After the War

by Rudi Dornemann

The last remnants of the robot armies huddled together on the peak of the planet’s highest mountain.

As far as the eye–or spectrum-enhanced optical processor–could see, the valleys, the slopes of neighboring mountains, the plains beyond, all were covered in a layer several meters thick of broken machinery. Their fallen comrades, casualties of a thousand years of automated warfare.

The few remaining squadrons parleyed, forged a hasty alliance, hashing out the terms in a hexadecimal pidgin common to all robots. Above them, huge shadows loomed–the low-orbit ships a more fearsome and implacable enemy than they’d faced before.

They clung to each other as the magnetic beams swept down and the scrap-corpses began to ascend into the air around them.

The recyclers had arrived.