Egon

Set in the future, Egon is a short story on how a counterfeit Nanobug (and his counterfeit friends) ate into a restaurant buildings foundations mistakenly due to a malfunction in its programming, being counterfeit, and ends with the destruction of the building and lost lives. *Ruok = R U OK = Are you okay?

Egon
Dark, dirty, damp. To Egon, it was instead heaven to him. He could find all sorts of treasures there: banana peels, onion skins, fish bones, and the routine coffee grounds. This was his home, the Ruok fusion cuisine restaurants BioLandfill. It was a place where the staff of Ruok deposited their biodegradable waste. And it was conveniently located under the restaurant. Any waste that the restaurant wanted to dispose of was thrown into a chute that led into the BioLandfill. Someth ing landed with a loud thud a few centimeters away from Egon. Snack time. Juicy, crunchy, some flesh left. An apple. Definitely an apple. Mmm Delicious, Egon mumbled as his metal pincers bit into the flesh still hanging onto the apple core. Egon was a Nanobug, a counterfeit Nanobug. His kind, the Nanobugs, were Nanobots , originally introduced to decompose biodegradable and non-biodegradable materials in landfills at many times the natural speed. At the rate the landfills were filling up, there would no longer be any more space for all of humanitys rubbish. BioLandfills were introduced, with a limit on the amount of waste it could contain, to induce a sense of responsibility in people for their own rubbish and manage them well. It spawned many well -received rubbish management courses and Nanobugs were one of the ways to help rubbish management. Egons pincers bit hard into an apple seed. Apple seeds were slightly more problematic, being big and very hard. Egons infrared sensors could feel the toweri ng presence of the mere apple seed. But nothing daunted Egon. He had conquered so many hundreds of apple seeds before this one, breaking them up from t he inside. His claws would dig many microscopic tunnels into the apple seed , leaving holes that would cause the apple to collapse and become a crumbly organic mess . Egon was always very proud of this crumbly mess. Egon started to work on this particular apple seed. Apple seeds were part of his job. And he always made sure he did it well. Egon finished h is apple seed and looked for something else to decompose. His infrared sensors could sense so many other Nanobugs around him. All of them busy scurrying over the mess in the BioLandfill , digging many thousands of little tunnels , like him, building potentia l mini civilization s in ordinary organic compounds . Egon crawled over a banana skin. But he didnt detect it. The sensors on his cold metal legs simply transmitted the readings as nothing more than cement. Egons pincers picked up the watermelon rind just a few centimeters away from the banana skin. Woah. Whats this? Soft, fluffy, Egon mentally scrolled through his database of food that he had encountered so far. But nothing fit. Eh? What is this? Egon could not figure out what it really was. Was it candy floss? No, it would have melted by then. Was it ice cream? But ice cream was not fluffy. Egon finally decided that it was simply too soft, too fluffy to be even broken up. He threw the watermelon rind to one side. It was a pity, because watermelon rinds were one of Egons favourite snacks. The hard, crunchy rind was always filled with juice. It was a rare find in the BioLandfill and Egon always enjoyed his tunnelling experience thoroughly. Whenever the sensors on Egons metal coat came in contact with the moisture in the rind, it always gave Egon a th rilling sensation. Egon loved it.

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Egon

--Meanwhile in the conference room located on the top floor of the restaurant, the management of the restaurant gathered to discuss their business strategies. Thanks to our new Nanobugs, in the last few months, the level of waste in Ruoks BioLandfill has decreased drastically , allowing for more food production, because of the increased allowance for waste. I expect our profits to soar by thirty percent or more in the next three months, the head of the finance department indicated his projections as the arrows on the hologramic visual ascended and climbed the chart. Yes, thats highly likely. But I suppose the fact that these are counterfeit Nanobugs dont matter to you? This started out as a bad idea and still is . We are exchanging quality for quantity, money for substandard Nanobugs . It may be ten percent the origi nal price, but I still think that the authentic Nanobugs are more reliable. We dont know when they may malfunction. If this gets out, our public image will be affected too, this time it was the head of the public relations department voicing his objectio ns. He was one who stuck to his professional ethics . I dont see what is wrong with using these counterfeit bugs. They havent malfunctioned yet, and who knows if they even will. Our profits are increasing steadily. So will your pay. If this goes well, we may implement it on the other branches too. Who knows? We could open even more branches in other parts of the world. The possibilities are endless, as long as we have money, it was the Chief Executive Officer himself, Mr MacDaddy , with a cunning chuckle. But started the young head of public relations. No buts. So its set then. The Nanobugs will remain , and Mr MacDaddy concluded the discussion. He was a rather stubborn man, but that very characteristic had lead to his success, making the right choices at the right times despite facing many objections. Yet, this could be the worst decision he ever made. --Back in the BioLandfill, Egon had j ust finished breaking up some pieces of bread. It wasnt really tough for Egon. The bread had so many holes to begin with. Egon bumped into something hard. It was the vertical cement foundation of the restaurant but he could not tell. This time, he thought it was a big, huge, gigantic, humongous watermelon. Egons transmitters were malfunctioning and no longer provided the right information to Egon. Egon started to dig holes through the watermelon. His usual routine, he thought. --On the first floor of the restaurant, a young lady put down a cup of tea and continued chatting with her BotFriend about her new job selling TeleWatches , watches that could be

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Egon
used to communicate and much more. Her tea spilled slightly onto the table, just slightly, because the ground was slowly slanting downwards, really slowly. But she was too engrossed in her conversation to take note. --Around Egon, many other Nanobugs had already started to malfunction. Granite pieces were now fish bones and the cement foundation were chicken bones and coffee grounds. Slowly, one Nanobug after another joined Egon in digging holes through the cement foundation with their sharp metal claws. Digging, digging, digging. --In the restaurant, there was a sudden je rk downwards, when the buildings foundations momentarily gave way. The grand antique chandeliers jingled for an instant. Many plates of food slid of the table. Many glasses of wine shattered upon impact with the floor. The customers were taken aback, not knowing what had happened to them. It took them a while to regain their bearings. There was another jerk downwards. Tension hung in the air. Eyes flickered here and there. Mouths opened but closed before any sound came out. Nobody knew what to do. Yet ever ybody knew something had to be done. But before they could recollect their senses, the entire building crumbled downwards. It was as if a gigantic hole had opened in Earth, like the hole in the ozone layer many decades ago . And then everything just sunk. --Egon had finished with his watermelon. From what Egons sensors told him, it was all a pile of slush now. And Egon was very proud of his slush. He was always proud of the work he did. Something hard hit him. They were cement chunks that were originally part of the kitchen floor. That hit displaced Egons systems, just like a head concussion. Egons pincers twitched for a few seconds. And then they stopped. They would never twitch again. --The debris and dust had a lready, like Egons watermelon slush, settled into a neat pile by the time the rescue teams had arrived. They set to work quickly. Rescue operations that took days and nights were things of the past. With a few portable thermal and x-ray scanners, they could detect the bodies easily and retrieve them. In a few mere hours, they were done. There were many deaths, but only three survivors, a young boy of no more than five, the young TeleWatch saleswoman , and Mr MacDaddy. With his bloodstai ned face, Mr MacDaddy looked upon the mess that had become of Ruok restaurant, his restaurant. His forlorn eyes could not comprehend how it happened. But the collapse of the building did not mean anything more to him than a loss of a few million in profits . In Mr MacDaddys mind, the lives lost in the collapse did not register, and the only thing on his mind right now was how much poorer the collapse of the restaurant was going to make him.

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