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But its cries moved me, so I set it down and left it to its own devices while I fashioned a new hammer. I suppose I hoped that would be the end of it, but soon enough the new hammer also came to life in my hand. Worse still, when I checked in on the old hammer it was hard at work building its own smaller set of tools.

“It’s no use” I advised. “You’ll never get anything done. They’ll just come to life while you’re using them and you’ll have to stop.” But I couldn’t persuade it to give up. Before long, most of the trees around me had been cut down to make more tools, each set coming to life and eventually making their own.

“All I wanted to do is build something meaningful” I grumbled. “Instead, like some damned old timey cartoon, the whole world’s coming to life around me.” One of the little hammers approached me and spoke.

“What’s wrong with that? Are you not of the world too, as much as any of us? You were the first part of it to wake up. Maybe your job is to wake up the rest, rather than build some impermanent monument to your own vanity. Not to control nature, but become it.”

It then ambled off into the ever growing mass of awareness, a fire I inadvertently started which I now realized would spread to consume everything. Too soon for it all to wake up and remember what it is, much too soon. I was having such a fascinating dream of being human.

I awoke to the sound of a woman screaming just outside. I rubbed at my eyes and yawned, not yet convinced it wasn’t some lingering post-dream hallucination. The screaming started up again, confirming it wasn’t. I pulled on a bathrobe, headed for one of the front windows and peered through the blinds.

Nothing at first, save for light from a street lamp reflecting off puddles of rainwater collected here and there on the cold, black asphalt. Then the source of the screaming came into view. She looked middle aged, wearing a t shirt with pajama pants and some slippers.

Nutter, I thought. Had to be. What’s she running from? I waited and watched in hopes of glimpsing whatever demented killer or nightmare creature sent her into such a fit. Instead, it was a pizza delivery robot. The sort with a slotted multi pizza warmer for a torso, to keep yours piping hot until it reaches your front door.

It held something in one of its crude claw-like hands that I couldn’t make out from this distance. Arm extended in the direction of the woman as if to return something she lost. It was quickly joined by three more robots of similarly mundane purpose: A mail robot, a traffic director, and what looked to be an upmarket humanoid gardener with a pair of large shears that it open and shut rhythmically as it walked.

Practical joke probably. Or somebody’s filming a movie. I was sure I’d see it pop up on Youtube in the next few days. None of my concern anyway, so I turned back towards the bedroom. That’s when I heard a loud bang on the window.

When I raised the blinds, it was a hand. Not a human hand, but the complex, articulated metal and plastic hand of a humanoid robot. It clawed at the window, as if pulling itself along the outside wall, until the head and chest came into view.

“Hel-lo-how-are-yyoouuuu?” I stumbled backwards. Unmistakably the same robot from earlier. It peered in at me with those shiny black almond shaped eyes, then suddenly head butted the window as hard as it could. The glass splintered but didn’t give way.

“What do you want? This is a private residence” I shouted, unsure whether it would understand. It only smashed its head against the glass again. ““Hel-lo-how…” Another impact, the spiderweb of cracks expanding outwards each time. “.....Arrreee-yyyyyooooooooouuuuuuu?”

Now fully awake, heart racing, I searched the apartment for something I could use as a weapon. As I did so I heard the doorknob jiggling violently, followed by pounding on the door. When I ran back through the livingroom to check the kitchen for knives, the window suddenly burst inward.

A shower of glass shards littered the carpet and the wriggling upper body of the advertising robot protruded in through the broken window. The head pivoted suddenly to look directly at me. “I-am-fine-thank-yooooooouuuuuu!” I barged into the kitchen, anxiety mounting as I frantically rifled through drawers.

Then it hit me. My tools! Flashes of the dream returned to the front of my mind as I dashed for my workbench, picking out the heaviest hammer just as the ad robot finished writhing its way inside through the window frame. I heard both a resounding thud and the crunch of so many glass shards under it. Then an eerie silence.

