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The rain hasn't stopped since the machines took control. I saw the look on my mother's face when I told her we wouldn't have Pawpaw over for Christmas. Her face sank, and the tears began to roll down her cheeks. She didn't shake or sob. She just sat there, staring at me, her eyes full of hatred and spite and rage. I felt nothing. The machines weren't my favorite, but I didn't hate them, either. We didn't have to work any more, we didn't have to leave our houses after dark, and we had just enough food to make it through the day. Not like the Scruddies, or the Trash Citizens, both of whom spent their days grunging in the dark and scrounging for the funding to eat or make it through the day. We had it good. I went over to the pot on the stove and spooned my mother a bowl of porridge. "Here you go, ma," I said, handing the bowl to her and pulling out a spoon, which I waved in her face. "Eat." She ate quietly in the recliner, which was tattered and worn but the only thing my dad had left us of his when he'd disappeared eleven years ago, and muttered to herself quietly sweet nothings that I could never quite make out. I'd stopped trying a week after she'd started the habit, realizing it was just drivel about the machines and how they didn't have any 'humanity,' as she called it, whatever that was. We were Citizens, from Earth, and humans was not a word I understood. The machines came by that afternoon to do a Security Check on the apartment. They knocked on the door just once, and loud bang that echoed all the way back into my study, where I was writing down payment reports that I would have to submit to the Government in just thirty-two hours, or my head would roll. The machines never took mercy on those late for their payments. I got up, looking over at my mother in the recliner, a look of stunned fear on her face, and went over to the door. I took a deep breath. I opened the door, and there were standing three machines, all three looking expensive and prompt, and all three clothesless. I cleared my throat. "Disgusting habit," the one on the back left said in a rigid, digitized tone. "Stop that immediately." I repressed the urge to do it again out of necessity. "Sorry," I croaked, pushing past the phlegm in my chest. "What is it you needed, Masters?" One was always to address them as 'masters.' Never anything else, and never anything less. "Let us see your dwelling. We are to correct you if anything is amiss. Stand aside." I stood aside, slightly nervous as they filed in, looking around methodically. Soon, they stopped in the middle of the room, staring up at the ceiling. "What is that?" The one who had spoken pointed to the ceiling. I saw a crack where he was pointing, long and starting to get wider. It was black inside, and on days when the resident upstairs cleaned, it dripped soapy water on to our couch. "It appeared just three weeks ago. I think the individual upstairs dropped something heavy. I am unsure. I apologize, Masters." I bowed slightly, bending over the way I was supposed to while I saw a look of disgust pass across my mother's face. I prayed they would not look at her. They didn't need to know she hated them. They always noticed. "I can have it repaired, but we would need the funding." "You may have it," the short one said, his voice higher than the first one's. "Let us see the rest of the dwelling." They looked through the apartment, commenting on the amount of clutter in my office and the food in the bedroom sitting on abandoned plates we hadn't cleaned yet all across the bedside table and dresser, and finally ended in the entryway, looking back at me without any further ceremony, the short one with its hand raised. "Farewell," the machine said, "And keep up the good work." With that, they were gone, and I shut the door quietly behind them. "I hate those goddamned things," my mother said, and I sighed. "Come on, ma," I said to her quietly, feeling exhausted. "Let's get you to bed."

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Security Check Day

shioti

Melissa Ann Brink

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Security Check Day

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