Reba watched as the android enforcers advanced down the desolate street. They dug out the last fragments of resistance and mindlessly enforced a law that no freethinking human being would.

The administration promised a crime free world, and their slogan was clear. "Thought control is crime prevention." Reba spat the slogan as she watched the enforcers drag a screaming dissident out of hiding and plug him criminally into the mind-sweeper. They were less than a block away.

Reba hid her face in her shoulder and slowly turned sliding down the dirty unpainted wall until she reached the fetal position. There were very few in this district that, like her, hadn't been mind swept. Now they were being systematically hunted down. She couldn’t remember what it was like to feel free.

She froze when she heard the solid footsteps stop in front of her door. There was no knock, the door simply burst inwards. Reba scrambled against the flying slivers to reach the fallen refrigerator in the middle of the decaying floor.

“Citizen, in compliance with the mind control act, prepare to be swept.”

Feeling across the closed fridge door, she found the strap of her weapon, and pulled it quickly over the edge. The enforcer didn’t move.

“Sweep my ass, metal head!”

“Beasts of burden need not comply,” the footsteps resumed.

Reba laughed out loud. The unthinking machine wouldn’t understand the joke it had just made. Simple plays on words were just as beyond its grasp as human emotions and the idea of freedom.

Rolling to one side, she fired half a clip directly into the chest of the unfeeling monstrosity crossing the floor. She fired the other half through the entrance as she dashed out the back. “No bastard machine’s gonna drain my brain!”

Reba was wrong.