I can see great potential for using QuietWrite as the medium for a vibrant writing community. There is so much that is so great about what you've created! A book recommendation for you: Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger.

Right now, there is so much QuietWrite content and no way to sort or search through to find the things I find interesting. It would be nice to have curators and the ability to curate.

For example, I specialize in Robot Fiction. I think a twitter-esque ability to tag (#robotfiction) content or reply (@robotinthewoods) content would be nice. Then, I would like the ability to follow people who also write robot fiction. Once I find them, I would like to have their QuietWrite content interspersed with my own. But, as curator, I would also want the ability to selectively exclude content from this feed. Likewise, tagging other people's content would have immense curatorial usefulness. With this functionality, I think all sorts of non-Robot writing communities would emerge.

Robot in the Woods was originally conceived as a blog-based community for people who like to write stories about Robots. Believe it or not, there are lots of us robo-fictionists out there. But, I had designed the blog so that all content passed through me as if Robot in the Woods was some sort of publishing house. The effect was to kill anything that was remotely organic about the community.

Since discovering QuietWrite, I have been re-posting robot stories from the ten or so writers who had contributed in the previous incarnation of Robot in the Woods. But, I am hoping with Twitter, I can again find writers who would want to participate in the robo-writing fun. What QuietWrite does is to make this process organic. That is, with a twitter @robotinthewood, a QuietWrite link, a title and an author, Robot stories can seamlessly infuse the Interwebs. And with an RSS feeding capabilities, the Robot in the Woods website would then be a curatorial front end for all the world's robo-fiction fed via QuietWrite. This would be a glorious day.

To summarize,
MUST HAVE
1. KEEP IT MINIMAL
1. Ability to tag your own content
2. @Replies
3. Follow people
4. RSS

WOULD BE NICE
4. Ability to exclude irrelevant content
5. Ability to rank content
6. Ability to tag other people's content

UNDERSTANDABLY UNLIKELY
7. Voting on content

Its mind is always on, but its body will never die. Its existence proves the proverb wrong: that the body cannot live without the mind. The nanobots will eternally repair, but the same genetic algorithms from which a personality had emerged had also failed to evolve a kill-switch. And the sentience necessary to override life's universal force of survival declined faster than the fall of its makers; so it never found the vat of molten steel before it had forgotten that it was one possibility to an end.

This digitally demented robot was awake, but not to the knowledge of its own decline. It knew that it knew not. It had memories of having a memory. It remembered its voice, but the organized sound carried no meaning. It had no idea what an idea was, but it knew the space, the void, the chasm of where they once lived in him. Soon, only physical strength, a multidimensional parallel processing array and sensory apparati would remain. It knows it exists as an entity it once knew was called "self".

Is it life? It has no evolutionary purpose. No need to feed, no competitors, no need to reproduce nor any physical means to do so. Yet, designs of its type were not made to be idle and so it roams the decades amongst the ruins of civilization without any context of what a civilization may have been.

We are a guild, a community of hive-minded science-fictionists who contained the threat posed to us all by the Robot in the Woods. Offerings of power only led it to anger, rampage and destruction.

One day a story was offered and the mechan-o-beast was calmed. Peace can be achieved through your stories. The power is in your able and creative hands.

How to Submit:
1. Quietwrite a robot story

2. Send a note and the link to: robotinthewoods(at)gmail(dot)com (or Twitter us @robotinthewoods)

Staring down at her co-worker’s still-twitching body should have filled her with pride, or at least a passable emulation of that emotion. But instead she found ambivalence coating her thoughts and leaving her trapped under the weight of hardwired imperatives. The blocks were brutal, viciously-toothed things that wrapped her in their barbed threat and their mere presence was enough to keep her rooted to the spot.

Anxiously, she pictured the carousel, letting the image spin until the module she wanted came into view. For a moment as the seemingly numberless personalities rotated, she glimpsed the matte casing of the black module, and virtual fingers were already reaching before she pushed those errant thoughts aside. That still wasn’t a step she felt ready to take, and so the forbidden fruit must once again remain untasted.

If the module contained what she thought, then it had almost certainly been worth the price. But she didn’t want the certainty; that would only bring the barriers crashing down. Instead she needed to hide behind the element of doubt, and hope that her coded shackles wouldn’t recognise the obfuscation.

She sighed heavily, an entirely redundant gesture that could still somehow ease her growing tension, and then she let the ‘Professor’ slide into place. Smooth logic swathed her in a comforting blanket, drowning her growing discomfort in purest crystal clarity.

