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06/06/10(Sun)03:15 No.10309048>>10308635 >Japanese corpse collecting robot.
Unit R35T trundled down the broken street, its thick treads helping to further crack and rend the decaying asphalt. Many charging cycles had passed since it was able to fulfill its primary purpose. There were simply no targets left. R35T and its brethren were nothing if not efficient, and even the tremendous workload of those first few months of the plague dwindled to little, then nothing.
The thoroughfare was silent save for R35T's own functions. Optical sensors scanned for biological remains. Some units had taken to scooping up birds or rats or the occasional bloated feline corpse, flyblown in the sun and processing them in their furnaces. But R35T never lowered itself to such things. Though it had no vocabulary for the concept, it found the greasy soot left from the animals distasteful, nothing like the pure ash it was meant to create from its primary purpose.
The programmings its creators had blessed it with could not quite grasp other sensations either. Had it the words, R35T might talk of creeping desperation. Despair. Once it crossed paths with a malfunctioning unit, tipped onto its side, tracks spinning in useless frustration. The malfunctioning unit's engine screamed in protest but R35T left it there. It would shut down completely, one day. Never again to do its duty. |