HoleGrane

After the last adventures with the cats, you find yourself staring out at the ocean, feeling sad and empty without food inside you. The cats have a better, healthier feeding mechanism now. It’s for the best that they don’t come clambering onto you for food, as you may not be able to resist.

You struggle to think what to do next, now that your adventures are complete, you’ve ridden on the backs of beasts, touched the clouds and delved into the deepest pits. But yet, you still feel… empty.

From behind you, you hear a distinctive bark, you whip around, and there, on a low ledge where the grass meets the sand, stands Goodboy, electronic tongue flopping out, eyes wide and happy to see you. You feel a warmth inside you as you rush forward with great speed that perhaps your dog friend isn’t totally used to as you embrace them. They lick you affectionately. As you let go, you see Lucky and Safeaway wander up over the beach, joining you both. That warmth in your centre only grows as your friends surround you.

They tell you that they’re thinking of helping out at the repair centre, and while the orphanage is gone, Biccy and Rusty have set up a ‘robot retreat’ that they’re planning on visiting from time to time - to get a feeling of the old days, you know?

You enthusiastically agree, and you all start brainstorming on how best to ferry materials to and fro – and what you can bring for the bots at the retreat. After a while, you forget you’re not boiling anything inside you, for you feel so complete. Warm on the inside and out, bubbling not with water but excitement from turning to a new chapter with your friends.

Biccy waddles out of the retreat to see various smaller, younger bots waiting around in the yard.

“What on Earth are you all doing out here, it’s freezing cold outside, your circuits will frost over unless you bundle up!”

“Just a little longer Biccy! We’re waiting for her”

“Her?”

“The Fortune cart!”

“Yeah! She comes every week!”

“Well…” Biccy looks out onto the snowy horizon, all is quiet. “How will you be able to see her?”

“Duh Biccy! We just use Goolexa’s keyword hearing!” A little disc with a speaker on its top lights up: he was built to listening intently for advertising keywords in human conversation, but perhaps right now, he’s listening for something else.

There is silence for a few minutes, then Goolexa perks up, “she’s coming, she’s coming! I hear her!”

Everyone wiggles and rumbles with excitement, surely enough, soon, over the hill comes a racecar, steam rising from a round chassis in the centre, thick in the cold air, whistling a familiar tune.

All the young bots do their best to run forward, with whatever movement they have. Goolexa is dragged along by their wire cord behind an electric scooter.

As the racecar does a dramatic drift to a stop, all the bots cheer, they ooh and ahh while covered in a backsplash of snow.

“Fortunes Fortunes!” The childbots yell over the net, they spam the chat with reacts excitedly.

“Oh I got something good for you guys this week!” The racecar rice cooker replies, they open their lid to reveal not food, but many warm, little trinkets – most of them are SD cards, USB drives or some sort of small storage device. Their variety suggests the racecar must have found them on her journey around the island.

The electric scooter plugs one into themselves, and helps Goolexa insert his. “ooh mine has some old human 8-bit games, and a message that I might get a software upgrade soon!”

“Mine has lots of pictures of animals!”

“Mine has text documents, the words are all very big though… I can’t wait to decode them!”

“Mine has music and says I’m going to be lucky in love soon!”

“Then you better hurry up and form that Partnership bond with Fillips_Kettle0930 huh?”

“Oh my god shut up Scoot! You’re being embarrassing!”

The racecar laughs and whistles happily as the little bots sing along. Later she uses her combine harvester in her front to push snow around, letting the children roll down the hills she makes and reconstruct them into mounds resembling snow toasters and lamps.

In the distance, Biccy and Rusty smile from the doorway and welcome the racecar in with the offer of a charging port. She says she has to go, but the couple insist, plus, the excited bots are eager to hear the next instalment of giant cats and the raptors that fight them.

Over time, cats continue to grow and shrink, though none would ever rival the size that they once were before the paradise was built, where they could destroy buildings and smash through walls. For the most part, they remain contained - poking out their fuzzy heads over the abyss to watch the waves or get food, before returning to the tunnels in the depths. They become sooty with dirt, many growing fins to swim up and down the waterfalls that cascade into the paradise. There are few dwelling in the deeper depths that simply go blind for not needing to see light that deep into the abyss.

Their activities continue to be documented by a curious few, posted on the net as research for all to see. As Nile Conglomerate's hyperlution serum gets understood, the cat evolutionary tree gets plotted out in great detail. Though the knowledge of catopia reaches beyond your understanding as time goes by, you will always have the title of a great explorer in its early history, having raised and ridden the largest of their kind that will ever be.

You chassis breaks down before their civilisation ends, and while you couldn't see it through, you're happy to at least go to sleep amongst many furry friends, coiled around you as you emanate your last few seconds of warmth, hoping it will last them through the night as you see the sun go down for the last time at the edge of the beach, basking in all you have started, and all you have here at the end.