WELCOME TO SPACE JUNKER

READ AN EXCERPT

Chapter 2

The barn housed a small community of survivors: two horses, Sally, a handful of huddled chickens, and the resilient mice that lived in the rafters. Bob took meticulous care of them. While his core processors were incapable of feeling empathy in a biological sense, he had developed a connection to the animals that bypassed his original labor directives. No one had ever ordered him to walk the horses or wait late into the night for Sally’s return; it had simply become an integrated part of his operational cycle.

He would spend hours standing at the edge of the parched fields, his camera eyes whirring as he watched the horses run toward the horizon, always waiting for them to return to the safety of the barn. At night, while waiting for the goat, he worked on the Atmospheric Water Generator (AWG), his octopus fingers meticulously cleaning the filters to squeeze every drop of moisture from the drying Illinois air. He was the silent architect of their survival, a machine of strong, unasked-for values.