The Lost Thing
I can feel the sharp broken bits of glass slicing into the back of my throat as I breath. I swallow. It's worse. I can't taste anything out here. My mouth is dry. The air around me is... dry. There is no other word to describe it. It's like somebody took a very old, dried up sand pit and copied and pasted it a million times. The sound of blood-thirsty mosquitoes circling around my head makes me dizzy. I gave up thirst a while ago. Also gave up hunger. As soon as I got lost in this bone dry piece of land, my body gave up hope. It gave up the thought of living, it gave up the need for life. My white shirt has become brown. My dark pants have lost seems from all the tripping up I've had. They cover my shoes and now trip me up even more. My dark green bag, filled with empty water bottles. We were here for a business course. I work at the lab of SOL. Science Of Living. The aim was to take samples of the dry land, take them back to our science lab and rule the world. If we could find traces of rust here, we would be able to prove that robots have lived here, and may still. We could sue the government for Trillions of dollars. The Labour party promised us that they would destroy all National party robots because they are ruining the world. Robots break the communication between humans. They also need water to run, which mean we need to physically fight for it. There have been so many world wars. The last one was WW8. 5 world wars have begun because of the need of water. Labour destroyed all the National party robots, that wasn't the problem. They promised us no more use of robots. This land used to be filled with lakes and rivers. We suspect robots are being used here.
SOL, the group I obviously used to be in, decided they would take the Trillions of dollars by themselves. They erased my fingerprint unlock data from the float. When I went to unlock the doors, they wouldn't disappear. SOL flew away without me.
I think they have come back for me! There's something in the distance! Dark and grey, and there is a dark red shape moving around it. This must have all been an accident. SOL didn't mean to delete my fingerprint ID, I was worrying about nothing. I better run or they might miss me! It's hard to run when you feel so drained. I must be getting slower, because the float seems to be moving further and further away from me. My eyes need to shut for a while, I'm just going to lie down.
My eyes are open, it's still dark though. Am I blinded? Light is thrown at my face. I think I'm blinded now. The red shape that I saw before I fell asleep is hovering over me.
"AAAAAH!" I scream. It has huge green pincers. Standing up now, cowering before the red robot! Red, that means it's a Labour party robot! SOL was obviously way too smart for me! What does this robot want from me? Water? My life? "I don't have any water." I call, pleading for mercy. My heart is beating extremely fast, like I have just ran a marathon. His green tentacle legs bend up and down. Creating a nodding movement. A green chimney pops out of one of the hundreds of doors he has covered over his red, rusty body. Another one opens and the pincers reach into grab a bottle of water. The robot squashes it into the chimney and it disappears into the long dark tube. A puff of steam and the robot opens another door. Out topples another bottle of water. He pushes it towards me. Slowly, carefully not taking my eyes off the robot I snatch it from in front of his feet. Labour's robot's eyes smile and I drift back off to sleep.
My spine shivers, I feel so isolated. Where am I? Again light blinds me. This time in front of me is a man sitting on a blanket draped over a camel, holding an empty bottle of water out to me. The broken glass in my throat has gone. He gestures to climb onto the red blanket. He makes a clicking sound and the cream-coloured camel walks towards another shape in the distance, a brown one this time. With a door and windows. Through the glass I see a nicely made bed with a jug of water next to it. We arrive at my new home.
By Jamie Hollway
