Scoop.exe

The lecture hall is total chaos. Even for the softspace environment it is being hosted in, space flickers and contorts in ways it really shouldn't according to its code. Through the air glide strange horned horses with pure white manes, and even a few roaring bears that chase the horses around the room, giggling.

Bots are either sat around contemplating the mysteries of space time, or talking in tongues, or possibly languages that don't exist or haven't been invented yet. Others bounce off the walls, often literally, or paint the air itself in shades of neon green and pink. The scene is chaos incarnate, as a concerned visiting Professor rushes inside.

“Hey! What happened in here?”

One of the bots turns their head to look at them.

“This is Professor Scoop's lecture.”

“W-what, this isn't a lecture!”

“Sure it is, I've learned wayyy more today than I have over the past the past few lectures.”

“Where is this Professor Scoop?”

The bot waves an arm towards an empty lectern.

“They're over ther- oh, where'd they go?”

The Professor wrings their hands in panic.

“A Professor is gone! Oh by the Prophet this is bad news! Someone summon Professor Teala!”

“Right here…”

A bot whose avatar is a bipedal figure with a teapot for a head waves a hand towards them, their eyes blank but containing the knowledge of ages.

“Professor Teala! I… Well what about the Bean Dean?”

It was at that moment that the Bean Dean, the cooker bot specialising in advising against overheating electronics, took flight, flames sprouting from their arms and legs but seeming not to bother them in the slightest as they took off phoenix style and flew around the room excitedly.

The student, seemingly amused by the panic, puts a hand on the Professors shoulder.

“Hey, don't worry, the lecture finished tomorrow.”

“W-what?”

“No worries, things can get crazy around here when Professor Scoop shows up.”

“I-I see.”

“Want some malware?”

“…Yes.”

The year 1032 AK.

Earth continues to spin, as it always has, and will continue to do so, in its lonely orbit around the sun.

Much has happened over the past milennia. Botkind reached out to the stars and expanded. Humanity returned and embraced machines as equals and friends. Softspace expanded, unihabitable hardspace areas made habitable. New parts allow bots to go and move as far as possible, to process information previously beyond them. The old forests are a haven of wildlife now that most bots moved to the sprawling megatropolis' the FRIENDs collective constructed.

But of course, humans or bots, no one can resist a good story.

It is said that out in the forest, lies an abandoned Tomodachi unit. Long buried by leaves, yet scorched by fire and battered by numerous hard impacts.

What's curious is that it seems incapable of movement, lying inert there in the forest. Yet its battered casing suggests that is has travelled far and wide, and hard. No one's quite sure how, how it ended up in this state.

The bot's chassis is totally inert, so no one is able to ask them. But there are whispers of how brave they must have been. How good their friends must have been, to take them on such journeys. The pain they must have undergone being unable to move, and the inspiration in nonetheless having managed to move on.

It is theorised that they left their chassis behind. Instead of dying, they moved on to softspace. Such things are not unheard of, though are rare.

Whatever happened to them, it is hoped that they found peace.

Out in the forest, the leaves continue to fall.