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"Why do you even care? It's just a mindless machine."
Karin ignored her companion's annoyed grumble and studied the machine. It seemed to be modeled after a tall bipedal lifeform. Sharp chrome 'feet' stabbed into the garbage below. It was bent over at its rusty midsection, and its wide shovel-like hands poured scoop after scoop of trash into a fire.
This was the first... Well, not quite *living* thing they had come across on this side of the planet. It seemed half the world had been used as a landfill and whatever people that once lived here used this bot (surely it couldn't be the only one?) to clean up after them.
Karin took a step closer and accidentally kicked a piece of glass. It made a loud cracking noise as it hit the ground. The shovel-hands stopped moving for the first time since the two had arrived. Motors whined with strain, and a loud clicking sound filled the space as it slowly raised itself to full height.
The bot turned to face them, creating slightly less noise, but still with the appearance that it could fall apart at any moment. It then made a sound, some sort of squealing and clicking that Karin assumed was some attempt at speech.
"Hello? Can you understand me?" She waited for another grumble or a sigh from behind her, and was happily surprised at the lack of one.
The cleaner bot made a long beeping sound, then in garbled a static filled voice replied, "*He-llo? Can* (static) *-derstand me?*"
It took Karin a second to parse out what it said. Then, she let out a long sigh and began taking off her gloves.
Lotric's voice took on a concerned tone, and they touched her shoulder with their covered hand, "You can't be thinking of interfacing with it. You'll probably break it and hurt yourself in the process."
The gesture warmed her heart. It's easy to forget this sensitive side of them "It's ok, Lotric," She tries, and gave them a placating gesture, "I'm not that frail. And worse comes to worst, I have you here to fix me, right?" She held out the back of her hand, palm open.
They hesitated for only a moment before mirroring the sign, and tapping their hands together. They still seemed unsure, but they didn't stop her as she pressed four fingers into the 'neck' of the robot.
She's gone for 3.62 seconds. But thousands of years worth of data came at her. She sees a dead world, garbage and grime covering every surface. The sky is a dark, sickly blue and a thick haze sits over everything. A tall, two eyed creature stares at her through the camera of the bot. They're wearing some sort of device fixed to their face as they mess with something just behind the camera.
The scene changes, and the bot is hunched over in a small clearing in the trash wasteland. It's movements are quick and precise as it moves it's shovels, digging a hole in the soil. It plants a sapling in the middle of some bone formation. As it finishes packing the dirt, it looks up, revealing a small field of saplings. A large pile of skeletons sit off to the side.
Green erupts into the camera lens as the next scene appears. It's clear this is the same clearing as before, but the open space is far bigger, and the once saplings are now towering trees. Grass grows beneath the spiked feet that walk across the space.
Image after image flash in Karin's head, scene after scene of the world becoming more green, and the sky taking on a purple, then red coloring as the temperature drops.
The bot never stops, moving from task to task with grace and agility that degrades with its body as it slowly breaks down. It leads to the image of them, at the edge of the thirty percent of the world that is still covered in pollution, with a light red, almost pink sky behind them, the blue star, Azure she understands now is its name, sitting far in the distance.
Karin let go of the machine, almost dropping to her knees. She quickly put her gloves back on, reeling from the information. Tears streamed down her face, and she looked at the bot with awe and pity. It had done its best to take care of a dying planet after its creators had died out.
And for what? The plummeting temperature brought by the dying star would leave the planet more dead than it was before. Not to mention the state of its body. Even if she knew how to use this tech, it was obvious it couldn't be repaired.
After a moment of hesitation, she made up her mind. She gently took the head of the bot and rested it against her chest. "Good job," She murmured, "You did all you could. And you did so well." Karin took a deep breath and pulled out the battery.
And she watched as the body crumbled within her grasp.