text: On the verge of technological revolution in his small and isolated backwoods village, a young and ambitious aspiring mechanic begins to put the finishing touches on the robot that will get him into the "Androdox Personal Robotics" program. Only a few bits remain to finish his masterpiece, the outer plating to protect the internal components and wiring, and the personality matrix that would bring the bot to life. Seeing as the boy's town wasn't even old enough to be charted on most official maps, the closest of those parts available to him would still require possibly a week's worth of travel. Nothing will stand in the way of his magnum opus, however, so bags are packed, the trustiest available steed is chosen, and the robot is given a name to commemorate the occasion. Dot, is what the droid is to be called. Dot is flipped on for the time being, just to record its surroundings and to keep its joints in motion, wouldn't want Dot to rust up in the creators absence. Dot quickly finds a habit of patrolling the town, in one uniform route that Dot had calculated to be the most efficient. Were it not for the help of a few kind residents, Dot’s still new navigation systems would have had him wander off into the woods several times over by now, but it was no trouble to the citizens, who had become fond of Dot and his parrot like audio replays of their own voices. In the following days, Dot noticed changes in his residents behavior. The organics had been altering their regular routine, far fewer of them coming out of their domiciles as often. Dot began to take count of who he saw in certain areas, 4 guards on the perimeter, 3 elderly running the market stands, 12 that come and go from town each morning and afternoon, etc. 4 days after the engineer left to collect Dot’s finishing touches, Dot had counted 2 fewer guardsmen, and the complete absence of the daily caravan. Dot, not having the program to do anything about the situation, kept on his daily routine. The following morning, Dot clocks in a sudden spike of lifeforms, not in the town, but a short distance up and away from it, on the cliffs and mountains that hid his home for so long. Dot took minor detours in his route that day, as the readings from the outsiders was much different than the townies that Dot was all but used to. The foreign signals moved in patterns similar to Dot himself, efficient, calculated, and minimal to no sidetracking. That very night, the outside lifeforms vanished from Dot’s radar, along with 5 additional that were not accounted for on Dot’s next patrol. By this point, not even Dot’s parroting could do a thing to return the residents to their normal state of being. This had never failed before, but how was Dot to observe this fact, he was but an unfinished robot. Dot obliviously carries on his route, cataloging no change in population, only in routine. Dot had lost track of nearly every resident of his, before finding the majority of them gathered in the large town hall that rested at the far end of the two street city. The occasional guardsmen leaves the town hall, to return with containers of supplies, presumably to sustain the shelter. The population remained as such for several unbroken days, causing Dot to change his patrol path. Dot now only wandered the perimeter of the town hall, occasionally poking his head through a window to get a count of the remaining citizens. Dot noticed occasional returns in the outsiders' life signatures, coming in from the same mountains and hills at first, and slowly encroaching on the perimeter of the town itself. The signals themselves never stayed but for a fleeting moment, but they always returned for seemingly scheduled check-ins. Night fell, exactly two weeks after his creator's departure. The surrounding lifeforms re-appear all at once, bringing with them the residents that Dot had previously lost track of, very considerate! A large gathering of Dot’s regular residents converged with the new visitors, remaining gathered and intermingling amongst themselves for exactly 1 hour and 47 minutes. The visitors departed no later than they arrived, leaving behind the old missing citizens. With everything back in place Dot was able to finally return to his original route, and count the original amount of people in their original places. Not all returned to normalcy as Dot had initially calculated. The cycle of behavior that Dot had observed and cataloged had been halted, The citizens no longer moved on their daily paths, simply standing in their one designated place, day after night, unbothered by storm or snow. The once traveling caravaneers had awkwardly been parked in the center of the city, the animals dragging the carts eventually wandering off on their own. Months passed, Dot remained faithful to his route, and his once lively city of organics and their shenanigans had become still. Dot’s sensors eventually stopped reading his former residents as lifeforms, something of flesh and blood couldn't possibly be so static for so long, it was simply in-computable. Dot eventually came across an obstruction in his pathing, causing his nav systems to flip him around and mistakenly wander down the path out of town, and into whatever the world had in store for Dot. Without contingency protocol to instruct him, Dot simply kept wandering.