Following A Robot
by Krystyn Poe
Keira paused, frozen with indecision. The old man still rushed towards her, repeating his message with urgency, and then there was the shopkeeper playing with his metal thingy. What was a spy to do?
Think logically. That’s what she had been trained to do and her reflexes took over instantly. She quickly analyzed her situation. The old man was probably a harmless old kook, and judging from his clothing, he was probably an escapee from some insane asylum somewhere. The shopkeeper was probably of no importance, there could be hundreds of logical reason why he was fooling with the metal thing, and hundreds more illogical reasons. Therefore, the robot was her best bet.
All of this took place in only a moment. Keira nodded once to the robot and followed it down a few streets and into an elevator, descending to one of the more...unsavory parts of Moonbase 64. She continued to follow it down crowded street and alleyways. Finally, it lead her to a dark dead end of an alley between two abandoned buildings that were rotting from the inside out. She froze immediately. What if she was wrong? What if it was a trap? Could the Fandenians know that she was a spy? What had she done wrong?
The robot turned to face her and slid out of its human disguise, incinerating it with a small hand-held lasergun, similar to the one that Keira herself always carried. It then spoke to her for the first time since they had left the upper levels.
"Do not be concerned." It said in an odd, filtered tinny voice "This will only take a moment."
Keira watched as the robot turned to the dead end wall and spoke to it softly, as if coaxing it to do something. A small piece of the walling slid away to display a panel into which it punched a code of some sort. The wall slid up to reveal a hidden elevator, into which the robot stepped. It motioned for her to follow and she took a step forward before pausing again. Could she trust the robot?
DOES KEIRA