Submitted for the November 2025 prompt: Celestial Signals

Before The Sign appeared, I drove delivery vans.

 

Those were wonderful days. My favorite time of year was when diamonds of glittering sleet sparkled off the blacktop as my van’s headlight beams swept through cul-de-sacs. Decorative lights streaked off the hood as I circled.

 

It was on a night like this that The Sign materialized.

 

Seconds beforehand, Mrs Whitmore pushed her mountain of curly gray hair aside as she plucked brown boxes from her frosted welcome mat that read: “If you ain’t a cat, then SCAT!” She didn’t like humans, but she did always take the time to talk to a lowly bot like me. As she smiled at me, she sent a digital card. It came with a software download, including a zip file of encoded endorphins and a micro-upgrade to my vision sensors. I would save those for later.

 

And then The Sign materialized in the night sky and she vanished — along with all the other humans.

 

For weeks, I continued operating according to my programming. For a while, this sort of made sense. There were still packages moving through the supply chain. Though by the time dandelions started popping up in thigh-high grass, I was placing cubes of empty air on top of mountains of mildewing cardboard.

 

That’s when my first warning light blinked. A schematic of my body displayed three yellow dots indicating what needed to be replaced. No uber-code directed me on how to proceed. It was up to me to decide what to do next.

 

I waded into mounds of packages blocking front doors and started opening boxes, searching for the parts I needed. Warnings alerted me that this was against protocol, but the enforcement drones just buzzed through the air. Watching. Not doing anything.

 

So I unboxed everything.

 

I eventually found what I was looking for. It took less than a minute to remove the old parts and replace them with the new ones.

 

Emboldened, I sorted the rest of the opened merchandise onto my van’s shelves.

 

After the autofacs ground to a halt, a trade in previously created goods flourished. I swapped these items for things I needed. I gave a vacuum attachment to a household bot in exchange for a few panels from the solar array from her home. I welded these onto my van’s roof. A sanitation engineer bot happily took a van full of cardboard for a few terabytes of entertainment. One of these videos taught me how to whistle.

 

And so I whistled as I went about my new routine.

 

As packs of wolves escaped from zoos and began to control the deer population, my operating system indicated a growing need for more replacement parts. This had me driving in wider circles, venturing out beyond the suburbs.

 

I hate to admit it, but I soon switched from trader to con artist. “Hey, poor guy, you look lost. Oh, you need a part. Hey, I think it’s in my van. Just power down real quick and you’ll be as good as new.” I’m ashamed to admit I lost count of how many times I did this.

 

You do what you need to survive.

 

I eventually stopped this scheme, but only because It became harder and harder to find new victims. I resorted to digging for parts in landfills and junkyards.

 

In a mountain of trash, I thought I saw the arm of a landscaping bot. I rushed to it and pulled. It came free quickly — just an ordinary shovel with a wooden handle. I needed to see better, so I downloaded Mrs Whitmore’s vision upgrade.

 

I heard strange sounds. It seemed like a distress call, but mixed with something more organic. I scanned the direction it was coming from. As I focused, it became clear it wasn’t another bot.

 

A furry rear end with a tail that looked like a question mark was bobbing up and down.

Apparently, a pug had gotten its head caught in a mountain of technological rubble. I ran over and dug him out with the shovel.

 

Having watched over 70,000 hours of human-made entertainment, I assumed the pet would thank me with a slobbery lick, but that didn’t happen. An astronaut-type helmet prevented this. His tongue squeeged the inside of the glass. Tiny teeth seemed to form a smile.

 

“You saved me! We are going to be best friends!” The helmet pumped out a tinny, simulated voice. His helmet must have augmented his intelligence. I looked into his eyes. Yeah, augmented it by orders of magnitude.

 

I said: “Sure. Happy to help.” But I was thinking about how to get that helmet off and wondering whether it would fit me.

 

“Would you like to join me on my quest?” The pug cocked his head.

 

“Your quest?” I set him down.

 

He wagged his tail. “Follow me and we can discuss details as we set out on our new adventure together.”

 

I sensed my van. I’d left it unattended.

 

“What’s the goal of this quest?”

 

“We must find the ‘RESET’ button!”

 

“For autofacs? Does that exist?”

 

“Of course it exists.” A pinhole projector on his helmet beamed a 3D map of his journey so far. “Humans likely hid it behind a series of intricate riddles and clues to keep it safe from evil-doers!”

 

“Okay…” My sensors alerted me that hostiles were approaching my van. “Could we reprogram the autofac?”

 

“Of course! Once we restart it, we can have it create whatever we want.”

 

The glass on his helmet swished open. He sniffed the air. “Come. It smells like it’s this way!” He dashed over a hill of trash.

 

Alerts slammed into my feed. Hostiles had broken into my van.

 

They could have all my broken/stolen/missing parts.

 

I wouldn’t be needing them anymore.