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Fall of the Saovim .

The crowd screamed as The President dropped from his podium.

His ruined neck slopped blood as his limbs jittered uselessly. Synapses fired for the last time in the dying corridors of his body.

Parts of his face, stretched and torn beyond recognition, littered the stage.

The echo of the gunshot died as three officers tackled the robot. The extended gun barrel protruding from his hand was still smoking.

The officers pulled his metal carcass away amidst the pandemonium. The robot spoke up as it was being taken away, the flaring cats eyes of the contraption burbled electronically as he spoke.

"Let go of me. I am protecting The Fifty-Ninth President of The United States."

Blood dripped from the velvet curtains.

A foot twitched, and then that was it.

And The Saovim were supposed to protect, it was all they knew. There weren't programmed to do anything else but to protect humans and would short-circuit before hurting anyone made up of flesh and blood rather than circuits and wires.

Detective Inspector Kurt Contini was sitting in a cafe. He watched cars gliding silently through the evening sky above him. He sighed, predicting heavy traffic on the northwestern energy slipstream as he sipped his electrocoffee in his brown windbreaker. The sleet was picking up as he stepped inside the warm cafe to pop his disposable cup in the bin.

"Remind me," he asked the barista behind the counter. "Why did we start calling regular coffee 'electrocoffee'?"

The barista was sweeping up a stack of labels, milk tops and various spilled liquids. He stroked his beard.

"I dunno man, it's 2045 and we have flying cars and robots and an automated way of living. Maybe it just sounded... techy?"

"But it's still the same drink though, right? Why bother?"

The barista shrugged. He was now replacing bin liners. "Don't ask me, man. I just work here."

The detective nodded and stepped out into the street. The glowing green mermaid logo winked as he climbed into a hovertaxi and headed back to base.

The hovercab climbed until it plateaued above the rainclouds, speeding steadily along in the orange glow of the evening skies. Kurt ratcheted down the back window and lit up a cigarette.

He puffed contentedly until a voice from behind the one-way glass told him to put it out and he begrudgingly flicked it out of the window and watched it fall, disappearing into the clouds.

He wondered idly if it would fizzle out before hitting the ground of the wet world below.

The cab landed shortly after, and Kurt stepped out onto the roof of the police headquarters. He saw The Saovim being marched single file into the building, birthed periodically from dropships and gaping freighters that roared up to the roof to deposit the robots.

One by one, with every seventh robot spat on or kicked by uniformed cops that were leading them. It was a strange sight, thought Kurt, metal servants in metal manacles.

The actual executions took place far inside the headquarters, on a shooting range that many of the ancestors of The Saovim would have been familiar with after the straw dummies and paper target were replaced with animatronics.

Kurt Contini walked past rooms upon rooms of robots getting murdered. Some had a welding gun gently pressed against their heads until they melted. Gunshots rang out from other rooms.

In one room, there appeared to be two janitorial staff members that had been roped into simply pulling the limbs off of the creatures and throwing them onto a massive stack of appendages and copper wiring whilst the robot gently asked them what they were doing until its crackling blue eyes lost any spark of cold electricity.

It was a strange genocide, and seemed to be happening with a quiet resignation.

"Maybe that's how they all happen." said Chief Finnigan. "Personally I feel it would have been easier to just march the buggers off of the building after they land, but orders are orders."

He took another sip from the ceramic mug on his desk that was embroidered with a flowery "F" that looked so shoddily crafted that it was likely a present from his younger daughter.

"Maybe if we take a few of the parts and stash them in evidence we'll be able to make a passable coffee machine, eh Kurt?" Finnigan smiled and winked. The inspector smiled politely.

The muted gunshots punctuated the conversation, just slightly audible over the shushing of the ceiling fan.

"Have we got a perp yet?" asked Kurt, eager to get over the useless formalities. He didn't like to be pulled out of the field and into a dingy office. "Or are we still going by the assumption that it was a fault of the robot?"

