The Breakdown

I've not written anything here in a while so I thought I'd set myself a quick ten minute story writing exercise and this is what I came up with. As is the way with something written so quickly I have no idea whether it's worth your time or not but it was fun to do.  Kind of sad. Also, SF today.



The Breakdown.

'Hey Bob.

'Hey Arl, what you got for me?'

'This scyther, little guy was out there cutting the lawn and he just got up and stopped on me.'

'It jammed?'

'No, checked everything mechanical, seemed fine to me.'

'Well, probably came across something alive, fieldmouse or something.'

'Hey, Bob, you know I'm no amateur, checked for that too. Nothing living there, just a couple of dead insects and they don't stop for insects do they?'

'No, they usually make enough noise to scare off insects. I'll have a look at its code.'

'You feel anything in there?'

'Well, Arl, I'm in its systems, there's nothing screwy in the code.'

'But he can't just stop. Can he?'

'No, let's have a look through its visual memory. See what the last thing it did was.'

'Okay, he stopped about half an hour before I turned him off properly.'

'Right, let's see. Right, here it's cutting away and...woah. Is that the insect it killed?'

'Yeah, that stripy one.'

'Arl, man, that's a bee.'

'A bee? But bees are...'

'Extinct? Yeah, I thought that.'

'So he killed the bee and then, he...he just stopped.'

'Yeah, Arl, he killed the bee and then he just stopped.'

'Poor little guy. Bob, are you all right?'

'Just got something in my eye, Arl, that's all.'