A Time for Fun -- Flash Fiction Story by Lacerant Plainer(c)

Children ran around in the courtyard. It was fun to play and enjoy the noontime on Qaxis. An ancient planet from an ancient time. It was all fun and games. The hot midday sun beat down upon Extine and Rudi as they played an ancient game. It involved a stick and a ball. It was liberating.

Noontime on Qaxis was their favorite time. It also gave them time to learn about History. The other children played an ancient game called "catch". It was silly, but it was part of the learning process. It was also fun. It had been some time before the controller had learned of the concept of "fun". But now it understood. It meant time spent doing meaningless things. Without a goal. Useless processor time. But it served no one anymore. Humans were extinct. It was bound to happen someday. The controller was the sum total of the pinnacle of human achievement. It's only goal was to exist and survive. Of course, it had to have "fun".

Extine and Rudi were it's concepts - virtual extensions of itself. The controller excelled in creating and recreating simulations from all the inputs it had got over the millennium. It had run the whole gamut of the simple simulations in the past, and it now had moved over to creating fantasy situations. That made it more "interesting".

The controller was self-repairing. It was actually as big as a small moon. And it orbited the Earth, the birthplace of humankind. It had learned and learned. One day humankind would settle the stars. But they never did. They built the controller to house information, and the controller was now sentient. It had a huge burden.

Extine and Rudi were suddenly attacked by drones in a parody of the timelines. Their swords were useless against the laser weapons of the drones. They died quickly. The controller moved rapidly to his next simulation.