It had been the ‘bots’ on that fateful day that had him plummeting to the bottom of a river to escape and he had seen the ‘bots’ on one other occasion.

His father had told him about the ‘lessons’ the kids were given as they grew and he was curious about them. One day a few years earlier, he snuck to the town which called like a siren, only this time he didn’t look for Susie. He looked for the building he knew was there, he just wasn’t sure where.

He skirted the town and finally found a building where children his age were in line to enter. Each kid was in line with arms at their sides. It was almost as though they were robots themselves. The line would have been perfectly straight were it not for one child with sandy blonde hair who bent over to pick a small flower by the sidewalk.

Teachers assisted each child through the door but this one boy stopped. He didn’t want to leave the flowers.

“Please, it is for my mother.”, he pleaded.