The window shatters and an alarm goes off inside the house. Quickly a human-like figure runs out of the building and onto the streets following a dark shadow carrying the stolen object. The sounds of running feet and hydraulics pass by the security cameras along the streets of New York. The thief turns a corner, but the figure of metal and plastic turns as well and with the same agility. The man begins to tire which the robot takes as an opportunity catch up to thief. A cold hand grasps his arm and forcefully turns him around. The man stares into the lifeless cameras in the location where the eyes of a human are. With the other hand, the robot grasps the stolen object and hurries away back to his owner’s home.

“Urgh… I can’t ever get that computer from that house. It is always a robot who catches me and takes it away again,” he whispers to himself. Blaine is the name of the man who tried to steal the electronic equipment. This was his third time trying to steal one, Blaine knew he couldn’t actually get it, but without one, he wouldn’t be able to get a better life. I have always wondered myself what I would do when I grew up. I would be with little money and probably, like my dad would not be able to find a decent job, I thought pessimistically, very unlike my normal self.

I sigh as I lay on my dirty, old bed. Blaine is my dad. We live in a world conquered by the rich and technology. Without the money to get these expensive gadgets, we have no way of getting further in life. Almost all the jobs that don’t require sophisticated tech are all done by mindless freaks, otherwise known as the HIR 2.0. These machines roam the city doing the work of street cleaners, mailmen, and even waiters. But the one job they can quite do yet is being a plumber and electrician for the older homes, which are quickly disappearing. The new homes all have these microbots who work behind the walls to fix the pipes, wires, and other “in-home” work. But, the older homes don’t have this so that is why they have my dad.

I get myself dressed and walk out of my room and into the kitchen/dining room. I make myself some toast and pour myself a glass of water. That is my breakfast.

I take my bike out and ride towards my school. But most of my other classmates speed by with their parents on their electric powered vehicles which they call cars.

But my best friend is like me, much poorer than the rest of the people, and without a “car”. He catches up to me.

“Hey, Rob!” he calls. “How’s it goin’?”

“Not very good, Matt”

“What’s wrong?” he put on a sad look, but it was virtually impossible for such a cheery guy to do so.

“Err… my dad tried to steal another computer last night.”

“Again?” he said shocked. “Isn’t this like the fifth-”

“Third time,” I corrected before he finished.

“I know your dad want to be able to get a better job… but stealing?”

“I don’t think there is an alternative. He has to have a computer to be able to get a better job. Being an electrician and plumber in our world right now just isn’t enough, especially with all those new microbot homes.”

“I guess.” Matt and I turn the corner and walk into the front door of the building. Here we each have to slowly walk though the identification bars. The light flashes green and a display of our names show up beneath it. We hurry to our individual classrooms. I sit behind my designated interactive desk. If only we had one of these at home. I gaze around the room, my mind drifting to last night’s robbery, the bell rings.

“Test tomorrow, class!” announces my teacher, Ms. Sally. Well, it was only one class. Actually, it was the third time, I did the same each time my Dad tried to steal one of those electronic brain thingies. I walk out into the hallways and a small janitorial robot passes by, sucking up the dirt and trash left by the students. Why can’t these things just malfunction so my Dad can get a good job and these evil annoying things will be removed from the face of the earth!

I sigh. I open the front door of our apartment and I see my dad tinkering with some strangely familiar robot.

“Dad! What did you do with the mailman?”

“Nothin’, I just pulled out his battery when he turned around after dropping off our mail and I am now removing his processing core… Ah here it is!” He pulls out a black orb labeled ‘Core Processor, DO NOT REMOVE’. “They won’t notice since he is a very old model and he was going to get replaced anyways sometime this week. The city was predicting a failure of our mailman anyways.” I laugh at his evil tone of voice.

“What do you want to do with it?”

“I want to do this….” He whispers to me his plot. “This Friday, after our neighbors are gone, I’ll go and grab their computer from their house. Then, I’ll put it in the hands of this now non-functional robot. The security robot of the house will see this robot and ask for it back. But since the mailman has processing core, he won’t respond, only stare back at the security bot. During the time in which the security robot is thinking about what to do, I’ll jump from behind and flick off the switch on his back.” He smirks at me. “Well then, we’ll have to wait two more days until that day comes.”

