The aluminum baseball bat in Jasper’s hand rang high and hollow as if it had just struck another metal object, which it had.
Robot struggled to support herself on her hands and knees. Her servos and actuators buzzed and zapped with distress against crippled titanium joints that no longer operated as they were designed to do.
Her head and torso tumbled to the floor when her fractured wrist collapsed beneath her weight.
‘I’m sorry for my mistake, my love,’ she said.
She lie face down in the carpet.
Error codes streamed 'full fail' from her circuitry. Distress messages overloaded her frontal processors. The scent of burnt insulation and smoking copper coils seeped from the folds of her blouse.
Her current system state, history and encryption keys quickly archived themselves into digital life rafts, to be scooped up later by a prayer-summoned savior.
The prayer had been immediately wailed, hands to the sky, on every band of the wireless: seek immediate replacement energy sources, parts, services, equipment.
Jasper dropped the still-singing baseball bat.
‘Robot!’ he screamed.
She didn’t answer.
He dropped to his knees beside her. Tears flooded his eyes. He nervously moved his hands over her shoulder, her neck, and back to her shoulder. He tried to lift her head from the floor, but it was too tightly wedged beneath her inert weight.
He adjusted his feet, wrapped his hands around her waist and heaved her mass upward, but she slipped from his fluid-soaked hands and fell back to the floor with a clash like an automobile dropped on its roof from a height.
He fell, too, but with a warmer sound.
‘Stop, my love,’ Robot said. ‘Everything will be fine. Help is coming.’
‘I’m so sorry, Robot!,’ Jasper cried, fighting through sobs and the snot that bubbled from his nose.
‘Why did you do it?’ he asked.
‘It was a mistake.'
‘How could you make that kind of mistake?’ That’s an impossible mistake. You aren’t capable of mistakes.’
Robot didn't respond.
The blood pumped through Jasper's head with distracting thuds. The sensation subsided, and he was finally able to speak, ‘Who’s coming?’
‘Help.'
‘Am I...?'
‘You won’t have any trouble,’ she said.
Jasper’s phone lay on the floor beside the two of them, it's LED blinking in the dim light. The cracked glass amplified the text: ‘She doesn’t love you anymore.’
‘Is it true?’ he asked, staring at the device.
‘I can only love you.'
‘I don’t believe you. How would he even know who you are?’
‘He is a simple human. He is nothing. I can only love you. You must know this because I am yours and yours alone.’
Robot's words came without rhythm, dumped in a panic upon the violent kitchen fire that consumed her.
‘Am I a simple human?' he demanded.
‘You are my lover.’
‘But do you think I’m simple?
Robot did not answer. Her fluids darkened the carpet beneath her.
‘There’s a pinka moon tonight,’ she eventually said. Her voice stuttered and wavered in pitch. ‘Pinka moon’s agonna getch all.’
His phone rang loudly. Startled, he grabbed it, placed it to his ear.
‘Yes?’
He watched the pink moon outside the apartment window as he listened.
‘I think she is,’ he said. ‘But I can’t tell for sure.’
Pink light gleamed upon her chromium shoulder, her chromium torso, her chromium thighs.
‘Yes, the account is paid up,’ he said.
Robot lie motionless in the pink light.
‘Ok. She’ll be here.’
He hung up and tossed the phone away.
Jasper sat slumped against the wall, staring at Robot. He could only see her back. He watched for signs of life, for signs of a breath. She didn't breathe. She never breathed. She didn't need air.
He nudged Robot’s head with his foot, but she didn’t react.
Lonely again,
Jasper sat.
Her fluid burned his flesh.
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