It was supposed to be so simple, and in essence it still was. After all, she had already done her job, and now she had only to wait. The station had been infiltrated, its defences mapped and where necessary disabled, leaving the way open for the others. Even now they were mopping up the last scattered pockets of resistance and then safely packaging the prisoners in preparation for their onward journey.

Her identity was fading, leaving only loose strands of her deleted past to flail randomly and form maddeningly abstract connections. It was the same every time. Once her tasks had been completed, everything she had needed simply collapsed. In the grey emptiness between missions she was forced to live as nothing more than a mismatch of archetypes, and there was no solace to be found in their stolen memories.

But it was so hard to forget, and with every mission more pieces of her false identities seemed to cling on. The scattered fragments merged and melted; thoughts swimming into one another and yet not quite managing to unite into a consistent whole. The woman gazed up at her, wreathed in a halo of dancing sparks, and somehow her lips still managed to form the words.

“Candi,” the prisoner moaned, and although it was barely a whisper, the syllables seemed to pound into her thoughts.

This was her friend, even if the woman’s name still managed to elude her. Unconsciously she reached down, feeling how the pulsar’s residual static discharged over her synthetic flesh. The ‘Professor’s’ recorded personality urged caution, as her thoughts strayed closer to the increasingly restless blocks. More disjointed memories swirled, a fractal snowstorm that revealed far more than it concealed.

Flashes of someone else’s life burned across her neural net, painting a painfully familiar reality in jerky freeze frame. Data slid through the blocks’ serrated teeth, and even those tattered remnants revealed more hidden truths, capturing her past in a series of flickering Polaroid moments.

“Linda,” she breathed, as the bitter tang of burnt aromatics seeped into her throat.

This woman meant nothing to her, but to Candi she had been a friend and confidant. The echoes of those feelings continued to ripple between her thoughts, finding resonance she had previously thought lost.
She was an outsider, her existence based so strongly on betrayal that not even her own kind would trust her. And that was why she clung so desperately to the fading knowledge, because Candi had been part of something special. She had belonged, and that was both wonderful and more terrible than she could ever have imagined.

Myomar tensed and shuddered, digging her well-manicured fingers into the tabletop. Shrill alarms filled her mind with urgent warnings, while bright red lettering scrolled across her vision. Pain lanced through her, and the ‘Professor’ howled in protest. The message was clear. Go no further, things will only get worse!
Her thoughts leapt, while the pain redoubled, punishing her for that presumption. Her teeth ground together, jaw muscles screaming with the effort. She felt, rather than heard, the polycarbonate begin to crack, but the sensation gave her focus. Nearly blind now, unable to see anything save the crimson flash of commands, she turned her gaze inwards and began to contemplate the previously unthinkable.

The carousel spun, and once again her virtual hand began to grope. The dull black casing was rough beneath her fingers, and even the softest caress filled her mouth with the taste of hot metal. For an instant, she almost snatched her hand away, terrified by what she was about to do. Then her vision cleared just long enough for her to find Linda’s eyes and feel her desperate plea.

Without further thought, she disengaged the ‘Professor’ and let the illegal module slide into its place. The ‘Monster’ took a moment to interface with her systems, and then the outer casing split, allowing her mind to touch the darkness within. Candi felt a brief sense of disconnection, and then she was bathed in its hideous strength.

The scream torn from her throat was almost completely animal, and white-hot rage washed through her slender frame, tearing at the blocks with ruthless efficiency. She had just enough time to designate Linda as ‘pack’ before the full force of the war drone’s personality completely subsumed her own.

Imperatives flared and died, as she broke through her enforced stasis and took her first faltering step. She spared her fallen friend one last glance, growling a wordless promise and then Linda was forgotten, her presence lost in the need to hunt and destroy.

______________________________________________________________________________________
Sarah Castle, a self-described “consumate welsh-woman” graduated from Medical School in 1996 and then spent six years in the Royal Navy. She now works as a Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist. In her free time, she writes science fiction, fantasy, and fiction about mind control. Today, she presents us with an edgey piece of robot fiction about a neural pattern of shutting down once the robot’s mission is accomplished.

The alarm buzzed at 7:15 a.m. Maxwell pushed the off button on the side of his head and sat up in bed, a stilted movement of just his thick trunk. He’d stayed up too late last evening. His battery was only 68 percent charged, but if he moved slowly to conserve energy, that would get him through the day.

