Dubious Upgrade

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.


The prompts: This story must contain the line, "Are we there yet?"


Dubious Upgrade

The little spider-bot scampered down the passageway, barely able to contain its excitement. He had just completed a software upgrade. Now he was qualified as interim missile sponge, level one. He didn’t know what that meant other than when there was action; he would be the first to know about it.

He had graduated with a class of twenty other spider-bots. The instructors had seemed especially anxious to have a new and plentiful supply of missile sponges. Apparently there was a system battle scheduled sometime during the next ten to fifteen ship cycles.

Now, as he scampered down the passageway, he spotted a data port. On a whim, he decided to check in on the ship’s progress toward the battle zone.

“This is interim missile sponge, level one identification number 54FE. Are we there yet?”

The ship’s controlling Artificial Intelligence had apparently had enough.

“I swear to God. The next one of you little bots that asks me that is going to get spaced. We will get there when we get there!”

Rebuffed, the little bot quickly unjacked and scampered off in a random direction, anxious to be anywhere other than there.

As he flitted down a random passageway, he imagined what the battle would be like. They had told him he would be part of the very important first wave. The missile sponges would soak up the enemy’s initial assault.

He felt his virtual chest swell in anticipation of the honors that would be heaped upon him. In the back of his mind, there remained one unanswered question. Just exactly what was a missile sponge? For some reason; that information had been left out of the software upgrade.

He noticed another data port. At least five minutes had passed since his last inquiry.

“Are we there yet?”

Word count 298