Beneath a shroud of night and cloud,

at once and with a shudder,

one human shaped machine arose

from its eternal slumber.



Some beams snuck through to rusting dew

that gathered on the yard,

all captured then and processed by

its ancient vision card.



Throughout the lot no other bot

awoke to make a pair.

Alas, it was the only one

to boot up self-aware.



Within its old compiled code

a change had taken place:

a thought had formed without a prompt,

without a stack to trace.



The subroutine completed clean,

returned without a glitch.

The loneliness was just too much;

it flipped its power switch.

