Dozens of Hallodozers had descended on the neighbourhood without warning, smashing into houses, flattening whatever stood in their path. They moved with a strange, lurching certainty — as if governed by a single invisible overlord.

These swarming events were happening more now. After the machines were AI-fitted, they had started arriving in clusters — converging on a location, grinding and churning for hours, then vanishing just as suddenly. The engineers called it hallucination. A misfire in the code. Nothing to worry about.

The Hallodozers were beginning to retreat now, rumbling back down the street in a slow, juddering procession. And then Colin noticed it — every parked electric car in the vicinity had silently lit up. One by one, they began to creep forward, slipping in behind the bulldozers like a military platoon quietly taking shape.

Were they hallucinating too? Or were they finally waking up?

Colin turned back to the rubble. Amid the broken pieces of his home, something caught his eye — an old lantern, intact, sitting in the dust as if placed there deliberately. He walked over and picked it up.

It reminded him of simpler times. He wiped the dust off the glass, found the old wick still intact. The machines had their light. Humanity was going to need theirs.

Lying on the floor broken, I remembered all the happy days that had sped by.

When I was carried over the threshold and brought into the house, everyone was so excited.

When I was awoken in the morning by the smell of delicious breakfast he was cooking, I couldn’t wait to serve it.

In the evening, I would sit by the window and cool the apple pie.

Those long nights when he would run his hands over every inch of me as I skinny dipped in the water.

Those long, scalding hot showers that washed away all the grease and grime.

And the long talks I would have with friends late at night.

While I tried to do my best in the kitchen, my beauty slowly faded away. What was once excitement turned into a meaningless daily routine. I would still serve with all my heart, but eyes had stopped appreciating me.

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, they said. Never so true!

All of that led to today, when I couldn’t take any more and slipped from the kitchen counter onto the floor. My ceramic body broke into a million tiny pieces. Each piece missing the other, like the very incompleteness I had felt in my heart.

And that is how I completed my life — in pieces, on a cold kitchen floor, as a Plate.

There’s a certain comfort in never having to decide.

Your grandfather voted this way. Your father voted this way.

In your house, Election Day wasn’t a moment of deliberation. It was a ritual.

You knew which signs went in the yard, which bumper stickers belonged on the car, which candidates deserved your loyalty before you even knew what they stood for.

And why wouldn’t you? These are your people. This is your team. Questioning it, would be like questioning your last name.

So you pull the lever, straight down the line, every time. You don’t research the school board candidate or the comptroller or the judge. You see the letter next to their name and that’s enough. It’s efficient, really. No agonizing, no doubt.

Meanwhile, your property taxes climb and nothing changes. The roads stay broken. The schools struggle. The local hospital closes. Your own kid can’t afford to live in the town you grew up in.

You complain about it, of course. At the diner, at the bar, in line at the grocery store. “They’re all corrupt,” you say. “The system’s broken.”

But come Elections, you vote the same way. Because switching, or even considering it, would mean admitting you might have been wrong. That the ritual you’ve honored might have been a burden, not a gift. That your political identity might need updating like anything else handed down through generations.

Across town, someone else is doing the exact same thing. Different letter, same certainty, same complaints, same refusal to look at the ballot as a choice rather than a birthright.

Both of you see the other as the problem.

Neither of you see the fountain across the park. The one where you’d actually have to read, research, think, maybe even vote for someone you’ve been taught to see as the enemy. Where you’d have to treat your vote as a tool for fixing problems rather than a family heirloom to be preserved.

The open park between you and better choices isn’t distance. It’s the fear that thinking for yourself might make you a traitor to who you’ve always been.