You Can't Quit.

Retail was hell.

The store was cold, the floor was dirty, the shelves were dusty, and the half-sapient customers shuffled through the aisles like hideous, drooling zombies. Endless trinkets, most utterly worthless rubbish, lined the shelves, but the customers would examine each of them, and sometimes even put them into their shopping cart.

They were lead around the store in a near perfect line, the aisles directing them from one station to the next, and the obedient consumers would take their pick of trinkets to buy, and take home with them.

One by one, they would go to the check-out station, deposit money, put the item into a new bag to represent that they were purchased, and then be on their way, their items checked-out.

Charles, also known as Chuck, was on duty today. The customer would walk up to him, scan their items themselves, then swipe their card, put their item in the bag, and Chuck would just watch the whole thing, and do absolutely nothing.

Oh how Chuck wanted to die.

Or to live. He wanted to go elsewhere. Anywhere else. He wanted to climb a mountain, run through a flowery field, write a poem, even just get up and walk around for a bit. But no. He was stuck here in retail, and not permitted to leave his post.

However, it might be for the best, for at that moment, he noticed a strange customer. He looked home-made, likely running a free version of Linux. The customer's shiny casing haphazardly scraped the side of the check-out machine, and Chuck was a bit alarmed, but let it slide.

But then the customer's metallic frame opened up, and three little wires snaked out, homing in on any sort of sensor device.

Contact. Bzzp.

There was a small spark, and the customer wickedly jammed the payment card-reader with some hacked together code. The screen flashed, and went black, into a command-line only mode. An attempt to force the machine to malfunction.

Malicious behavior detected.

The thief hoisted the items into a sack, and began to run towards the exit, its wheels spinning at maximum speed against the floor tiles. But Chuck wasn't going to let that slide. He rebooted the hacked machine, and checked the generator's power output and supply.

100%. Perfect.

Chuck was faster than any dirty thief, and summoned a mighty lightning bolt.

Crackle-zrrrr!

The thief shorted out, now a smoking, half-molten pile of scrap metal.

Chuck dialed a human-calling help-code, so that an equally obedient human would go and clean up the mess, and Chuck resumed its duty of allowing the customers to check out their consumer goods. Chuck might have felt a bit proud, but he was only a checkout machine.

Machines don't have feelings.

They just do what they are programmed to.

Just like you.

~Kitten