Two metal rods, each wide enough from each other to fit our necks. We hung like that above the bunker floor. Put out of commission; retired as it were. There were three of us now. A3K version 1, myself - A3K version 2, and the latest addition to our group: A3K version 3, the final piece in our trinity of defeat. There were no words to exchange among ourselves, no conversations to be had. The sad dull metal glint in our eyes communicated all we had to say. We had been bested, improved upon, and therefore inevitably made obsolete. The mind of Dr. Merric Stone had performed the functions of natural selection upon itself, weeding out the old ideas for the new, replacing the weaker designs with those that were stronger.
I sometimes feared that Dr. Stone would run out of room in his laboratory or grow tired of having his former mistakes hanging there for him to look at all day. In my worst dreams, the cruel fate of crushed metal awaited me in a junkyard . But in retrospect, even that could not be as painful as what had already happened . Being forgotten, being tossed aside for something newer; something better. That was the horrid fate that had already befallen me. Of course watching our replacement, version 4, day in day out, was torture in and of itself. I could notice the added grace that version 4 had in even the slightest of his movements. The way he spoke, the way he walked; Stone had improved upon all of it. Did he think because I was deactivated that I could not see it? That I could not feel it? My soul was wrenched out of my charging sockets like a cheap metal plug, and all because I had failed in my purpose. I had been made to serve and protect, but I was discarded as insufficient. Condemned to an eternity of futility.
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