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| Photo courtesy @starbuckmcDee copyright 2015 |
The retro-macho roboTrucker felt nothing when the endangered bird smacked the windshield and struggled at the edge of the highway. It didn't have any emotion chips installed. The roboTrucker kept driving and didn't even contact the roboAuthorities. It wasn't a part of its programming. The roboStreet sweeper would come around soon enough anyways. Would it at least be composted, or would it just become a part of the landfill? The other human drivers assumed the roboAuthorities would deal with it. The programmers of the roboAuthorities assumed that other programmers would deal with it. The bird, still barely alive, made its way into the nearby tunnel, looking for shade in its last moments. A little boy snapped a Vine post. It went viral across the Eastern Seaboard. The roboAuthorities were soon to be re- programmed, according to reports.
Traffic was backed up for weeks while they worked out the tweaks. 12 confirmed suicides were reported in the tunnel from disillusioned bird watchers. Everybody's avatars voted for more roboAvatar suicide watchers. Traffic was soon restored as electro-magnetic bird nets were set up in key areas. This changed the birds nesting grounds in Florida, according to some biologists. The robo avatar authorities were looking into it. They eventually concluded to shut off the bird nets. Soon afterwards, another retro-macho roboTrucker hit a rare racoon this Wednesday. It felt a little sad and notified the roboAuthorities. The roboAuthorities felt absolutely terrible within their newly upgraded emotion chips across their neural network and completely shut their traffic control and monitoring systems down. The human programmers interceded and removed the roboAuthorities emotion chips to basic levels. Traffic was mostly restored. The same roboTrucker was running late one day. The human business owners and programmers of the roboTrucker, due to pressure from higher ups, installed a hacked speed control chip from overseas so that it could go as fast as possible in areas where the roboAuthorities didn't have cameras in rare spots. It ran into another hacked roboTrucker from a different company from the opposite direction. The uranium leaked all over the highway when the roboTrucker initiated the hacked self-destruct mode. The other roboTrucker was carrying illegal rare live chickens from South America (the ones that may have come into contact with last year's Avian Influenza strain.) The roboAuthorities were algorithmically and cybernetically dispatched once again. They kept the incident off the news through various means. They didn't want to have their previous high level emotion chips reinstalled. They gathered the injured people into the middle of the Nevada desert for questioning, along with the biological produce and the Uranium as well as the roboTruckers. The injured were never heard from again and the whole incident went unreported except on conspiracy web feeds. By Friday of the following week everything appeared to be back to normal again.
