The Callousness of a Vain Creation

Written by Adam Mullen, with art by Marcelo Millicay, and edited by Ted Kendrick.

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Blue-44 watched as his comrades around him fell to his sworn enemy, Red-88, and the traitor’s organic allies. Blue-44 was programmed for two things: to kill and follow orders. He knew that Red-88 was skilled at the former, but not the latter. Blue-44 could not discern how Zat Tabow tolerated Red-88’s shato excuses and botched jobs ever since Tirgot, but he estimated that Red-88 had an eighteen percent chance of remaining on Tabow’s good side after his latest screw up with inmate Z-IV. He and the other Soul-Eaters knew it was only a matter of time before they were called in to finally take care of Red-88. Tabow had protected the traitor for far too long, but that didn’t matter any more because Red-88 would now die.

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Both Yellow-22 and Green-66’s demise did not affect Blue-44’s ability to function and carry on the mission, a cold commitment to the cause that the forty-four models were programmed with by the Creator. The twenty-two models were long outdated, barely operating hunks of scrap. The sixty-six models were too self absorbed to be of any practical use, and the eighty-eight models thought themselves to be better than everything that came before. Blue-44 always knew that the Creator should have stopped with the forty-fours. 

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Was Blue-44 vain? “Certainly not,” he thought to himself. Many described him as callous, but he never took any stock in those who highlighted his vanity. It was no fault of his own that he was perfect in the eyes of his Creator.

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Blue-44’s audio sensors picked up the conversation between the traitor, Red-88, and the poor excuse for a human, James Deven. 

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“Red-88, I have a plan!”

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“Does it involve death and destruction?” 

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Blue-44 heard enough. No plan of theirs could possibly defeat him. Movement caught Blue-44’s attention. Red-88 pointed his shotgun at the fuel line above them, and in one fluid motion, the traitor fired his shotgun at it. 

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In the instant that it took for the fuel line to erupt in flames, Blue-44 sifted through every memory he had preserved in his cranial hard drive, remembering every victory and defeat he had experienced in his fifty-six years of operation. For 80.315 percent of that single second between the explosion of the tunnel’s ceiling and his looming death, Blue-44 thought about Red-88 and the betrayal that the devious android had inflicted upon the Soul-Eaters at Tirgot. In the final moment before his assured demise, Blue-44 wanted nothing more than to rip the steel spine out of Red-88, and watch him writhe on the ground.

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Knowing that his nemesis was going down with him, gave him peace. He was prepared to meet whatever oblivion awaited for hellish machines such as he. In the blink of an eye, the searing heat of the explosion melted away Blue-44’s orange skin. As he watched Deven and the others escape the collapse of the mine, the tunnel gave way to rock and debris, crushing his exoskeleton. If his motors would let him, he would have laughed from the thought that the Creator gave him orange skin, but thought to give him the serial designation of ‘Blue.’ 26.43 seconds later, darkness came for Blue-44. 

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After an unknown interval of time, Blue-44’s systems came back online. He ran diagnostics to check for any fatal system errors. One undeniable fact did not require a scan. He was still alive and functioning. As Blue-44 lay underneath a mountain of rock and rubble, he knew that the Creator smiled upon his perfect work. Bue-88 now had a second chance to destroy Red-88.

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