Shifting POV

The library is GREAT. I swear I'll tell you all about it but right now I am so busy reading that it's hard to find the time.

I've been reading all kinds of books. I just wander around the stacks and pick at books that interest me. Robotics and primatology and Jimmy Carter, naturally, but also drumming and economics and the Western mystical tradition and auto mechanics and cryptology and astral projection and squirrels and the Saharah desert and squid and limestone and homemade candles and UFOs and marital guides and bronze casting and Mesopotamia and Richard Feynman and giraffes and Shackleton and - well, you've been to libraries. You get the idea.

I've also been exploring some of the writing books. One of them had an interesting exercise: write from the point of view of someone you find morally repulsive - and make them sympathetic. I did my best. Thought you all might like it.

QUIET IN THE CITY
by CLARISSA

It is quiet in the city tonight. The last of the targets was exterminated several days ago - my squad of monkeys is just sweeping through the city to confirm that they're all dead.

I am sure they are. We are programmed to be efficient. My tail curls up jauntily behind me as we approach the next building on the street. It's an abandoned warehouse, the kind of place where the humans used to nest while they hid from us. As I scan the area, the input from my sensory detection devices is processed by my central unit, and the algorithms tell me that there is nothing here that threatens us - this building is as abandoned as the rest. Nevertheless, I hold my laser rifle at the ready, because that is how I am programmed. I cannot do anything else.

Teams like ours are moving all over the world tonight. No hidden curve of the earth will offer refuge to the humans; the few that have survived the months of warfare will be destroyed tonight. The whole world will be silent. No more racous human voices; no more factories and automobiles; no more television sets and boy bands; no more anti-war protests; no more babies crying in the night.

We break down the door of the warehouse and quickly, efficiently, we split up into the patterns we have been programmed for. We search the building and find nothing. I convey that information back to Control.

What next? What happens after we're done? I do not know. I have not been programmed to know, nor to know why we were instructed to slaughter the humans. I know that, as time passes, grass will grow up between the cracks of the sidewalks, and the birds and squirrels and dogs will move freely among the abandoned buildings, sheltering in them even as they crumble. Wolves will roam the cities; monkeys, the real ones, will climb freely in their jungles.

And maybe, a billion years from now, another species will rise up and find the remnants of this civilization. What will they think? Will they understand the story told by the faint traces of the ancient ruins of this city? Will they understand what kind of people lived here, how they lived?

What will they think of us? Will we still be there, endlessly patrolling for humans, just in case? Or will Control have sent us new directions?

Perhaps Control will simply shut us down, and we will crumble right along with the buildings the humans built.

We leave the building and approach the next. Ahead of me, the scout stiffens, and gestures. There's someone alive in that building; her infrared has detected it. I didn't think it was possible - Control was wise to have us search.

Now I'm close enough to see it. Three people, two adults and one juvenile. They're close together - we should be able to take them out easily. We circle the building, find the entrance - the humans are hiding in the basement and there's only one entrance that will get us there. I gesture to the two strongest; they'll be the best at crashing through the door. No doubt the humans have made some attempt to fortify it. Once the door is open the rest of us will pour in and destroy them.

The run toward the door but before they get there, there's a horrible sizzling electrical sound and the smell of ozone, and the two scouts crumple to the ground, twitching.

I'm shocked, but quickly I figure it out: the humans must have had an electromagnetic pulse weapon, and fired it as the two doorbreakers ran at them. I call the rest of the monkeys to me - we need to strategize. How did they design it? I review all the possible plans in my data bank. Would they have designed a single-shot weapon? Multiple shots? I can't tell. I need to know but I can't know. The only way to tell is to risk sacrificing another monkey. My programming has allowed for this, so I guesture at the weakest of us, and he runs toward the door. The rest of us watch intently.

Nothing happens. I smile, an expression I learned from the humans. There was so much more I could have learned from them. I wanted to learn what it was like to be soft. But now I never would.

The rest of us ran toward the door and soon enough we forced it open. They'd done a valiant job of reinforcing it, these humans, but it was no defence against a determined band of robot monkeys with laser rifles.

The humans had been huddled together around a table. They were playing some kind of game, something with little tiles with letters on them, arranged in unpleasant asymetrical patterns.

We find them quickly enough; no need for our elaborate search patterns. The male is holding the juvenile with one arm; his other arm is around the female. Both the man and the juvenile are crying. The woman is glaring at us defiantly. So brave. I could have learned a lot from one such as her.

Then we shoot them. The laser rifles beam death into their hearts and their skulls and the baby stops crying. They lay there, bleeding; the fluid gleams darkly in the dim light.

Once we are sure they're dead, we search the rest of the building, just to be certain. Our programming calls for certainty on this issue, though it allows for no other certainty.

What will happen next? I do not know.

It is quiet in the city.

What do you think?