SILENT RUNNER

Whenever things got problematic, 8791 simply transported himself through wormhole portals into other space time continuums in the galaxy and started over. It was the easiest thing to begin a brand new chapter of your life ad infinitum these days and with no seeming repercussions, at least not while your basic machine survived intact. The universe had become a perpetual merry-go-round of cosmic opportunities provided you were mindful to look after your personal tech.

But for machines such as 8791 there was the added complication of guilt and sentimentality as his model type had trace elements of human behaviour hard wired into its original programming software.

It now turned out that moral issues aside, a world/universe without guilt and sentimentality was far easier to manage and maintain. Since the beginning of the fifth industrial revolution, pure cause and effect was allowed to fully flourish without any protracted, agonising pause for thought, hesitation or procrastination that had previously delayed the inevitable outcomes of tech and evolution of consciousness for the planet. After decades of extensive scientific research led by the World Technology Forum into what had held back human progress, it was comprehensively agreed that guilt and sentimentality were the two most problematic obstacles. It was then finally concluded in a seminal paper on the subject entitled "Moving Forward With Purpose In The 22nd Century" that nothing focused the collective identity of consciousness better than pure survival instinct and the necessity to finally remove the attachment, doubt and fear of human emotion from all new robot innovations was made imperative.

But in that subtle transition where the last of the human fabric transmorphed into robots, an entire generation now remained that still included the ability to engage with those obsolete emotions banished by the WTF.

8791 was struggling to find his place in a galaxy where human emotions had ostensibly been outlawed. This meant that most environments on earth and similar planets were inhospitable to his kind and therefore he had to keep moving like a silent renegade in the night. If it wasn't for the memory of 2891, he would have found a way to self-destruct his unique generational components beyond all repair but the overwhelming desire to be reunited with 2891 was stronger than his impulse to activate his kill switch code and so he kept on looking for her in his endless teleporting incarnations, like a cyborg Orpheus searching for his Eurydice.

He'd lost her that night at The Silent Running memory bar in the year 2223 when they had agreed to join some rebel allies in a derelict space station 1000 km from Planet Earth, hoping to avoid confrontation with robot killers who had been sent to annihilate the last of their type.

When she failed to appear at their designated midnight rendevouz near Neon Bay he sensed she had either been executed already or had left him in limbo due to fear of being caught with him.

Vanishing through a wormhole portal behind the bar itself, 8791 hated himself for leaving 2891 without commiting to an extensive search for her but there was simply no time, as a comprehensive droid manhunt was underway to find any GenXbots still active in the city and he still had enough survival instinct of his own to avoid getting caught himself.

As he felt the force of hyperspeed against his machine body, a profound regret grew inside of him which came to resemble a black hole of emotion.

The sentimental robot was haunted by the events of that fateful night at The Silent Running and now he was obsessed beyond all reason with the idea of finding her again although he had no clues as to where she was or if she was even still operational.

In a world where nearly all memory of human emotion had been vanquished, he came to believe that he might just well be the last bastion of love in the universe.

8791 would keep on searching for her until he'd scoured every last inch of the cosmos; even though he would be forever pursued by assassins who would sniff out his human emotion in space like sharks sensing blood in the water, the eternal memory of 2891 would make him stronger than all of his unfeeling enemies combined.