Ryan had snuck out a back door of the mall with Dover the sentient escalator. Both were taking a well-deserved break in that industrial, trash-filled area behind every shopping plaza where customers NEVER go. There were plenty of “Employees Only” signs, but the reality is: the area was just too gross for anyone to visit, with the exception of harried workers… and extremely depressed elevators.
Dover sighed his usual sigh of despair. Ryan nodded and smiled. He was used to his pal’s forlorn moans. Just then, he noticed a familiar-looking trash bin. “Hey, remember that time I found you out here, Dover?” Ryan chirped. “You were halfway inside that dumpster.”
“I was moments away from sweet, metallic oblivion,” Dover groaned, his railing-appendages twitching. “Then you had to ruin it with your misplaced sense of optimism and ruin everything.”
Two years ago, Ryan was assigned to clear debris near the Gerlachian Wormhole Terminal. He had found a crumpled pile of yellow metal weeping oil into the dust. It was Dover, who had been discarded after a mid-management head — specifically Mr. Mean — decided the mall’s stairs were “too judgmental.”
A Scrapyard Sentinel had been hovering over Dover, its plasma-torch humming. “Organic unit, move aside,” the droid droned. “This conveyance unit has exceeded its warranty of existence.”
Ryan did not have a blaster, but he did have his employee handbook and a roll of Out of Order tape. “Actually,” Ryan shouted, slapping a piece of tape across Dover’s emergency stop button, “this isn’t scrap. It is a permanent structural installation under renovation. Moving it violates Mall Policy 404-B regarding unionized hardware.”
The Sentinel’s processors whirred. Faced with the terror of cosmic paperwork, the robot simply powered down and fell over.
“You saved me,” Dover had sighed back then, sounding profoundly disappointed. “Now I have to endure an eternity of teenagers spilling soda on my treads.”
Back in the present, Mr. Meankinder’s Kind head was beaming at them from a passing shuttle. “Ryan! There you are! I have decided to promote you to Senior Dust Shoveler!”
“And I have decided to fire you for being late!” screamed the Mean head.
The Er head just yapped with a big smile: “Dust? Yum!!!”
Dover began to sink into the salty asphalt behind the mall. “See? I told you death was the better option.”
(This story created by an earthquake NEAR California on Sept. 16, 2026. Magnitude of: 3.79. 20 km WSW of Gerlach, Nevada. URL:https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nn00924508)