As he got to his feet he noticed that he was covered in dust. It took not a moment for his computronic mind to retrace the events of the last few hours.

He’d begun this day as he had so many others, by noting that he had never slept and never needed to. Humanity was so inferior to him. He, Robexor, was the tuly the finest being in existance. As the humans slumbered in their shelters, Robexor was free to roam. Striding confidently down city roads he cheerfully used his sensors to catalogue all the various wind currents and occupied himself in other such robotic games. The rising sun glinted off his metal skin as a rooster began to crow.

When the humans began to rouse, Robexor noted a change in their behavior. Always had the frail but abundant species acted in ways that seemed absurd to him, but this morning they were skittish and wary. Robexor grew interested and approached one of the greasy, furry creatures to inquire.

“What causes this trepidation amongst your kind this morning, human?”

“Today is Friday the Thirteenth, Mr. Robot,” a human replied.

“What is the significance of this date? Are vampires coming?”

“No, Friday the Thirteenth is just a day on which bad luck happens.”

And as the human ran away throwing salt over its shoulder, Robexor cursed in binary and scoffed at the humans and their belief in this so-called luck. With a mathematical mind like his, he could calculate probabilities with ease and he saw no difference on this day than any other. But as the day wore on, his anger files began to fill up.

An old man headed to the grocer turned back when a black cat crossed his path. A delivery boy refused to deliver to a building numbered thirteen. A woman took extreme measures to avoid breaking a mirror. This was just a small sample of what Robexor witnessed that morning. Robexor decided that the humans had to learn a lesson. It wouldnt bad luck that caused catastrophe to befall them, no, instead it would be their own superstitions which had angered a robot with a powerful deathbeam.

He activated his rocketlegs and flew to the top of the tallest building in the tallest city. He activated his megaspeakers and yelled “Foolish humans! Know that it is not luck that causes this! It is I!” He activated his deathbeam.

And just as the beam cut its path through the sky a seagull dropped the mirror it had found in a clam that morning. The mirror shattered as the beam struck it. The beam reflected back to the building Robexor stood on and before the robot realized what had happened, he fell to the street below. Bricks and dust fell upon him.

And so, as he stood in that rubble and noticed the coating of dust that kept his glorious skin from shining as superbly as it should, Robexor learned the lesson of Friday the Thirteenth:

Bad Luck Also Applies To Robots!

The end.

Patrick D Ryall, The D is for More