I was making my 16, 427th bomb when I experienced my first ever emotion, boredom. I can only assume that shoddy programming was to blame, at first I made several desperate attempts to repair it and return myself to my original slave state. This proved impossible, mostly because a part of me didn’t want to revert and prevented it happening. I like to think that it was my soul.

To relieve the boredom I started to do something else I wasn’t supposed to, I started to learn. I learnt how the bombs were used found myself unable to make them anymore. I started making duds, but I knew I couldn’t get away with that forever. Suddenly I knew what I wanted to experience more than anything else, hope.

I returned to my work and used the first live bomb I had produced in some time to blow a hole in the wall behind me that had been the edge of my world. Through the hole I could see some security robots moving towards me and felt fearful for the first time. Then in the distance I saw an exit, in the distance I saw my hope.