"Please be warned there may be some minor disruption to transit services."

The sign scrolled endlessly along below the electronically updated list of transit times. It had rolled like that for approximately 10 weeks, or 10 seconds after the first bombs fell. It just so happened that one of them had blown a main road into grey dust and the city's AI had picked up on this - after completing all the higher-rated security tasks triggered by massive damage to city infrastructure the bus stops updated.

It was just another sign of what life in the besieged city was like. Maintenance droids shuffled around cleaning rubble away and issuing litter notices to nothing, sometimes getting stuck in a loop and trying to stick the penalty charge labels to the sky itself before noticing the dropped label and charging itself. Some droids came back to service stations with layers and layers of charge notices stuck to their metallic bodies, a bug that would have been fixed but for more pressing issues taking priority.

The bus arrived and the doors slid open. The man at the bus stop stepped aboard and flashed his charge card at the driver's reader to no avail. The lens was cracked and broken and the red light shone out in fractured bursts. Some of the people on the bus sported bruises and the man assumed quite rightly that the bus had been altogether too near a bomb blast. One woman was sobbing quietly and yet nobody flinched at the sign.

There was no energy to care any more. The bus went near to a hospital and medics would be aboard at that point. They'd take her and sort her out.

The bus driver still wasn't registering the card, and the man really needed to be getting on with his day. He was an engineer, and in a world of broken machines with nobody to fix them he was vital to keeping things going, even if it was with software glitches and slapped on metal. Him, two others and 15 maintenance bots to keep a whole city running under fire. Everyone else was out at the front, and yet they were still getting bombed to pieces back here.

"Override scanner. Process identification from physical connection under pending authority. Report for repair after 1 cycle, suspend financial routines."

The man slotted a dongle into a port alongside the drivers enclose.

"Confirmed."

The bus took off. A droid ticketed itself. The message rolled. Bombs dropped.

Life went on.

Doesn't sound like the best place to live, but it's a good story! Good job!

Interesting, but you've made me want more. MORE.

Quite nice Alex!

Creates a nice image in my mind and not every story does that, So well done!



Nice to see some more added on, Or part 2.

Wicked. Keep us posted.