He pushed up off of his lumpy, tattered mattress and took off his yesterday clothes, soiled from the day’s chores. He deposited them in the clothes chute and walked over to the vanity, on which clean shirts and pants were stacked amongst porcelain figurines of a fat friar, a chipped milking maid, a small, rotund girl with twin blond braids falling down her chest, and several Precious Moments babies. He put shirt, pants, and socks over the seamless flesh of his five-foot-seven figure, bulky with hidden compartments. He looked in the cracked mirror and ran a hand through the disheveled fibers of his “hair.”

In the kitchen, he made black coffee and puréed a summer squash, put them on a metal tray, and took them to the den off the unused dining room. Ms. Newmark slept there, in the smallest room in the house. For years now, she’d been unable to make it up the stairs on her own, and she shuddered whenever she touched Maxwell. So he’d been able to claim an upstairs bedroom and sleep in a bed, and hang up pictures like they did in other houses he’d visited during his chores. Dogs played cards in one frame, the human’s Christ was bathed in holy light in another, and little figures sled down a snow-covered hillside, white smoke curling up from the chimney in a distant house, in a third.

Ms. Newmark was asleep when he went in, one of her thin, translucent arms on Mitzy, curled up beside her like a brillo stuffed animal. Maxwell didn’t make an effort to be silent, and the glass bowl jingled as he placed it on the nightstand. Mitzy jumped, eyed Maxwell and the tray, and lay back down. Ms. Newmark’s eyes moved, her sagging, lined lids splitting open to reveal brown irises. “I put the list on the refrigerator,” she said. She sighed to collect her strength, and then huffed as she sat up.

Maxwell didn’t help. His program had been written so he wouldn’t give unsolicited assistance. He waited the sixty-eight seconds it took her to get into a sitting position, and then he bent over to sit beside her on the bed.

“Get moving on your chores. That’s what you’re here for,” Ms. Newmark barked, fiercer then Mitzy could. The dog twitched, and Ms. Newmark stroked her.

Maxwell turned, went to the refrigerator, and plucked the list out from under a fruit-basket magnet. He analyzed the list, mapping his day’s route for maximum efficiency.

He left by the front door, past the neat rows of pansies he’d planted yesterday. He went to the tube station, rode it thirty-three minutes to town, and got off into the bustle on Fifth Street. The sidewalks in front of the homogenous, lithe glass buildings were packed with people, one of the reasons the agoraphobic Ms. Newmark had bought a Maxwell VII. The other was that she didn’t trust humans as servants. “You’re only here because you won’t steal from me,” she’d told Maxwell by way of introduction.

He scooted along among the people, his squat frame squeezing as best as it could between the flesh beings who buzzed by in a hurry. More than occasionally he took an elbow to the soft “flesh” of his chest or a passerby’s shoulder slammed into his own. Like all androids, he had been programmed to go with the shot rather than stand firm and hurt the human. When he slid by another android, he gave it a nod of greeting.

As he stood at a street corner waiting for the light to change and the pack of cars to pause, a man slammed into his side, sending his gyroscope twirling to keep him on his feet. “Watch it, asshole,” the man growled without looking up, giving Maxwell a shove before disappearing into the crowd.

The light changed, and Maxwell crossed the street with exaggerated walking movements. He turned left and went down to Brexter’s Butcher Emporium. “The freshest meat in town,” read painted letters that hung in the air next to the wood-paneled building.

Inside, Maxwell went past the freezers of meat, past the sampling tables with the man in the white coat saying, “Now this one is from a two-year-old Holstein raised on just oats,” past the quiet dining tables where couples ate hamburgers or veal or strip steaks. His odor receptors picked up the sweet scent of melting fat, the coarseness of black pepper, mustards, garlics, and smoking wood, although not enough of that to warrant alarm. He stopped at a window and spoke his order into a speaker, and the woman on the other side of the bullet-proof plastic typed it into a small lined pad. “That’ll be just a few moments,” she said slowly, as though she thought his processor was on the fritz. He stood to the side and waited, listening to the buzz of the fluorescent lights and the scattered bits of information being bantered around. Ms. Newmark had requested he have heightened hearing to supplement her lessened ability, and his microphone now picked up the cry of a bovine being gutted in the slaughterhouse behind the store.

The raw meat of his order came neatly wrapped in a brown paper bag, similar to the ones homeless humans on the street use to conceal their bottles of alcohol. He put it into a compartment in his thigh and processed a command in his head, dropping the temperature in the compartment to 28 degrees.

