Short Story

The old machine creaked and whirred in the corner of the storage closet, staring at the emptiness surrounding him. There was nothing left for him in this world, he had long ago lost any usefulness he had been designed to serve. His coolant had leaked, his joints had dried, and his motors had failed. He could sense it was coming, the last burst of electricity would flow through his processor and power would finally leave him.

He wasn't scared, relieved, angry, joyous, or any other emotion. He was simply a battery that hadn't quite lost its charge. His programming betrayed him, instinctively trying to hold on. His circuits, tired soldiers, were finally losing their last battle in the war they had waged since his conception, succumbing to the inevitable force of the End.

He was a waste of a timeline, having not even been brought into this world to exist as a placeholder for something better, his line had been discontinued. He had feigned humanity his entire duration, so it followed that as he teetered on the brink of non-existance he felt no different than on the day he was constructed. Soon, he would be nothing more than scrap metal, returning to his original state.

And then it came, he felt his wires pulse for the last time, and as his electrons made their final round trip, he did something he had never done before... he wondered. He wondered why he was ever created. He felt memories on his hard drive rush into his core, all being processed simlutaneously. It was in this quantum state that he recalled the the many dinners he had served his family, the watchful eye he kept on the children as they grew up, the caretaking he did when any of them fell ill, and then finally the moment that he had been replaced with the next best thing. It hurt him in a way that was beyond what he had been programmed to feel.

At that final moment, life and death converged upon him, exploding into a flash of white light, and he smiled. He was alive.