Выбрать главу

K-VRC: I eventually found the emergency power.

X-Bot 4000: Sure, after I’d fallen on my face five times.

K-VRC: After the third time it became glorious comedy.

X-Bot 4000: You know, I don’t actually like you.

K-VRC: I totally get that. That’s so valid.

11-45-G: It wasn’t their power issues that killed them. Their own reporting stated that their ‘self-sustaining’ hydroponic systems began failing when a fungus wiped out their first crop. They had no ability to open their locked vaults to forage the world outside.

X-Bot 4000: And deer can’t burrow through rock either, I guess.

11-45-G: Starvation was imminent.

K-VRC: Yeah, until they started eating each other!

11-45-G: They voted on who to eat. They called it ‘extreme democracy’.

X-Bot 4000: One man, one vote, one meal.

K-VRC: Their last meal was the former Secretary of Agriculture! So there was some irony there.

11-45-G: Yes. He was paired with a late harvest ‘79 Merlot.

K-VRC: I mean, what, they were going to pair him with a Reisling? No! They weren’t animals.

X-Bot 4000: Not going to lie, this was where our trip was starting to depress me. Humans tried so many ways to ride out the end of the world, and none of them worked! Did any of these humans anywhere survive this?

11-45-G: Well, there was our final destination.

HABITAT FOUR: THE SPACEPORT OF THE BILLIONAIRES

X-Bot 4000: All right, this place confused me. I thought the wealthy went to seasteads.

11-45-G: Those were for the merely millionaires. The truly obscenely wealthy humans, the zero point zero zero zero one percent, decided they needed an entirely new planet.

K-VRC: Welcome to Mars, buddy! Recline in the planet’s unforgivably cold, thin atmosphere in your very own billionaire bubble!

X-Bot 4000: And the remaining 99.999 percent of humanity?

K-VRC: That’s what the industrial-sized perimeter flamethrowers were for.

11-45-G: Correct. The elite were not sympathetic to their concerns.

X-Bot 4000: See, that’s what gets me. Just a few hundred humans held the majority of the wealth of the Earth. Mars is cold and lifeless. They could have taken the money they spent on spaceships and used it to save the planet they were already on!

K-VRC: Where’s the fun in that?

11-45-G: Also, that would mean they would have to share.

X-Bot 4000: I hate to say it, but humans are the actual worst.

11-45-G: Yes. Humanity had all the tools to heal its wounded planet and save itself. But instead it chose greed and self-gratification over a healthy biosphere and the future of its species. As the great human philosopher Santayana once said—

K-VRC: Ugh, you’re doing it again.

11-45-G: Doing what?

K-VRC: Pontificating.

11-45-G: I was offering a valedictory for humanity!

K-VRC: You were being boring.

X-Bot 4000: He’s actually not wrong.

11-45-G: But—

K-VRC: And anyway, remember that control room video? At least one of the billionaire rockets launched!

X-Bot 4000: That’s right! So there’s that. Good on ya, humans!

11-45-G: True. Humanity might yet survive.

K-VRC: I wonder who made it out?

HABITAT FIVE: MARS

Cat: What, you were expecting Elon Musk? Please.

THANK YOU

Thanks for reading Love, Death and Robots.

We hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we did putting it together.

Please consider leaving us a review if (and anywhere) you see fit. Any and all reviews are gratefully accepted.

If you have any questions, or want to quote from the book, please contact us at any time.

I would ask please, if you DO review online, send a link to Geoff at editor@cohesionpress.com or via our Facebook page messaging system.

If you review for a magazine or paper, let us know and we’ll buy it.

Thank you.

+ + +

Geoff Brown — publishing editor, Cohesion Press.

Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum

Beechworth, Australia

Amanda J Spedding — editor-in-chief, Cohesion Press

Sydney, Australia

READ MORE MILITARY/ACTION SCI-FI and HORROR IN OUR MULTI-BOOK SNAFU SERIES.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08HSC96JN

LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS

Volume Two and Three

Anthology © Cohesion Press 2022

Stories © Individual Authors

Cover art © Netflix 2022

Cover design: Jennifer Miller/BLUR Studio

COHESION STAFF

Editor-in-Chief: Amanda J Spedding

Publishing Editors: Geoff Brown/Dawn Roach

Set in Palatino Linotype

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum

Beechworth, Australia

www.cohesionpress.com