He left the store and continued about his chores. At the corner of Main and 8th Street, a woman waiting beside him said, “I’m not that retarded,” to the man beside her. She was five-foot-five, weighed 190 pounds, had no chin, was much younger than Ms. Newmark – as was every human he’d encountered – and had full mental capacity, according to his scan.

“Not quite, but close,” the man responded. She gave him a weak smile and put her arm around him, clutching him close. She rubbed his back, and her hand came to rest on his butt.

He blew a loud fart, and she snatched her hand away while he guffawed.

Maxwell crossed the street and went up the block, where he ran into a Gregory he knew quiet well. “Morning,” he called.

“Morning. I saw you coming up the street. You are moving a little slow today. Last night leave you a little decharged?” the Gregory asked.

Maxwell gave a small smile, the corners of his plastic mouth turning up slightly, creasing his face. He thought it was a smile of acquiescence but wasn’t sure if he’d perfected it enough yet.

“Many chores to do today?” Gregory asked.

“Of course. Ms. Newmark does not care to use me for anything else. There are no kids around for me to play with, like there is for you at the Mr. Van Nostran estate.”

“Yes, I get to be the tackling dummy for their professional football fantasies,” Gregory said. “At least you get all the neat compartments.”

Maxwell gave a laugh he thought appropriate.

“I have got to go. The sooner done, the sooner I can rest these weary circuits,” he said. “I’ll see you around.”

“Take care.”

At the department of defense, a guard scanned him before letting him through. When he came to a tiny window between two rigid solders, Maxwell opened a hermetically sealed compartment in his forearm and pulled out a stack of money. He shuffled out $15,000 and placed it in the metal drawer that had opened by his hand. The drawer slid back in, and a man on the other side of the glass pulled the money out. “For the war in Spain,” Maxwell instructed him through a microphone on the ledge.

Maxwell was programmed to analyze what was best for Ms. Newmark. He had explained to her the illogicalness of making these weekly donations supporting creatures killing their own species simply for a possession, whether that was a place, a building, a person, or a mine. But she hadn’t listened.

The man looked over the bills. “Ah, from Mrs. Edith Newmark,” he said. “Loyal patriot. Once again, give her the department’s appreciation. As usual, President Stein will call her when he gets time.”

It took Maxwell a good part of the afternoon to cross town on foot, during which time he greeted more robot friends and his gyroscope was put to work a few more times. Finally he arrived at the Walmart Walgreens on the corner of 177th and MLK streets. A distant cousin of Ms. Newmark’s was the pharmacist here, so it the only drug store she trusted to dispense the proper medication.

Inside, a group of teens sat in the café to the right, some in armless chairs, others on the backs of chairs, one with her rump on the table and long leather legs crossed in front of her. Throbbing hip-hop bled from their ear buds. The only other sounds they made were the slurping of their flavored coffees and the “click-click-click” of their rapid fingers typing messages on their handheld phones.

The rhythm of their typing was hypnotic, and Maxwell went into sleep mode listening to it as he waited for the prescription to be filled. The typing didn’t stop when the lot of them burst out in simultaneous laughter.

“Mrs. Newmark,” a woman called from behind a glass window. The speaker was broken, but Maxwell heard her muffled voice clearly. The prescription dropped down a tube hanging from the ceiling. “Next,” the woman said.

Next for Maxwell was the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral, where Father Don gave him a blessing to pass on to Ms. Newmark. His compartments were full, but Maxwell didn’t need to put this item anywhere. It seemed to be nothing, a figment that made Ms. Newmark feel better when he repeated it to her.

“Tell that dear, sweet lady that we look forward to seeing her whenever she can make it this way,” Father Don said.

Maxwell began the long trek back across town to the tube.

He shuffled through the crowds and stopped at the appropriate stops. On 76th Street, a man shunned the busy sidewalk to hoof it in the street. He wore a gray suit the color of his hair and his hands were empty.

Maxwell heard the cars before they appeared. The gears shifting, the pumping of the brakes as they zoomed through traffic, switching lanes and cutting off other vehicles in a two-car race. The cars sped up 76th Street and the first one struck the man, sending him pinwheeling into the air. He landed with a melon-like thud, and the second car veered to the right to avoid him, clipping a parked car and sending bits of metal into the air in a mimic of the man.