“Are you sure about this… I still don’t like the whole ‘stealing a computer’ thing”

“Sure I’m sure; I’ll see you later, some guy called me over to fix a leaky pipe.” He waves to me and leaves through the door. I stare at the motionless pile of metal. The mailman, my dad just disabled the mailman.

Friday comes, and my Dad leaves at 11:00 pm. He slowly and casually walks to the intended house and places the mindless robot next to where he was going to run out. The city is eerily quiet. I watch from my window as he slowly opens the back window. The alarm goes off. He dashes in and out the front door with a rectangular box in his arms and places it in the arms of the disabled mailman. As planned, he ducks into the bushes nearby. The security bot speeds out the same door my dad came out.

“Why did you take my owner’s computer?” asks the bot in a creepy human voice. The mailman doesn’t respond. Then my dad jumps from behind, and hits the switch. “Emergency… power has been disconnected. Shutting off…”

“Success!” my dad whispers under his breath. My dad drags the turned off security bot back to its home. He turns it on. He dashes out the door and brings the computer and disabled mailman back. Again, the security bot dashes out, after it had started up, but it found the outside empty. We watch from the window as it walks back home, seemingly disappointed. My dad plugs in the computer. The screen lights up. The words “Please scan your retina now” pop up onto the screen. My dad does so. “Error, incorrect user” is displayed. At this time, my dad hits a series of buttons. He is greeted with a system reset screen. He begins by erasing the hard disk using a special magnet. This way, no one would know that this was a stolen computer.  He manually goes through setting up the various settings on the computer. Half an hour later, he gets up from the desk where he was sitting and comes over to me.

“It worked – we now have our very own computer”

“Dad, I was thinking,” I hesitated. “What would happen if they found out that you stole it?” My dad looks at me sternly.

“It won’t happen; I disabled the cameras of the house.” I nodded, but still not reassured. I head to my own bed. And quickly fall asleep on it.

In the morning, I already see my dad tapping the keys on the computer. Lines of text slowly made its way across the screen. My dad couldn’t type. He was just jabbing at the key with his two index fingers. This might take a while. But then again, there isn’t much my dad has to say on his résumé.

That night, the air was still and the city was blazing hot. My dad was continuing to type away on his stolen computer. I smile.

“How’s it goin’?”

“Good,” Dad looks up from the keyboard and at the screen. Then he looks back down to resume his two finger typing. Tomorrow was the day he would go for an interview. He was writing out his résumé for the company. Finally, my Dad is going to get a better job!

The next day, I went with my Dad to the company where he was applying for a job. We took the bus to the huge tall building. We stepped right through the scanning door. Dad and I walk up to the desk.

“Hi, I have an appointment scheduled with Fredrick Whalen.”

“Yes, Mr. Blaine.”

“That is my name.”

“Take the elevator over there,” she points over at a glass door to her right. “To the 38^th floor and take a left when you get out. His office is the first one on your right.”

“Thanks,” I say and she nods back at me.

“An elevator…. I hate these things. It feels like it is going to break and fall to the bottom.” I say nervously as we stepped in. My dad and I walk into Mr. Whalen’s office.” It was a large, well furnished room, filled with books, little gadgets, and various other things. In the back of the room was a large wooden desk. There sat a man of middle age, I would say around 40 years old. He had dark hair and had an enormously large head.

“Hello, you must be Blaine,” says Mr. Whalen. His voice had a metallic edge to it.

“Yes, I’m pleased to meet you,” my dad holds out his and Mr. Whalen shakes it with his huge hand. I immediately had a strange gut feeling about this guy. “I have been looking over your documents and they are quite impressive. I can’t really believe that you are a ‘poor’ person” He chuckles forcefully.”

“Uh, thanks. Now are you going to hire me or not?”

“I’ve have discussed it thoroughly with my people and they said…” He pauses. “Yes” A huge smile crosses my dad’s face. He tries to hold back some tears. I smile and my eyesight begins to blur too.

