Christmas Lights Of July

Lights of July: Complete Story

The office building was right on the edge of the small town. Built in the late 2000s it had once been the public library but after the ebook takeover all the libraries across the county had been digitized. 

The building was old, cracked lions stood guarding the entrance thinking they were guarding the books of knowledge and fiction. In truth for the past 20 years or so the lions were guarding the towns maintenance office. There were no more books, just old rusting parts of various things mixed in with a slew of old laptops, tablets, and even a desktop computer. that could go to a museum. 

In the back of the library where the historical fiction would have been, there were four desks for the four people usually worked there. Usually on Friday afternoon they would play a game of darts, the two winners would get to leave early leaving the two others to divide up  the rest of the days work. This time Nick and Cal lost the game leaving them at the office until five. 

"I always have to stay, why can't we play a game I don't suck completely at?" Nick complained.

"That's why we choose it," Cal said. 

"You bastards."

"What do we have left to do anyway? What do you say we sneak out early?"

"I do actually got something," Nick said 

 "What is it?" Cal asked

"Well..."  

"What? Is it bad?" 

"Its just in these situations we are supposed to wait for Dragon corp to come out and solve them." 

"Another bot problem?" Cal asked. "Fourth one this year did you call Dragon Corp yet?" 

"I was wondering if you could manage the deactivation on your own. It's the one that sets up the Christmas lights for the town" Nick said

 "So the bot that sets up the lights is malfunctioning? Why can't we just wait for Dragon Crop to come repair it? Plus its July I am sure someone will come out before December to fix the thing." 

 "Have you been downtown yet?" Nick asked 

"No, not yet I've been here all morning." 

"The bot set up the lights." 

"What? In the middle of summer?"

 "The thing is old Cal, that's why I want you to go decommission it. You toyed with robotics in college right?" 

"That was a 101 class taught by a former United Earth Government soldier that hardly qualifies me to decom a bot."

"I don't know, remember what happened the last time they released that software patch to all the bots? What if this thing still has that bug in it? It's best we— well you handle this." 

"What your too scared to go see a bot that sets up lights?" 

"Yes," Nick said. 

"Oh," Cal said looking at Nick he could tell that he had waited all day to avoid having him go do this. He could actually see that Nick was scared. "Fine." He said, "Where is this thing?"  

 The air was warm when Cal left the old library that afternoon. He locked up the office and walked over to his car. 

"Where to today?" A robotic voice chimed as he approached his car.

 "First and Western street please." He said getting into where the driver would normally be. His car sped off to the county courthouse where Nick had said the bot was stored.