In the Lives of Puppets

by T.J. Klune

Rambo didn’t seem to believe him. He squealed, pincers opening and closing, his circular body shaking as his all-terrain tires rolled over pieces of metal that had fallen from the scrap heap. Across the top, in faded markings that had never been clear, were the letter R and a circle that could have been an O or a lowercase a, followed by what was clearly an M (possibly) and a B before ending in another O or a. He’d found the little thing years before, repairing it himself with metal and care until the machine had come back to life, demanding to be allowed to clean—it needed to clean because if it didn’t, it had no purpose, it had nothing. It’d taken Vic a long time to calm the machine down, fiddling with its circuits until the vacuum had sighed in relief. It was a short-term fix. Rambo worried about most things, such as the dirt on the floor, the dirt on Vic’s hands, and death in all manner of ways. Nurse Ratched, Vic’s first robot, had asked if she could kill the vacuum. Vic said she could not. Nurse Ratched asked why. Vic said it was because they didn’t kill their new friends. “I would,” Nurse Ratched had said in that flat voice of hers. “I would kill him quite easily. Euthanasia does not have to be painful. But it can, if you want it to be.” She rode on her continuous track toward the vacuum, drill extended. Rambo screamed. Five years later, not much had changed. Rambo was still anxious. Nurse Ratched still threatened to play with his corpse. Vic was used to it by now.