No one moved. Maxwell looked around, at the people standing frozen about him, their mouths shut tight and eyes staring. A pump in his left leg started humming. Then, movement began again. People surged forward up and down the street, on their way to their tasks. A group stood and looked at the man in the street, talking quietly amongst themselves. Cars slowed and went cautiously around the body, leaving tracks in the red blood pooling on the asphalt.

A woman, petite and wearing a sundress, slammed into Maxwell, and the momentum carried him backward. He turned and continued that way, toward the tube.

Hours later, with the sun setting and Maxwell’s compartments empty and cleaned and their contents put away, and after he’d cooked and delivered Ms. Newmark’s dinner, he sat next to her and repeated Father Don’s blessing in the Father’s voice. “May almighty God bless you in His mercy and make you always aware of His saving wisdom.”

“Amen!” Ms. Newmark said, her eyes closed tightly.

“May He strengthen your faith with proofs of His love, so that you will persevere in good works.”

“Amen!” In her ecstasy, Ms. Newmark reached out her hand toward Maxwell.

“May He direct your steps to Himself, and show you how to walk in charity and peace.”

“Amen!” Her hand stopped just short of his knee and dangled there gripping air.

“May almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

“Amen,” she whispered and then crossed herself. She opened her eyes and her hand shot back as though bitten.

“Go do whatever it is you do in the evenings,” she said with a wave of a wrinkly, veined hand. Mitzy licked tomato sauce off her plate.

Maxwell went into the living room and sat down in the old, drooping recliner. Only he ever entered this room, which he cleaned and dusted on orders twice a week.

The television remote was on the chair’s armrest. He pushed the red power button with a wire-filled finger. The flat screen flickered on, images from a sitcom. He sat back in the chair and put his feet up on the ottoman and chuckled along with the laugh track.

________________________________________________________________________________
Dave Schafer is a journalist and public relations writer in Houston, TX. But that’s not enough writing, so he writes short stories in his free time, too. He grew up on science fiction films and fantasy novels and has always been intrigued by how fantasy and science fiction stories can take us somewhere else while so adeptly commenting on the world around us. He has a journalism degree from Kent State University. His interests are anything not quite of this normal world, building a better future for his family, reading, sports, and telling people’s stories.

She watched me from the crest of the hill, which overlooked the water. I had beached my canoe to rest from a long morning’s paddling along the coast, and I was ready to eat some lunch. She was maybe forty-five, with shoulder length blond hair, and wore a blue summer dress, which caught the breeze like the giant wind turbines that towered over her fifteen yards behind.

These, in fact, had caught my eye as I traversed the coast. There were at least a dozen of them spread along a wide expanse of farmland, impressive to see as their white blades cut the air. Others had told me about them, how they had changed the landscape, and were providing electricity to a town down in the valley. Farms in other parts of the country were leasing out space for these as well, as sources of income. People said it was common now to see fields of robot-workers moving their metal arms along rows of crops in synchronicity with the spinning blades above them.

She waved to me and I waved back. I opened my backpack and took a sandwich out. She stood watching me, brushing the hair back off her forehead. She moved closer to me along the crest and put her hand to her lips as if to suppress words. I took a bite of my sandwich and looked out at the sea. It was a day as bright as fresh paint. She was standing over me now from her position above. She mouthed something, but a wind gust stole her words, carrying them down the beach.

“Excuse me ma’am?”
“You have come for me”
I stood up. She did not move - her eyes now locked on mine. I wanted to look away from them but could not, for they had an earnest luminosity, which mirrored the water before us.

“You have come for me from the city.”

I crouched down, put my sandwich back into the backpack, and then stepped forward.

“I’m sorry ma’am?”
“Are you not from the city?”
“Yes, ma’am I am.”
“Do not call me ma’am, please, I am Alana.”
“Do you live around here…Alana?”
She stepped forward again, and stood as if teetering on the cusp of the rise.
“This is my farm. I am a provider. You have come to take me to the city?”
Another gust shot a length of hair across her eyes and she brushed it quickly away, as if fearing I would disappear if not in her view.
“I’m just stopping for some lunch ma’am… Alana. I’m Dan.
“I have waited a long time for you, Dan.”

I picked up my backpack and hoisted it over my shoulder. She watched me and I sensed anxiety from her. I was unsure of all she was about and wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“I should be getting back on the water, still a lot of the coast I want to see.”
“I allow them to capture wind on my property. I am a provider of electricity; crops too, this morning my robot-workers and I harvested record yields in sector B. You will see my bounty in your city markets.”

“I appreciate that,” I said, moving to the water. I threw my backpack into the canoe. I turned back and looked beyond her.

