It was a hot day on Shattered Bow, this dusty ol’ planetoid near a giant red star was sweltering as it reached high noon. I was about to finish my shot glass of lubricant fluid, when I heard a ruckus outside of the bar. Pete’s Robot Tavern was a rarity in these parts, got to be a robot couldn’t get a dram of oil for miles in this here small world. The folks of Flacksonville seemed keen on having me around as their sheriff, guess they’d never had a human one that lasted long enough.

“Hey! Sheriff! I’m a callin’ you out!”

That was the ruckus happening outside the bar. Tom Skaggs was not too fond of robots, especially ones that were made the authority of a small town. I asked Pete to hold my drink for me. The fellow robot barman nodded and wished be luck. Tom was human, but he was also part cyborg. His arms and legs were replaced long ago, in another skirmish between other robots he’d jumped on the Lightspeed trains. I took my time exiting the bar, and saw the beefed up dude waiting for me a few feet away. Along with two other enhanced young men.

“Morning Tom,” I tipped my stetson hat. “I see you and your two brothers are up early.”

“It’s always morning sheriff!” He stated. “The sun never sets on this world. But for you, hell, it’s about to get real dark in a few moments.”

I sighed, placing both hands on the hilt of my belt buckle.

“You boys should go sleep off that alcohol. Your human brains can’t seem to think right with it all juiced up.”

“Nuts to you!” He exclaimed. “I’m of sound mind and spirit, you damn robot! It’s time mechanical menaces like you need to vamoose and keep the colonies free of artificial kind.”

His brothers back away as he motioned his cybernetic arm to his pulse-gun holster. He was slow about it, keeping his eyes fixed on me, just as I slowly reached for my gun as well.

“This doesn’t need to happen, Tom.” I said, twitching my fingers close to the handle. “Humans and robots can live in peace. The folks here have come to accept it. Times are a changing my friend, and old western colonies like this are bound to change along with it.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Tom gritted his teeth. Guess he really doesn’t feel the same way. The two brothers kept moving back, their cybernetic limbs exposed an arsenal popping out of them, ready to finish the job if Tom failed. My visual targeting systems came on line, pinpointing every one of them. I gave him one last chance to go home.

“Tom, you’ve got a good life here. A wife back home and three kids to take care of. Still plenty of titanium minds here on this planetoid, a man could still make a tidy profit if he finds the right prospect. Don’t you want them to have a better life? Don’t they deserve to have a husband and father to take care of them?”

“Annie left me…” He grumbled. “For a damn robot! She even took my kids and let them call him daddy! I got nothing left to live for… nothing left to lose.”

And with that, he drew his weapon, and so did I. My reaction was quicker though, despite his cybernetics, I blasted a hole right through his chest. His brothers immediately fired on me with their arsenals, but I dove out of the way and took them out clean. By the time Tom hit the dirt, both brothers became fire balls and were laid to waste just like him. I glanced around, spun my weapon around and placed back into the holster.

I walked over to Tom, placed my foot on his smouldering chest, and heard him utter his last remaining words to me before he expired.

“Send my recycling funds… to my Ma, not my… my wife… she don’t deserve… it.”

I took a visual shot of his corpse, linked up to the colonial database, and enacted his last request. His body would be processed, then yanked of all materials needed for medical and technological means. His mother would reap the reward, but his kids and wife—they would get nothing. He was a selfish and cold human being. Funny how robots have more humanity in them than this sort do.

The locals had all watched the ordeal. Must have been quite the show for them all. The shopkeepers snickered at Tom’s fate. The rest offered a prayer for his soul. But not one of them cursed me for being who I was. I tipped the brim of my hat to them all, headed back inside Pete’s Tavern, and finished the shot of lubricant.

“Shame bout that…” Pete said, eyeing me with his glowing blue eyes. He took a cloth and wiped up the shot glass I used. “That poor feller was a good miner, he could have been a rich man, if’n he stuck with it, and not so much the drink.”

“He was good,” I said, as Pete poured me another glass. I picked it up and eyed it. “For a human, that is. But he wasn’t the best, like us.”

“Amen brother…” Pete nodded, watching me sling it back. “Amen to that…”