Free to a good home

Free to a good home: a couple of story ideas, inspired by photos I took this weekend. (I have the odd feeling that life sped up this weekend. I have a stack of entries inspired by things that happened during it.)

( The keys )

( The robot hobo family )

The Robot Story

This one is all on asakiyume. Last entry I posted a photo of a sculpture of robot hobos and importuned the world to write the robots' story, and she said, "You should write it!

And so: here you go.


The Robot Story

Everybody hates robots. It’s on account of them that we have the Depression: ever since that man Brewster invented them, they’ve taken over most of the old factory jobs and driven just about everyone out of work. “Makin’ themselves workers who don’t need to sleep or eat! Drivin’ real flesh and blood to starvation with their heartless machines!” my uncle Max always shouts, rattling his newspaper whenever there’s another robot story. “The goddamn capitalists – ”

“Don’t use that kind of language in front of Susie,” Mama reminds him.

And then I say, “I wish you’d call me Susannah.” Usually she does, but whenever she wants Uncle Max to talk nicely she forgets, because it’s not much good telling him to think of the children when I’m going on thirteen.

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