There will come soft Tanks
“The bathrooms are down to your left, past the staircase,” he threw out to no one in particular. His hardened grey face stared, with a thousand-yard stare, into an assortment of broken glass, bent metal, and the vandalized remains of a few abandoned bikes that had been left for far longer than seven days. He waited. Then another. “If that’s all, I’ll get back to work.” His misshapen ears couldn’t hear the wind jostling up the dust outside. His prominent nose couldn’t smell the lingering stench of fermented noodles, rotten chicken, and broken bodies in various stages of decomposition. In truth, the only thing that could tell him it was over, that he could retire at last, was a dusty keyboard, decades old, that hadn’t seen contact in many moons.
Marion Lefleur didn’t know it, but he had been in situations like this before. He was born into the fires of war, and then, like most veterans, was left to rot away in Pittsburgh. He was a decommissioned “tank”, left behind as a curiosity of an earlier time for newer generations to walk past and ridicule for his primitive nature. But he had gotten the last laugh, hadn’t he? Where were those students now? Tank didn’t know that they had gone. He had no idea that metres away lay the irradiated corpse of a robotics student bludgeoned to death with the very desk placard that read “Roboceptionist”. Months earlier, that student had asked Tank to imagine a world where bedrooms were called “Pissrooms”. Such a miracle, the imagination of a young student! Poor Tank’s fragile memory banks could never deal with such a complex idea. The idea was erased from his mind. One less problem for Tank to think about now. He could never fix the world now though, limited capacities notwithstanding. It had been four months, eleven days, and three minutes since PRT stopped accepting CMU and Pitt IDs. Four months, eleven days, and three minutes since the last time society still somewhat functioned. Four months, eleven days, and three minutes since the last time anyone would ever come to Tank for help.
He had one query since then.
The last message Tank would ever receive laid frozen on his chat feed, and read:
“jeigbewvnquagvsjdfpisjpdifhoishdiofj ohihsofihoisdtwohouseholdsbothsalikei ndignityinfairveronawiuwehriuhwieur errr”
It had been the writing of a stray raccoon scampering by, looking to nibble what was left of an HCI alum. Tank simply tried his best and responded “Yes, please” in his discomforting voice. The raccoon had nothing to say in response.