The Great Purge

The Great Purge, also known as The big getting-rid-of, was a genocide mass decommissioning of property that took place in late 2015. It was undertaken by the council in an attempt to regain money being lost keeping the obsolete A-model artificial human workforce maintained.

However in the end it actually lost the council money and has crippled their productivity due to being unable to sufficiently fund a work force rebuilding program.

History
The A-model worker drones were first introduced in 2004 by the council as a way of saving money on paying real people for manual labour. They were first trialled as basic heavy lifting grunts before eventually being deployed in almost all other fields of work. The A-models were prone to deformities and deviations as the growing procedure was not perfected. it was not uncommon to find A-models with facial scarring or other abnormalities such as enlarged craniums, under bite, or advanced signs of aging.

In 2008 the Model B's where introduced into the market and proved moderately successful with consumers but it was still clear improvements were needed; B models were known for having incredibly short life spans due to knock off energizers the council had switch to in an attempt to save money.

By 2011 all production on A-models had ceased as the superior D3-models had far outsold them in the previous year. One of the last A-models to be produced was A-276.

In mid 2015 the new S-model drones were announced and with it came another budget cut. In order to maintain a steady flow of money, the council decided that the A-models would be decommissioned. However, The decommissioning of Model As was far more expensive than estimated and following the purge, only a few S models were ever produced. After having destroyed most of their A-model work force and only able to create around 30+ S-models, the council ran out of money to sufficiently rebuilt it's work force.

The purge
In Autumn of 2015 the official order was given that all A-model units would return to their local council headquarters to be destroyed and that all who disobeyed would be hunted down. Just under 80% of all active drones followed the order to hand themselves in for decommissioning.

Methods of deactivation
Those who went willingly to their end were dealt with in a variety of ways as the method of decommissioning differed for each local council. Some were crushed in large hydraulic presses, others were melted down in big pots of molten liquid. The most common method was for local chavs to beat units to death with bats and for their bodies to be buried in large pits.

Resistance
Not all A-models obeyed the order of self destruction, some took up arms against the council and formed squads of guerrilla fighters, others rioted in the street until they were killed where they stood, and many more simply ran and hid. However since the A-models had limited intelligence, their hiding places mostly consisted of putting a newspaper on their heads or hiding behind a lamp post.

Survivors
Only 4 units survived the purge. A-276 being the most famous. They were spared as the purge was ended prematurely as it ended up costing far more than anyone thought it would and actually bankrupt the council.

"Human" rights controversy
Many people wrongly asserted that the A-model worker drones should have been viewed as fully fledged human beings with a right to live as they do. These hippies held protests outside council buildings before and during the purge, they were eventually arrested and sent to reeducation camps.