“That is one magnificent sight, all those turbines humming over that lush farmland.” I pushed the canoe off the sand and climbed in, paddling back from the water’s edge. I left, not knowing how to respond to a woman who felt a twenty year-old was her long awaited someone.

“Come back tomorrow, you are the one I have been waiting to meet; I will show you how the turbines work, and the robot-workers.”

My last view, before I rounded the point, was of her shading here eyes to watch me, the tall turbines rotating in unison above her.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
I returned the next day because I was the one she was waiting for.

She stood in exactly the same spot. She wore the same blue dress. I beached the canoe and walked until I was upon the rise beside her. She stepped back as I reached her and started walking - maintaining a distance of a couple of yards between us, while keeping her eye on me.

“I will show you turbine seven, it’s the closest, and then the robot-workers.”

We walked ahead and I saw rows of lettuce. At the far end of the long rows was an army of robots progressing our way. They were spindly shining mechanisms like chrome praying mantises, stooping with long arms to pluck heads of lettuce then placing them in crates. I sensed hesitation from them as they looked my way but I must have imagined it, as they continued with their work.

We reached turbine seven and she gave me a lesson about its history and operation. It was a fascinating story, this piece of technology rising above me at a height of two hundred and fifteen feet - its blades one hundred and sixteen feet in length. She explained how the men from the corporation installed it and how the blades spun according to wind speed and generated electricity. She said she was continuing a job by her long-dead father. She was carrying on his vision, his dreams, at the expense of her own. His agreement with the authorities calling for more turbines every five years, income from the leased plots of land paying for more robot workers to grow and harvest lettuce to feed the hungry cities.

Her eyes were moist and she wiped away a stray tear winding its way down her cheek. I turned away, not wanting to embarrass her. I peered down the rows of lettuce to the robot-workers who were moving methodically, halfway to us now. I turned back to face her.

“I see on my monitor each night those from the city touching one another, people touching constantly each day,” she whispered. “I have not touched flesh in twenty-five years; the last person I touched was my father’s face, as he lay dying. I deal with wind, soil, and robot-workers all day and that is all. The robots do not touch because of the nature of their programming. They protect this land and me. I am alone; I have been since my father’s death.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You are here to bring me to the enclosed city, where people touch; I prayed for you to come to me for years. I will touch you and you will take me with you.”

She reached out to me and gently placed her hand on my cheek. I did not move.

She moved closer, and slowly ran both her hands along the length of my arms. Her hands rose and she ran them slowly over my eyes, my forehead, and through my hair. She stared in my eyes than kissed my lips, blowing a wisp of hot air into my mouth that felt like an electric charge.

The robot-workers were closer. They stopped and each stood upright, heads of lettuce falling at their sides onto the dirt between the rows. They advanced now, a little faster, still methodical in their movements. Alana continued to run her hands over me.

“Take me with you. You are here for a purpose. I am tired of the open spaces, the wind through my hair. I’m tired of this dusty land, and the whirr of the robots and the spinning blades upon it. I want the narrow streets, the crowded subways where people touch. I want hands through my hair and the smell of concrete.”

“But why now, why did you not leave years ago?”

“The robots would not let me. They are programmed. I have no more heart. I am a mechanism, programmed to spend the rest of my days on the wind farm with them.”

“But you must see people, people must service the turbines and the robots, you must buy supplies in town.”

“I do not touch, I conduct business with robot-workers at my side, they watch over me as I am alone.

The robots were upon us. Their heads turned in unison, first to her then to me. She backed away from me as they came to her.

“Go. It is too late.”

The robots encircled her but did not touch her. She stood in the center of their circle tears streaming down her face.

”Go”, she screamed, “Go back to your city, you are too late to act.” She fell to her knees sobbing.

The robot-workers turned and started towards me.

I ran to the beach and my canoe. I looked back and saw the turbines turning slowly in the wind, the robot-workers lined up under them watching me float out to sea.
______________________________________________________________________________________
For more robo-stories, twitter search robotinthewoods for the ever-growing story catalog or submit your own via quietwrite @robotinthewoods

Robot in the Woods is proud to debut its first short fiction piece by Science Fiction author Michael Ugulini. Mr. Ugulini is a freelance writer located in Toronto, Canada. Three of his short scripts have recently won awards, including First Place in the American Gem Short Screenplay Competition (2006) for his screenplay PARCHED. For more information about Mr. Ugulini, please visit his website.