“Thank you Mr. Whalen. I’ll see you tomorrow for my first day of work.”

“Yes, Blaine,” my dad and I turn to leave now my dad’s workplace.

“Thank was much quicker that I expected,” I commented.

“Yes, I know. I can’t believe it. I just got a job!”

We walk out of the building into the hot air of the city. I breathe in deeply.

“Hey, Dad, can I go to Rob’s house now?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Okay, then I’ll see you later.” I take a sharp left down the street.

“Yeah,” my Dad replies absentmindedly, obviously still thinking about his new job. I quickly run down the well known route to Rob’s apartment and I stop at the front door. I press on the button with Rob’s apartment number.

“Matt? Is that you?” calls Rob’s dad through a small speaker.

“Yes it is,” I hear a click and I push the door open. I head up the stairs to his apartment. Rob’s dad is standing at the door.

“Hi, how are you on this fine day?”

“Uhh… Good, I guess. Is Rob home?”

“No, he went out with his mom to buy food, you can go join them. They went to the store right down the street.”

I pondered for a second and replied, “Nah, when will he be back?”

“I don’t know, you know how it is with Moms,” then he stopped. “Oh, never mind” he said as he remembered about the accident. “I think they’ll be back by noon, come back then.”

“Sure, tell Rob that if he wants, he can come to my place too.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him”

“Thanks,” I turn around and head out the door. Instead of heading back to my house, I turn down towards the store. But I walk right pass it to the post office. I head in. A man rushes through behind me. The post office was a small room with a door that I knew led to the city’s store of mail robots. One man sat at the desk to the side of the room.

“Robot 334 has been disabled,” reports the uniformed man. He was one of the very few actual “mail-people”. Hmm, maybe I could grow up to be like him, a mail person.

“I see. Where is it now?” replies the man behind the desk. This guy must be the district mail manager.

“According to the embedded GPS device, the robot is currently at 54 15^th street.” Uh oh, that is my apartment’s address. I turn around to head back to dad to tell him about the news.

“Hi, did you need something?”

“No, sir. I was just…. Interested to see if the new mail robots had come in, I wanted to see how they looked.” Not bad of an excuse.

“Oh, then I’ll show you. We have a few back here,”  said the man with a smile. I hesitated, I didn’t expect that, and then followed the man down. He put in a code and scanned his palm into the door lock. The door clicked and he pushed it open. It was huge, I tell you. When you look from the street, it is just a tiny little post office, but man was this back room large. But that wasn’t the creepiest part that they had this huge room, it was filled with still, unmoving humanoid robots. “It’s okay, they aren’t going to bite you,” he said with a touch of humor. “I have to start deploying them soon anyways, might as well start now, so you can see them work.” He walked over to a microphone and flicked it on. Immediately, the heads of around 100 robots turn towards him with a soft hiss.

“Attention, this will mark the start of your jobs. Please file out the back door and receive your designated mail and deliver them to their marked address.” The robots one by one walked towards and out the door. They look so much more human than the old ones. I weakly smiled when the man turned to me.

“Well, I have to go find that lost robot,” and the man turned towards the same door the robots were headed out.

“Thank you, sir!”

“No prob.” I went out the door we came in and dashed back home to warn my dad. I sped up the stairs of our apartment. My dad wasn’t there. My mind started to go into full panic mode. He must have come back, and he couldn’t have left without leaving a note. I checked the table, no note. I walked over to the disabled old mail robot, might as well put him back together and leave him outside so no one would know he was tampered with.

On the table, sat the black orb which I assumed was the processing core that my dad had taken out. I removed the back cover of the robot and connected it back in. I didn’t turn it on in fear that it would attack me. I lifted it down the stairs and left it in the alley next to our building. I flicked the switch and ran back up the stairs.