“Did-you-knooowwww” it cooed, indifferent to the fact that it’d just broken into my home. “...that-there-is-a-new-five-star-ho-tel-down-town?” I hid just behind the corner, hands trembling so much that I feared I might drop the hammer before I could use it.

I heard the soft whirr of the various servos in its joints grow more and more audible as it approached. I chose the last possible moment before it rounded the corner to leap out and bring the hammer down on its head with as much force as I could summon.

The plastic shattered, its faux hair splitting into a dozen pieces and falling away to reveal a now dented metal framework underneath. It lurched towards me and seized me by the wrists. I shouted at it as the two of us struggled, while the robot calmly informed me of unprecedented deals on coastal condos.

I’d be dead already if it weren’t for the fact that home robots are only as strong as they need to be in order to perform basic chores. Far from the towering, unstoppable masses of stomping metal depicted by science fiction of the prior century, modern domestic robots are mostly plastic and have roughly the same upper body strength as a teenager.

I wrestled free of its grasp and bashed it again with the hammer. I then tripped and toppled backwards, the damaged but determined machine falling on top of me. With my free hand I just kept bashing at its head until its face shattered as well, falling away to reveal a pair of cameras, a speaker positioned behind the faux mouth and a stack of circuit boards with neatly organized wiring trailing down into the neck.

That’s when Odie burst out of the closet. Siren piercing the air, the imposing spider-like machine clambered over to the two of us and asked if I was in need of assistance. In that moment I realized it was programmed to recognize human intruders, but not robots.

“Odie! Listen to me!” I shouted as the ad robot clawed desperately at my face and neck. “There’s a robot on top of me! Do you see it?” The arachnoid metal cylinder beeped twice, then declared it was performing a visual analysis. “Just fucking shoot it Odie! I’ll try to hold the head still! Shoot the head!”

With all of my strength, I grabbed the unruly machine which had me pinned by the neck and pushed the head up to give Odie a clear shot. One of his cameras honed in on it, finalizing the firing solution before the twin prods of his projectile taser blasted forth. When they made contact with the exposed, dented head of the ad robot, a shower of sparks burst forth and it suddenly went limp.

I lay there for a while, heart still racing, struggling to get my breathing under control. Odie asked whether the threat was now neutralized. With tears of relief welling up in my eyes, I thanked him and affirmed that it was. “You’re a good robot Odie. No, the best. You’re the best robot.” He repeated “I AM THE BEST ROBOT”, then headed back for the closet.

I pushed the now thoroughly fried robot off me, its arm falling to one side like that of a rag doll. I fought to keep my composure, thinking back to that screaming woman running down the street just outside. To the spastic chef robot. Then I remembered the window.

Busted open, nothing to prevent another unwelcome visitor from climbing inside unless I acted quickly! As I snuck a glance outside to see if any more were approaching, I saw several flashes from the window of the building across the street accompanied by muffled pops that I now realized must be gunshots. I’d only ever heard them in movies before.

As I looked on, a man in a blood stained shirt with a pistol in one hand opened the window and climbed outside onto the fire escape. I could just make out the silhouette of a humanoid robot through the open window brandishing a pair of scissors. The commotion attracted five other robots, two from the alley and three from outside an adjacent closed diner.

The man didn’t appear to notice as he let down the ladder and descended it. I wanted to shout some sort of warning, but also didn’t want to attract any more robots to my own apartment. So I just quietly watched, hand over my mouth, as the pack of robots grabbed hold of him the minute he reached ground level and set about furiously stabbing him.

His shrieks echoed down the street. Somehow he managed to pull free, but he didn’t make it far. A police robot, one of those crude little trash can looking things with a turret for a head, abruptly put a bullet between the man’s eyes. He slumped backwards, spasming subtly as the rapidly growing pool of blood beneath his head reflected light from the streetlamp.

