Other Work

It’s sad the things that influence you in life.  For some it would be great art, others inspiring literature.  For me, it tends to be old ZX Spectrum computer games from the early eighties that I bought for £1.99.

I’ll claim I came up with the idea for Colony, but in reality, I kind of pinched bits from the game of the same name.  It’s not a classic, not like Jetset Willy or the like, so I doubt anyone would really notice.  Either way, when I get round to releasing it, I think I might like to check the legalities of it all.

Anyway, here’s the spiel...

By the year 2101, life was tough.  Not for humans of course, as they spent most of their time watching transmissions from the reality TV nebula or designing forms for other people to fill in.  No, life in 2101 was tough for droids.

Especially if the droid in question was merely one of millions of identical Beta Droids, stationed throughout the universe and destined for a life of protecting human crops from the biggest threat humanity had every known – giant killer Ants.  Ants were over a hundred feet tall, breathed fire and when they weren’t ravaging entire harvests, were eating human infants. 

Only one Beta droid disagreed – a small blue robot only known by a ridiculously long serial number, stuck on a far flung human outpost.  While it patrolled its human colony, it had been thinking.  It had been pondering why it didn’t have a proper name, why the Ants on this planet were no larger than a housecat, why they were actually rather pleasant and had a highly advanced society, not to mention preferring toasted mushrooms to newborn babies.  And, most importantly, it had been thinking about why it was capable of thinking when no other droid it had encountered could do likewise.