Friday 2 December 2011

Friday Flash Fiction - Pointless War Machines

The third war left the wasteland devoid of life, but it was by no means inactive. By now it was filled with fifth generation junk war bots, the offspring of repaired micro-tanks, mine-layers and automated gun turrets that once patrolled the area. The little war machines destroyed each other while the repair bots fixed broken ones, reprogrammed captured enemy bots or built new ones from scraps. They charged and retreated, burrowed and flew, hurled each other through the air and pinned each other to the ground to deliver dramatic killing blows. The region held no strategic value any more, and no country could spare the resources to clear it, so the robots continued fighting their solar-powered obsolete war.

Another repair-bot released a half-blind mobile turret that tottered off on three unsteady legs. It turned its head left and right, trying to get a clear picture through its camera lens, already smeared with mud and grease. It spots something cresting a nearby hill and leans forward as if to see better. In that moment of hesitation, the micro-tank siezes the advantage, flails its electro-whip and disables the newborn turret with a jolt of electricity. The repair-bot waits until the micro-tank trundles off elsewhere, then creeps out of hiding to drag the mobile turret back by the leg, through the churned and burned earth, and fix it once again, to fight its pointless part in an endless war.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Just a sad little image idea that came to me.
PPS - Do you think they would ever stop?

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