Whatever Happened... to Robot Jones? Continued

Chapter 21: Damage

Once he got talking to Shannon, the rest of the afternoon went by quickly. With little more to manage except the collapsing of the snack tables and the final counting of today's earnings (even though Socks had managed the register, Robot took it upon himself to count the money, since it was an instantaneous process for him, and it relieved his friend to go home early), it was too soon that Robot found himself putting the key in the door and locking it from the outside, one last time.

The automaton was the last one to leave the arcade, with Shannon of all people being the second to last. Cubey and Mitch had left with Socks, and the last remaining customers-a five year old kid with his high school brother, asked to leave over a half hour ago. Robot's friends may have just spent their day making little kids and their parents happy, but the automaton had never seen them look so miserable. Like Robot, they must have realized Nob's was a goner if James hadn't even shown. And they couldn't even enjoy its last day open because they were busy playing adults and running the event. Robot decided he'd have to find a way to make it up to them for all they'd done, but he was too tired to think of what.

Due to the strange relief of having finally started talking to each other again, Shannon couldn't find it in herself to just get up and leave Robot at the arcade alone. Likewise, Robot couldn't find it in himself to let her know that he could manage the shutting down by himself. So, Shannon had made herself useful and swept the floor of popcorn and dirt with an infrequently used broom she found in James' tiny office while Robot went down the final checklist. When the movers came to take the remaining working games for storage, at least they'd have a clean floor to walk across.

Robot was so exhausted that all he could think about while taking care of the last things was getting home and going into dreamless sleep mode. He didn't even care that this would set his sleep routine back three hours too early.

Once the key was turned, however, Robot couldn't step more than a foot away. Closing the doors on the arcade felt like he was closing a chapter of his life, and suddenly, he almost understood why James couldn't bring himself to come.

It was seven thirty, and even colder out now, with the sun having set hours earlier. Even with his systems working overtime to keep his body warm, Robot didn't want to leave. He lingered with the arcade, and thus Shannon lingered with him. It took Shannon quietly commenting on the temperature outside for Robot to snap out of his daze and turn away from the door. He was still a robot, and he had a job to to: Escorting Shannon home, now that dark had fallen.

In the days before things got weird between them-well, weirder, maybe-Shannon would have insisted that she would be fine walking home by herself. But this time, it had been she who had suggested that they walk home together. The suggestion had come up so naturally, like all the anger and frustration they'd had for each other had finally just died, and they were just two random schoolmates again. And Robot had accepted, neither excited nor reluctant. Just fulfilling a simple human request, like a good robot.

They were taking a different route than the one Robot had taken to get to the center of town that morning. As Shannon had explained, it was faster to get to her house if they cut through the park, and the connected cemetery. Robot had no outward objections to this, since he wanted to put this confusing day behind him, but though he'd be lying if he said he wasn't at least a little nervous about taking this unfamiliar route in the dark. He pushed it off as fear for the human, trying to think of himself as manlier than that. It wasn't because he was afraid of zombies rising from the graves, or even ghosts-he'd done all but scream his opinion on the existence of ghosts to the planet. But that didn't mean that being around the humans had allowed him to develop a strange feeling, being so close to so many of the deceased.