Chapter 7: Bleak Horizon
The moon was high in the sky. The air was cool on The Jon's warm face. He stumbled as he walked, held together just about entirely by duct tape and his suspenders. He tripped and fell to the ground. "No...I'm so close...I can't quit now." He began crawling, until he reached the edge of the city nearby. He propped himself up against the side of a building and stared at the street in front of him.
The Jon felt the duct tape fall away from the crack in his boiler and the last of his water leak to the ground.
So this is how The Jon's story would end. After all the wars, after everything he'd seen. All his stories would die with him, at the side of a building somewhere in south Louisiana.
He had failed. He couldn't survive on his own, and he will probably just rust at the side of this building until he was taken apart and sold for spare parts.
A newspaper blew over The Jon's face. The title New Orleans News was printed on the cover. The Jon didnt really care.
Wait, New Orleans News? The Jon smiled as tears streamed down his eyes, he had made it. He felt himself succumb to the pain as the last of the water in his boiler leaked out and he powered off.

A poor old man with a cane was taking a walk. He was looking for some spare parts to repair and sell, as he usually did this time of day.
A vulture flew overheard. The old man knew that that particular vulture had been his friend for a long time. It had led him to big machines he could sell in exchange for a little food. It flew down beside him and dropped a small brass gear by his feet. "What's this? Looks pretty expensive. Did you find something good?" The vulture flew up into the sky and the man began to follow it.
After a while, the vulture began circling the side of an old run down convenience store. The old man looked around for anything useful that he could sell.
It was about then that the old man sighted a glimmer in the morning light. When he approached it he noticed that the glimmer was the face of a metal man."Nah, can't be. Must be some ol' fella in a costume down on his luck." However, upon further examination, he discovered that it was in fact a real life automaton. He prodded it with he cane a few times. At first it remained still, as if frozen in time. "Ah, totally gone. Guess I cant sell it whole. oh well, I could probably get a few bucks if I sell it part by part." The old man then kicked the machine. The bot made a low grinding noise and the man jumped back. The robot then made a loud sputtering noise and a bright blue light radiated from its chest. It uttered the words "System reboot" in such a perfect automatonic tone the man assumed it must have been a recording and not the actual bot talking. The robot shuddered and it's eyes glowed a dim but brilliant blue. It raised its hand to the man. "P-p-please...help me..." before powering off once again.
The old man soon returned with an old shopping cart to carry the robot on. It was quite a chore to get him inside, especially for an old man like himself. He wheeled the broken bot back to his home in the deep bayou. He had been a mediocre mechanic back in his youth, and hoped that he could help this poor boy.
The old man took off the robot's clothes and opened it's chest. As he examined it, he noticed that it was powered by steam and some type of energy that he could never even begin to comprehend. Thankfully, he wouldn't need to, as it's power core was unharmed. He repaired it's crushed arm as best he could and replaced the broken boiler.
The rest of the robots machinery was pretty run of the mill, except that, there wasn't much of it. Aside from the boiler and power core, there was nothing in this robots chassis apart from a large container of some sort. He pryed it open with a screwdriver and stared inside. It was nothing but a hot dog and what appeared to be a glowing koi fish, flopping endlessly inside the void of the robots chassis. The old man closed the container and decided not to open it again.
After a while longer of research mixed with guessing, the old man had entirely fixed the automation. Or at least, he thought he had. The old man braced himself as he got some water to start up the machine.
He poured the water inside the robots boiler and was about to turn him on, when he realized that he hasn't quite thought of what to do when the robot turned on again. What would it do? What was it suppose to do? Would it attack him? Was it some kind of military drone? No...the old man thought. The government wouldn't make anything like this. It's too...old looking.
The old man sighed deeply. Awaiting whatever was to happen as he flipped the switch on the back of the robots neck.