text: “Let’s go Robert, you need to leave” the robot said to the old man, his mechanical voice box creating an almost realistic empathetic voice . “Can it, Tin Man!” the old man angrily replied, unwillingly hopping off the brown, frozen bench The thin snow layer on the cold winter’s afternoon, buckled under the robots mechanical heel. Machines had no need for clothes or rest. The robot couldn’t understand the man’s need to revisit this place once a week. Death was death. Deactivation. No longer existing. To revisit a place of death again and again, always bringing 2 roses. The old unshaven man, now painfully standing and grunting, his calloused hands struggling with his old blue jumper zipper began slowly limping towards the car, placing his old woollen cap on his head, hopping in the passenger side, looking more fidgety than usual. The single scarlet rose twiddling in his fingers. Suddenly then man grew angry, huffing and puffing his chest. His hands fidgeting more and more, the rose in an iron vice in his hands. The old man reached for the steering wheel, yanking it to the side in the way of the graffitied wall to the left. However, he was old and couldn’t so much as change lanes. He cursed loudly and reclined into his seat. “Why do you try Robert? That was the 3rd attempt this month. 11th ?attempt to injure yourself this week“. The robot said softly , the plastic flaps and mechanism moving to seem sad and concerned. The old man paid no heed to the pouting robot “Do you believe I want - “ “WANT...BELIEVE?!” the old man interjected. “You can’t want or believe!. You're a thing, a bunch of ones and zeros in a box!” his screaming silencing the old radio playing what he called “rock” “We do believe Robert, no in the way humans do, but our sensors and ‘zeroes and ones’ work in ways that enable efficiency and fulfilment. Your rules, implemented in us a birth - ” “You know nothing of birth or life or living” he interjected, yanking at the locked door handle in vain, then reclining in defeat “ I know that it is my job to babysit you and make sure you're healthy and alive, in compliance with the laws of humans, on robots. I do not want to be here. I was built as a surgeon, to save one another from deactivation. Being here is a waste of my capabilities ” “Can’t you see keeping me alive is torture?” his eyes, dark grey and suffering, filled with the pain of 200 years of existence” “I must, I’m sorry Robert, you’re the last human. We must protect humans” the plastic flaps and synthetic, stringy fibers contorting back into a deadpan expression, both sets of ‘eyes’ on the dead road ahead. “You’re a monster....” Robert weakly rebutted. “And yet humans are the ones who killed and fought and destroyed one another. You’ve been killing each other from the beginning with Cain and Abel. You built faster, better, easier ways to kill one another, all you’ve ever done is kill, kill, kill” the mechanical voice box whirring, straining against the torrent of thoughts and words. “I keep you alive, feed you pills, drive you around, do everything for you.....to help you”. As quiet filled the car, the gravely, unkempt roads almost bucking under the car filled the air, while Robert sat up, head down in what looked to be anger and hate. The scarlet rose now crushed and picked apart, leaving only thorns. “Now tell me who’s the real monster here?” &#x200B; P.