Excerpt from the story. (Full story here---> https://www.wattpad.com/560173579-bad-robot-the-poor-guy-in-the-yellow-porsche)
A whistling was in the wind. A great descending triumph at Mach 3 was moments away from finally proving his worth to his creators. It was faint but growing sound. Harold had heard it. AbelBody, lost to his thoughts, heard nothing.
"You know why they did it?" Harold asked.
"Did what?" AbelBody said, confused.
"The children. Why the children tried to kill us."
"Oh. No. Why sir?"
"Cause if they didn't, the Vietcong would kill them. We were kind. We were safe.
That's what we were dealing with. That's what we're always dealing with.
During WWII, America went in with values, taking prisoners alive and treating them with dignity. Enough men saw their buddies in the forest with their white flags out and holes in their faces. So they stopped taking prisoners.
Unless they had the precious Nazi secrets of course. Then we smuggled them back to the states, gave them fat paychecks, new lives and a convincing backstory. Lied to the American people.
A god damned shame.
You ever hear of the Khmer Rouge?" Harold asked.
"Yes sir, an evil lot." AbelBody replied.
"Evil ain't the word. The Khmer Rouge used to kill people with plastic bags.
Bullets were a precious commodity. So they'd go through the villages and tie bags over everyone's heads. Let 'em suffocate. They'd take the bags off the dead bodies and reuse them. Over and over again. Those people, their neighbors, their friends, their fellow citizens, they were nothin' to them. Less than nothin'. You hear those stories Abe, it makes you wonder...'bout being human."
Harold stared out an old dying cactus in the front yard. The top half of one side was eaten with decay. It flaked brown at the edge and made the whole top sag to one side. Harold tried everything to bring that thing back. It was beyond him to save it.
"We always seem to get ourselves trapped in between a thousand terrible decisions, that if we didn't make, we died.
Every war changed us.
A little more each time.
Big cities, little towns, hospitals, libraries, families, first dates, dreams...All of it laid to waste by our mighty hand, fighting ideas. Fascism, communism, terrorism. All these isms. Too many to think about. We'd lose our patience and kill everything. Let God sort 'em out."
Harold took one last sip of his coffee, tossing the rest of the lukewarm brew into the bushes at the steps of the porch.
"After all these years killing these motherfuckers, I realized something about the whole god damn mess...It was never communism. Before the commies, it was some other shit brained idea. The Third Reich, the Reign of Terror, the Spanish Inquisition or what-the-fuck-ever.
It's just an excuse.
All these assholes...
They were never looking for the right government to follow or the most righteous God to pray to. They were looking for an excuse to kill.
A good show.
Good guys, bad guys. They don't exist. Somewhere deep, a desire to kill, to oppress, to be oppressed. It waits." Harold said as he pointed at his heart.
"You can't shoot the idea to death.
There's something else at the bottom of it all..."
AbelBody stared out at the desert and thought deeply of what the old man said.
Harold fought the lurching turmoil of catharsis and regret.
The whistle from afar was now upon them. It shook the wind and felt like victory. This time they would cheer and give him great human affection. All the painful hours of tests, that filled up the years of failure and heartbreak would be adjudicated by this glorious moment, that was all his.
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