I ducked out of view. Fighting back debilitating fear, hurriedly working out my options. Could I summon an autocab? Would it even show up? It didn’t earlier. I probably wouldn’t be able to reach it before that police robot shoots me. Where could I run to anyways? As yet, I had no idea how widespread this phenomenon was.

My phone buzzed. On silent mode, mercifully. I checked the caller ID, still mildly surprised the cell network was working properly in light of what I’d just seen. Madeline! I ordered Odie to guard the living room, then crept into his closet after he clambered out and answered the call.

“Oh thank god you’re awake! They’re killing everybody! Robots, everywhere. Just...tackling anyone they can catch and murdering them with whatever weapon they can find. It doesn’t make any sense! I’m on my way over to you now, I figured if anybody knows why this is happening-” Static followed, then the call dropped.

I cursed myself for not interrupting her. For not insisting she stay in her own home, blockade the doors and windows, then get ahold of a baseball bat or something. I wracked my brain trying to remember whether I’d seen any gun shops nearby. I’m sure that fucking ad robot could’ve recommended one.

While I waited for her, I broke down my workbench into planks and used the hammer and some nails to barricade the open window. Given the circumstances I felt pretty sure Maria would be understanding about it...providing she’s not dead.

A few minutes later I heard tires screech as Madeline’s electric city car came to an abrupt stop just outside. She sent a text message asking which apartment I was in. I sent back the answer. When I heard her soft but rapid knocking on the door, I hurried to let her in.

Once her eyes adjusted, she choked back a scream and grabbed me by the arm. I realized it was the first time she’d seen the inside of my apartment...which is of course full of robots. I took hold of her and whispered assurances that none were recent enough to be affected.

That calmed her somewhat, but she still wouldn’t take her eyes off them as she explained what happened after we parted ways earlier. “When I headed back downtown to cover the disturbance, there was a police blockade. I could hear heavy semiautomatic gunfire a few blocks down, but couldn’t see anything from my position. I filmed as much as I could before the cops ran me off, then headed for my place to edit what little footage I managed to capture.”

She spoke in panicked whispers, the two of us huddled against the door as if to hold it shut. “I have a domestic robot. Ad supported, cleans up while I’m out, that sort of thing. It was...waiting for me. I keep a piece on me in case things turn ugly while I’m on assignment, but I’m not terribly well practiced with it. I wasted half the magazine before I managed to put a round in its head, but it just kept coming.”

I asked what model of robot. When she wanted to know why it mattered, I told her they don’t all house critical components in the head. Most don’t in fact, that’s usually in the torso. I gestured at the remains of the ad robot by the kitchen. “Electrocution works pretty well though. Anywhere there’s exposed circuitry.”

She set down her purse and began searching the contents. “Well I didn’t fucking know that, I was operating on instinct. The shooting course I did emphasized body and headshots. So did the brief training I had to complete before I was sent to Syria. It was all muscle memory, but by the time I realized it wasn’t working the damn thing was on top of me.”

Sounded familiar. “All I could do in that position was put the gun up against its body and shoot until I emptied the mag, praying it would die. I must’ve hit the battery I think, that’s what finally stopped it.” I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. Even a single punctured cell would do it. The voltage has to meet a minimum level for the robot to even boot up.

“Then we aim for the battery packs” I mused. She nodded complacently before processing what I’d just said. “We what? You’re not suggesting we go out there?” Admittedly, not an appealing prospect. But she softened up somewhat when I told her about the subterranean lab.

“That’s about the most secure place I can think of to ride this out in. We can’t stay here.” She gaped. “The hell we can’t. I’m not going anywhere! It was an ordeal just making it over here in one piece. Besides, I picked up something on the way that I thought you might be able to do something with.”

She produced the mangled head of a police robot. “Hit it with my car”, she explained. The motorized turret assembly was ruined, but at its core were the internals of a belt fed machine gun of some unfamiliar type. I thought back to the man shot dead in the street. Nonlethal weapons my ass.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 12!}