“And over there you can see what’s left of the starliner Rainbow Ferry, destroyed during the Pleiades Wars of ‘57. Typical humans.” The robot tour guide didn’t mean this as an insult; strictly speaking it wasn’t capable of bad feeling at all. It was reciting a programmed script. It was also incapable of surprise or empathy, which is why it didn’t react or even pause the shuttle when one of the tour passengers broke into a muffled sob.
As the shuttle moved on, Carlo sighed and put his arm around his stricken sister. “I’m sorry, Mel. This was stupid, I shouldn’t have set this up.”
“No,” she said, “No, I wanted to see, it’s just… Rob wasn’t even doing anything, just making a life, and he died out there, and I can’t even…and then that thing-” she gestured bitterly at the robot. “It’s just too much, Carlo. It just is.”
“I know,” Carlo said. He didn’t say anything else as the shuttle hummed on, gliding to a stop in its standard dock. The doors hissed open and the passengers filed out.
“Thank you for choosing Imperial Tour ‘58,” the robot said. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
Mel and Carlo left the shuttle without shaking the robot’s extended metallic hand. Carlo, however, did fiddle with something in his pocket once he was a safe distance away. Quite suddenly, the robot’s eyes blinked out and it collapsed to the shuttle floor.
“Oops,” Carlo said quietly as guards rushed past, “I knew I shouldn’t have brought my spare magnetron today.”
Mel almost smiled, then she and her brother hurried away before the guards thought to secure the perimeter.
This story inspired by
‘s Friday flash fiction prompt:
The twist ending made me smile. Is this story a one-off or part of a bigger story universe? I’m curious about the conflict mentioned in this!