I searched around the house for any sign that my dad might have went out for something. Out the window of my room, I saw one of the new robots walking by dropping off mail in the boxes. It stops in front of the old mail robot that I left in the alley. It speaks to it, but from my apartment, I couldn’t hear what it said. Suddenly, the disabled robot on the ground jerks in an awkward way and stands up and starts running towards the apartment door. My heart starts to speed. What is it going to do? The new mail robot acts as if nothing happened and continued on with its job. The old robot slams into the metal apartment door with a slam. Another bang hits the door. I nervously lock our own door and stuck a chair in front of it with a pile of heavy books. The sound of doors opening throughout the apartment fills my ears; people were opening their doors to see what was happening. The door breaks open and the robot runs in and up the stairs kicks my door. The books shake and a few fall to the floor.

The old mail robot slams open my apartment door looking for something, or someone. I quickly duck and hide inside my closet. The soft whirring of the machine passes by me. The wooden door creaks and cracks. A metal hand grabs at me. I try to stay still but it pulls me out and onto the ground. I scramble to get up and head towards the door, but the cool metal foot kicks me. I lay still, trying to avoid its motion sensors. Someone walks in, a man, the one I saw at the post office.

“You!” he shouts. “What are you doing with that robot?”

“What do you what am I doing with that robot? You should be asking, ‘What is the robot doing to me?’!”

“What in the world are you talking about?” I turn to see a robot unmoving next to me. I raise my left arm and I smack it hard on its head. Nothing happened.

“I’m arresting you for stealing, modifying, and using the town’s mail robots”

“You have got to be kidding, right? Did you not see what it did? The apartment door downstairs, our apartment door, and my closet, look at them all destroyed by that thing!”

“That is impossible. All robots are carefully programmed to not inflict damage to anyone or thing. Plus, all action is monitored from our office. I can look up what this robot has been doing, look here.”

The man takes out a small rectangular device. He holds it up to the robot and presses a button. The device lights up revealing a screen. The man presses in some commands.

ERROR, in big red letters shows up on the screen.

“That time frame is not valid,” he reads. “Odd, I can’t get what it has been doing in the last 10 minutes. You haven’t just taken out its memory chip, have you?”

“No, I can prove it too. Look up what had happened; let’s say a week ago from now.” The man presses on the screen and a video shows up and a bunch of text. “See, you wouldn’t see anything if I had removed the chip.”

“Right, but…” the man’s voice trails off, thinking and evaluating the situation. Suddenly, the robot jerks and stands up. “I command you to deactivate,” but the robot walks towards the door and strangely leaves the building. “Come back!” No response. “Actually, you might be right,” the man smiles wearily.

“Let’s follow it,” I say, thinking with my heart, but not my brain. These robots could easily kill a human, it could do almost anything; they are robots. I run out the door, following the machine. It walks forward; not even dodging the pedestrians like it would normally. It turns left into a narrow ally, I hesitate, not knowing what to do. I press on, shaking nervously.

“Why, it is little Blaine’s kid, being all brave and such,” booms a voice. I scan my surroundings, it came from the robot. Someone must be using the announcement feature. That voice sounds familiar.

“Mr. Whalen! Why are you doing this?”

“You won’t understand.”

“Tell me, what have you done with the robots?” I demanded. The voice paused and then continued.

“In this modern world, robots do all the lower end jobs, like what your dad does, and he knows that he’ll be out of a job, so he tries to steal a computer. And you know what, that is what plenty of other poor people have done. Our company has lost millions of dollars replacing these stolen computers. Regular people’s lives have been lowered from you people and that needs to stop, now.” The robot steps toward me, hand clenched in a fist. The arm swings towards my head. I dodge and kick it in the legs.

“Owch,” I say. Oh yeah, it is a robot. Again, thinking with my heart, not my brain.

“Come on, follow me!” The mail guy who had tried to arrest me was behind me. I quickly turn to follow him, but the arm of the robot swings around and grabs me. “I’ve got him,” the man runs and hits the robot squarely on the back, right on the power switch. The robot’s grip loosens and it falls to the ground.

“Thanks, I-,” the man cuts me off.

“You can thank me later. I just spoke with your dad.” I give him a blank stare. Now I’m really confused. We dash down to my apartment building, but we run right past it towards the office building. We spin around through the revolving doors and head right up the elevator. We stop at the floor where Mr. Whalen’s office is. “‘The janitor’s closet on your left’,” murmurs the man. “Ha!”

