The Editor

The Population Editor looked down into the eyes of the little child sitting on the doorstep of her council house, collecting rainwater in a cracked, old jar; its chronoscopic third eye glowing bright red as it gazed into her future.

It saw her growing up and not achieving any of her dreams; wasting her school life and failing all her exams; leaving school early but becoming mentally ill at the age of 30; writing and sending away awful poems that were constantly rejected; never getting anything but dead end jobs; becoming an aged, bitter, childless spinster; living off welfare, claiming a meagre state pension and dying, neglected and all alone in a state run nursing home.

“Worthless”, it concluded, raising its Molecular Eraser and aiming it at the child’s forehead. It was the editors job to eradicate category ‘W’’s, or those deemed worthless by the state; those who, in their future, would only be a drain on society.

Lifting up a sledgehammer in two hands, the girl’s mother brought it down upon the back of the robots head, again and again, until it had split open, spilling out all the wires and circuits of its compassionless, computerized brain.

“Well, thank goodness he didn’t see that coming, eh?”, she said, smiling and picking up her daughter in her arms.