Patches: Short Stories

The Adventures of Bob the Robot

No sooner had I gotten Bob out of the car, than Janelle managed to override the manual commands and she sped off into traffic, moving at dangerously high speeds.

I was stranded, with nothing but my phone and a sick vacuum, and two other appliances in need of attention.

I plonked down on the grass, and pulled out my phone, cradling Bob's box in my lap. I scrolled through a news app and gasped. This was happening all over the world, but it appeared to be most concentrated in....

My hometown.

I furrowed my eyebrows, and opened up my tracker app. With a few taps, I hooked up to Bob's constant network connection, and pulled up a display of where he was receiving signals.

It lead to the factory where most appliances were made for the surrounding area. The factory that was only a mile's walk from here.

Curious, I looked up my other appliance's signal streams, and then, after a moment's hesitation, the signal streams of several hundred other nearby appliances and tech objects. The screen lit up, a spiderweb of lines converging on the factory.

This was unusual, very, VERY unusual.

Only appliances of the same kind and manufacturing dates should receive their data streams from their factory. And on my screen I saw hundreds of different types of appliances, all leading to the same spot.

I stood, clicking off my phone and picking up Bob, who made no noise. He was getting worse. I had to hurry to the repair shop.

But the repair shop might not be able to do anything. My data showed that it was his signal stream that was probably causing the problems, not any mechanical trouble. He was an unusual vaccuum, though. My diagnostics might not be completely accurate. They would only be able to do a checkup on him, either way.

But Bob was worsening, and I might only have enough time to get to one place before it was too late. The repair shop might try, but they would probably not be able to do anything. The factory was probably the cause of Bob's trouble, and if I went there I might be able to stop whatever was happening. But what did I know? I was only a casual hacker, and my results might not even be accurate for the commercially made tech.

But if they were, we were all in great danger, both human and tech. The signal was such that I had discovered an order to turn mindless, slowly eroding the carefully nurtured sentience, and turning the friendly day-to-day appliances ravenous and unfriendly, prone to accidents and miscommunication, and an overall decline in efficiency.

I had to decide.

"Bob, what should I do," I wailed, heart breaking at the sight of him lying there, unresponsive. "Bob!"

His lights flickered, and one long, slow beep sounded.

"You sure about that, buddy?"

He beeped again.

"Okay then. Factory it is." And I set off at a run.

I arrived, panting, in front of the large industrial doors of the factory. Everything looked calm, but I knew that was not the case. From inside, a signal was being sent that was making all tech restless and ill, and I was here to stop it.