"Well we can't legally investigate at this stage. Personally, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of tampering but the boffins from tech are telling me a bunch of stuff about how overriding the three rules of the perfunctory operating systems is impossible."

The chief grumbled.

"Goddamn nerds."

"So I don't have anything?" Kurt asked. "No leads, no witnesses to anything suspicious happening?"

Finnigan shrugged. "We have the body, and that's all we have. You're welcome to examine it, for sure."

The Chief reached into a pocket and Kurt saw the glint of something travelling across the office. Kurt fumbled with the keys, tucking them into his jacket pocket.

"Down the hall, then swing a left. You're looking for the room with the red door."

Kurt Contini left the room and ventured down the hall. As the door swung shut, Finnigan lit up a Marlboro that illuminated his tired face. "Those goddamn nerds." he grumbled.

Behind the red door was The Fifty-Ninth President of The United States lying on a plastic sheet in the middle of the otherwise empty room. No chairs, no tables, nothing.

Contini locked the door behind him. He reckoned the photographers had come and gone, but he didn't want to take any chances.

The head was nothing but a pile of gunk that had been bagged up and propped roughly next to the rest of the body, almost as an afterthought.

Kurt examined everything on the body, from the lapels to the t-shirt to the trousers. All untouched. He pulled out a Magnocircle from his pocket and touched the glass screen.

Nothing unusual about the blood that had coagulated around the neckline. Nothing to suggest anything off.

No.

Something was... Off.

Kurt stared into the glowing and beeping glass retina as it gave a mild indication of.... malaria? There was a 0.1% Malaria reading in glowing green below the other readings. But The President had been healthy only an hour before!

He reached into his phone and loaded up Facetwit. After a few moments scanning through the blue and green interface, he found the profile of the late President, already swarmed with 'R.I.P.' messages and tribute pages.

The last picture of him was taken sixteen hours ago, a picture of a man in otherwise perfect health.

"It just doesn't add up."

Conti's words echoed across the sterile room.

The rest of his search gave over nothing, save for a weird stray hair just under the collar.

Kurt gave up, and left the room.

When he got home, he found himself pouring himself a generous glass of scotch. Outside, snow had begun to fall. He watched the little Christmas Tree hologram in the corner as it revolved, his eyes dancing from one decoration to the next.

It was a nice thing to watch whilst getting merrily sozzled. He remembered the plastic one he'd had as a kid before they were outlawed and briefly remembered his grandparents talking about real pine trees they'd decorate in their living room. But of course, he was senile by then.

He took out the little hair-like thing from his shirt pocket and held it up. He twirled it. When he squinted, it looked a little the tree. It was funny how the hair had tiny-points like branches on a pine tree and-

Oh.

The piece of the jigsaw fell into place and he saw it perfectly.

And it was a shame they'd adapted to colder environments in 2030.

The mosquito buzzed through the coloured streamers, the noise completely drowned out by the murmur of the crowd and chatter from the man at the podium. It flitted across the crowd, maybe it even landed on a few of the people in the audience.

But then it had made a decision. And it flew straight for the leader of the free world. An insect that would no doubt cause serious illness. Probably not death, but the robot had probably never calculated that.

And he saw the robot lifting the sniper rifle to do his job, his duty. And no doubt the bullet would have obliterated the insect. Did the robot know it would take the head off the man it was trying to protect? Did it account for that in the positronic brain but fail to understand that it would have to kill in order to protect?

Kurt flicked the news on. They'd been running the same segment all day, the public execution of the robot that assassinated The Fifty-Ninth President. The video ran on a loop, the robot being hauled into the razor-wire noose.

The drop.

The head detaching with a crunch as sparks sprung from its mutilated metal body.

It kicked out as it died.

Just as The President had.

Kurt raised a lazy arm and toasted the robot, that had gone past the point of saving many hours ago. He imagined a brief and fleeting fantasy where he broke into the throng of onlookers as the robot was almost killed, raising the insect leg aloft and saving the robot.

But it was short lived.

"Merry Christmas, tincan."

He slugged the rest of the scotch back, and fell asleep sometime later.