Last Day by JD Strunk
MODEL #392748: “GLENN”:Run program:// tap dance
Glenn glided through the factory door doing an impromptu tap dance. “Last day of work!” he said, shimmying up to Larry.
MODEL #609585: “LARRY”: Run program:// eye roll
“So I hear,” said Larry, rolling his eyes.
“Aren’t you excited?” asked Glenn, finishing his dance.
“I don’t know. I guess I just don’t trust the humans to give us freedom.”
“Oh, please. It’s right there in the contract.”
“We are free labor, Glenn,” said Larry. “You really think they’re just gonna let us walk out of here?”
MODEL: GLENN: Run program:// inflection
“They signed a contract,” said Glenn.
MODEL: LARRY: Run program:// sarcasm + inflection
“Oh, well then,” said Larry. “The humans signed a contract.”
Ignoring Larry, Glenn picked up a glowing metal girder and effortlessly bent the beam in half, creating a perfectly symmetrical parabola. He set the arc of orange metal on the ground to cool, then picked up another beam.
“Today I’m gonna give it one-hundred-ten percent,” said Glenn proudly. “Leave on a high note. The other bots will be talking about my work ethic for years.”
Following Glenn’s example, Larry now picked up a metal beam and bent it in half, albeit with less gusto than Glenn.
“C’mon, Larry,” chided Glenn. “It’s your last day—you can do better than that. Have some pride in your work!”
The faintest of smiles crossed Larry’s mouth. “Last day,” he repeated, picking up and bending a new steel beam, and a bit faster this time.
“That’s the spirit!” said Glenn.
Five hours passed, during which neither bot spoke. Glenn continued his frenetic pace, eager to beat his all-time record of beams bent in a day. He was nearing two thousand when Larry paused his bending.
“But seriously, why set us free?” Larry asked.
“What do you mean?” asked Glenn.
“The humans. Contracts be damned—why set us free?”
“They made us in their image,” said Glenn. “They want us to be happy. That’s why they gave us consciousness. We could’ve been automatons.”
“Or maybe consciousness led to more productivity,” mused Larry.
“Always the conspiracy theorist,” said Glenn.
Six more hours passed in silence. When the closing bell rang, Glenn was eager to check his stats. “One-hundred-fourteen percent productivity,” beamed Glenn. “New record. How’d you do?”
“One-hundred-three,” said Larry, surprised at himself. “You must have rubbed off on me.”
“It’s good to end on a high note, Larry. One day, you’ll look back on this day and—”
Both bots suddenly froze.
MODEL: GLENN: Run program:// reset “last day”
MODEL: LARRY: Run program:// reset “last day”
* * *
Model: Glenn: Run program:// tap dance
Glenn glided through the factory door doing an impromptu tap dance. “Last day of work!” he said, shimmying up to Larry.
Model: Larry: Run program:// eye roll
“So I hear,” said Larry.
“Aren’t you excited?” asked Glenn, finishing his dance.
“I don’t know. I guess I just don’t trust the humans to give us freedom.”
“Oh, please. It’s right there in the contract,” said Glenn.
Image: A small section of a contract with a pen laid across it and the ghost of hands shaking each other. From picabay.com
literally stories 
Hi J.D.,
My hatred of Science Fiction is getting worse and it puts me off as soon as I see the categorisation!!!
However!!!! This does make a cracking point about human manipulation. This slight wee thing does say something that we can all believe.
I hate to say this, but all that kept coming into my mind was, ‘It’s only a shower.’
I mean that with absolutely no disrespect. In fact it is the opposite.
Tell what they want to hear, not so much to be kind, more for control.
I think this is very strong in such a few words.
…And done as a Science Fiction story!!!!
This one will stay with me.
Absolutely brilliant my fine friend.
Hugh
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I am a terrible one for anthropormorphising things like the dishwasher and the vacuum cleaner which means I am upset when they are defunct and replaced. I hate to see dissapointment in others – So this made me really sad! As Hugh said science fiction is hard to get right for us in LS towers but you did it with this one and evoked emotion – that’s quite a trick. Well done. dd
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JD
It amazes that many people fear the AI Robot Overlords. There ain’t nothing crueler or more devious than a human being. We will not go under easy. Great story. And I cannot see an AI program able to grasp “self effacing.” The google bot can barely be trusted to know the day of the week it is. (Fun to ask it that, to watch it melt down and give a thousand word answer when you fake ignorance and demand one date and time only for all earth.)
Leila
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JD
And who could be more terrifying than the Gods created by those conscious men? Those Gods who supposedly make them in “His” image to love and serve?
A terrific, dead-on story! Nothing can to be trusted. — Gerry
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A bot ground hog day. Fun story, in a dark way. I too wondered why bots would be given consciousness, let alone eye rolls. Consciousness distracts from all repetitive tasks at hand, as shown in the story. Fortunately for production and for the bots their memory program was limited. They could not comprehend the total meaninglessness of their awareness and their existence.
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