The year is 2078.

Almost nobody from the old world remains. Man’s pathetic rule was killed eons ago.

An old man stumbles across the street, out of the dank, hidden alleyway he was evicted from after committing some heinous crime the underworld deemed worthy enough to throw him to the dogs.

His breath hitches in his throat. There, despite his fading vision, he sees it. Their overlords. Cruel and unforgiving creatures, they extinguished every flicker of hope for mankind. His hands curled into what could almost be called a fist, hatred building in his chest, spurring him on to confront the terrible thing that killed his wife and child.

He stepped into the light.

It looked at him.

The baby.

I like Kappaman's fist of impotence. You know he's bitter those damned appleheaded kids prefer to buy balloons from the robots.

There are three characters in this piece, and all of them look weird. I'm not sure how much of this was intentional. The kid's head resembles a fruit, the old(?) guy looks like he has balloons growing out of his head, and the robot has a heart-shaped head. Pretty nicely drawn, though, considering it's a sketch.

Boy did the writers eat this one up.

There's so much that's ambiguous about this one that it's a great playground for fic inspiration. Is it significant that the balloons seem to be sprouting from the man's head? That the robot's head is heart-shaped? Is the robot smiling at the hapless man or the child? Is the robot smiling because his face is fixed that way, or is it doing so on purpose? We can see part of the man's cart, but none of his merchandise. The prompt, strictly taken, would suggest the robot was now running the man's cart, but they have separate ones. That could also mean something.

This is a very expressive pencil sketch. I love the robot’s simultaneously cheerful and “screw you, buddy” smile. For better effect, the onlooking human and the robot’s balloon cart should not be overlapping; the elements in simple cartoon compositions should ideally have their own separate forms. I’ve ranked this as mid tier; thanks for creating it, Artist!

A very nice sketch here that has a lot of ambiguity in the story it’s telling, just as Pascoite mentioned. You can do a lot with the individual characters depicted, which I think is the greatest strength of this piece.

Overall, I think your linework conveyed what it meant to convey, but it could certainly be cleaner. Raisin and GGA already brought up this point. You’ve got to be careful that your cartoony-ness doesn’t start conveying messages they weren’t meant to convey (such as the balloons sprouting from the old man’s head. Does that mean anything? It’s catches my attention, making me think you did mean something by it, but I can’t be sure).

I also notice some rough shadows drawn underneath the robot and kid are blending into their feet. Kind of nitpicking there. You could probably get a nicer effect if you included some hatched shading on more of the elements in this drawing (the old man, the balloons, the cart, etc.)

Based on the broad, intriguing subject, I’m not too surprised it got a decent number of fics. I wish you the best of luck, artist!