He opens the door. It is empty. A hand grasps him from behind. I take in a sharp breath.

“Mr. Whalen, let go of him now!” Although I hoped for my voice to sound confident it came out high pitched and soft.

“You think I’m Mr. Whalen, huh?”

“Where is my dad?” I shouted, this time loud and clear.

“He’s dead. I called for the robots to initiate the plan. He and all the other unfortunate useless people have been killed by my army force.” A banging noise against wood fills the air. Muffled sounds come following it.

“But that is impossible, I just spoke to him,” said the mail guy.

“Are you sure? Maybe he was someone else in disguise to lure you here?” A loud crack and wood pieces fly by.

“Urrgh! You were supposed to stay there, Whalen!” A sudden realization comes to me. I jump at him during the moment he had turned around. No switch. “You think I am that dumb to have a switch on my back?” The disguised robot turns to me. I see the real Mr. Whalen standing up, holding up a metal stick.

“You humans are so messed up. You force us to do what you tell us, to help improve your lives, to keep this planet safe. But yet you are the ones stealing from others, being inefficient with your work, wasting your time, and destroying your earth. I have figured out a way to help. I may seem evil, but I am doing this for the greater good. By eliminating the poor, we’ll have no burglaries, food shortages, wasting so much money could be used to make this a better world. You can’t understand.”

“Well you are wrong!” shouts Mr. Whalen and he swings the metal rod right into the robot’s back. A crackling noise, a hissing sound, and then the robot collapsed. He stares at the robot then at me. “I have a feeling your dad is still alive, but we have to hurry. Where does your best friend live?”

“Uh, right down the street in the apartment on the corner of this street.”

“Good.”He runs to the staircase and speeds down them at a speed I would not have expected from such a guy. We follow him down the stairs.

I turn back to see that the mail guy was still there following us. We walk through the door of their apartment, it was also damaged. We obviously could tell which apartment was Matt’s; it was damaged just like the front door. Mr. Whalen stopped, but I ran right in.

An unmoving robot with a huge dent in its head was on the floor.

“Rob!” My dad runs from the back room to embrace me.

“Dad, how did you figure out about it?” My dad sighs.

“I think you noticed how odd Mr. Whalen seemed today, right?”

“What about me?” Mr. Whalen steps in. My dad suddenly moves towards him. “It’s fine, Blaine, I’m not that robot.”

“I knew that,” shot my dad. “So I was thinking it over with all the various clues I had picked up.”

“Like what? I didn’t notice anything strange.”

“Why did he mention ‘poor people’? How come on the way back home there was a huge wave of the new robots? Why had Mr. Whalen scheduled such a short meeting smack dab in the middle of his busy work day?” I pondered for a second about what he just brought up and nodded. “So after I had understood why those had happened, I quickly came over to alert you, but Matt’s dad said you left. So I quickly explained and they went out to search while I stayed here to wait. I took the most dangerous job because I told them I had experience with taking out robots.

“So they hesitantly left while I waited here. I heard the robot bang at the door and it came in, but I was ready and quickly hit its head and destroyed its memory chips.”

“I have some thoughts to add too,” spoke Mr. Whalen. “The night you sent me your document, I started to review it. But as soon as I open the document, the power went out. I heard a robot coming up to me. I expected it to repair the problem, but instead it grabbed me and threw me into the next room. The lights came back on and I saw a glimpse of it and it frightened me that I was looking at myself.

“So there I was, in the closet, frightened. I wanted to make some noise, but I was worried about the robot there. So I waited for the best time, and it came when Rob came.”

“Well now that all of the robots have lost their leader, they have returned to their normal state, but I’m calling them back for individual evaluation to make sure none of them develop such violent ideas,” states the mail guy. “And I now understand that we really do live in an unfair world. Technology has taken us over, and someone needs to help us reverse that.

“Hey Dad, now I think I’ve found what I want to do in my future.”

“Yes, Rob?” says my Dad, even though he already knew what I was going to say.

“I want to make sure the poor will be able to have a life together in harmony with the rich and technology. Everyone will have a job, a real life, and I too, will have a future to piece together for me and my world.”