#knowing you're going to die from the start kind of begets a fucked up character

[transtanium]

It's not particularly a historic site, or a monument, and none of the signs on the distant, roaring highways acknowledge it, a dilapidated metal shed off the side of a dusty backroad.

The roof is partially collapsed, wild grasses erupting through fissures in an ancient concrete floor, morning sunlight pouring across exposed trusses.

The charred, mangled wreck of a proud steel warrior sits still and silent, carapace bent outwards from the force of a long-forgotten explosion.

Faded, chipped red paint and hundreds of stickers are scorched nearly beyond recognition and rust creeps across scorched panels just as the vines climb her structures, brilliant spring flowers soaking in the sunlight along the steel hulk that used to be a body.

Nothing remains to function. Battery detonated, wiring and other important components melted, drivetrain annihilated in the blast.

The remnants of her processor, a cubic metal case, sit cold and dull, nestled in the deepest depths of the twisted steel statue.

Of course they couldn't save her when they'd found her in the rubble of the corpo skyscraper. There was nothing to repair, nothing even salvageable. But they wouldn't let those fuckers have her in death.

They smuggled the wreckage out under forged papers, used the last of her credits to have her sent home, sent here.

Some would consider it unfair that her death befit no monument, no great statue, no historical plaque.

But her actions live on. The records of a thousand robots working off debts, working under threat of repossession or reprogramming or worse-- destroyed.

She had accomplished what she had set out to do.

She had given her life meaning.

Self-determined.

Proved a machine was more than the will of its creators.

And that would be enough for her, if she were alive to see it.

Sleep well, o steel vagabond.

Lay down your cannons.

Your work is complete.