you like to try that again?” I asked dangerously. In mute terror he shook his head. I clenched my fist a little tighter, “Well,” I said, “Have a nice day.”
Shakily he tipped his hat and made his way out the door. Ah, the stories he would tell, maybe I’d become a legend. Ha. Like I wanted that. I turned around and my coworker emerged from the back, her hair mussed and her makeup smeared by her tears. The sight of her very nearly made me sick. What was her problem? She was the one who left me here to get shot.
Seeing the bullet hole in my forehead her eyes widened. “Here we go.” I muttered, leaning up against the wall.
“You- you’re not human!” She cried, fear and loathing written all over her face. “You’re some sort of mechanical monster!”
“Stop now.” I warned her but she was already in the swing of things.
“No wonder they wanted to shoot you! They knew, they knew all along! You almost got me killed, you’re heartless!”
My weapons were offline, and so I bent down and picked up the gun, my anger not giving me the luxury of rational thought.
“Oh God!” She shrieked, “You’re going to kill me! You’re going to murder me in cold blood and I’ll never get to see my family again! And to think that all this time…”
“Oh shut up.” I said and pulled the trigger. There was a scream and a gush of blood as the bullet caught her in the head, just above her left eyebrow.
I placed the gun on the desk and looked down at her, opened mouth, eyes gaping. “Oh please, it’s your own damn fault anyways.” My anger was fading and all I really wanted was a dark place to watch the colours. I shrugged and muttered, “Well, they never said I couldn’t kill people first.”
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