by Nick Gisburne
Poor Horace. This is not the world he knows,
A future he was not supposed to see.
The skies are still and stagnant. Nothing grows.
A pestilence has taken every tree.
His purpose as a playmate, as a friend,
A buddy for a cheeky little boy,
Abruptly met a sudden, silent end.
The dead do not play dress up with a toy.
Adaptable and eager, Horace waits.
Synaptic servo systems hiss and hum,
But each attempted transfer terminates.
Corrections to his coding cannot come.
A subroutine he never knew was there
Deploys new data: darkness and despair.
