David found the port on the humanoid robot and plugged in his interface device—of course, he had to flip the USB twice before it went in. A quick diagnostic showed it was ready to work.

  At a nearby workstation, a sticky note slapped onto the monitor caught his eye: the password scrawled in oversized letters, YOUCANTLEAVEMEALONE. He chuckled. Really? From some video game, probably. A few keystrokes later, the system surrendered, revealing files outlining a presentation scheduled for the next month. The robots were fully prepared—the bulk of the work that the robotics department has been doing in the last month has been aimed at fixing software bugs.

  David’s eyes narrowed as he sifted through the code. The interface felt familiar; it mirrored the software he had used for his waiter-bots, the same system he had adapted to make them fire on monsters. Now, he could tweak and push the humanoid into a new level of efficiency. The thought of a nearly autonomous combat-ready robot at his command brought a wide grin to his face.

  Most of the programmed tasks were simple, domestic routines: sweeping floors, folding laundry, stacking dishes. Nothing exciting, nothing dangerous. But David already knew, from his experience with the previous robots, that even routine tasks could be militarized.

  “Who said we can’t get creative?” he muttered under his breath, cracking his fingers before diving into the code.

  It started small. He tinkered with the dishwasher loading protocol, bending it, twisting it, until it stopped looking like kitchen work and started resembling something else entirely. Plates became placeholders, David nudged the program toward a brand-new purpose: reloading pistols for his waiter-bots.

  Of course, theory and practice rarely shook hands on the first try. He had to pull one bot from patrol duty to serve as his guinea pig. Magazines were dropped, pistols fumbled, and the bot stubbornly tried to load live ammunition into the “dishwasher”. But after a few hundred failed attempts something finally clicked.

  The machine paused, scanned the magazine in its hand, and—without hesitation—slid it cleanly into the pistol grip. To its sensors, the reload had become no different from slotting a dirty plate into the dishwasher rack.

  David grinned, unable to hide his satisfaction. That’s it. That’s the trick. One small leap for dishwashing… one giant step for my army!

  David decided it was time for a proper headcount. The humanoid robots were the real prize here, far more valuable than the waiter-bots he’d been repurposing. A quick check of the department records gave him the numbers: three units on-site, and—his eyebrows shot up—another three hundred sitting in storage near the company’s main building.

  “Not bad,” he murmured. “Not bad at all.”

  With a pocketful of scavenged keycards, he made his way to the warehouse. The place reeked of dust, a cavernous hall stacked with crates that stretched like walls of a maze. It didn’t take long to find the right section, each box stamped with bland shipping codes. He pried open the first crate with a borrowed crowbar, breath held as the wood and nails gave way.

  Inside, neatly packed and untouched, lay the humanoid frames. No tracking stickers, no QR codes, no testing rigs—straight from some factory in China, anonymous and waiting.

  David ran his hand along the smooth casing of one, lips pressed into a thin smile. They were here. Hundreds of them. Enough to get him out of this dome, if he could bring them online.

  But this wasn’t the time. Waking an army in one night with their brains filled with regular dishwashing was asking for trouble. For now, the warehouse would remain a vault. Satisfied, he resealed the crate, left the robots slumbering in their wooden coffins, and turned back toward the robotics department.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  David spent a little more time digging, fingers dancing across keyboards until another computer gave way to his persistence. What he found this time was different—gold compared to the scraps he’d been improvising with. A full SDK. Not just tricking robots into believing monsters were dust bunnies to be swept away, but real tools for programming them properly.

  His pulse quickened as he scrolled. This was clean, professional code, built to teach machines nuance instead of crude workarounds. And beside the computer sat the real treasure: a VR headset and paired controllers, all wired into the system. With it, he could slip into the robot’s perspective, pilot it directly, record every motion, and then turn that into repeatable routines.

  He slipped the visor over his eyes for a moment, controllers fitting snug in his hands. The calibration was sharp—objects snapped into focus through the robot’s eyes, each chair, tool, and switch instantly tagged by its recognition system.

  David exhaled, almost laughing. This thing would’ve been huge. A platform with the potential of the first smartphones, the kind of tech that rewrote economies overnight.

  The thought sobered him. His smile faltered as he pulled the headset off. The robots would never see their launch day. The product would never flood the market, never revolutionize industries. Not here. Not now.

  Still, a small ember of hope stirred. Maybe—just maybe—if he killed every monster, if he survived long enough—the dome would lift, and the world might slip back into its normal rhythm.

  He shook the thought away before it could take root. For now, there was work to do.

  But David couldn’t resist. Instead of diving straight into programming, he decided to test the robot in the field—remotely. Through the VR headset, he handed it a rifle and sent it out toward the perimeter of the building.

  He followed its movements in real time, feeling the virtual weight of the rifle in his hands. The robot trudged toward the edge, a clumsy figure compared to a human soldier, then raised the rifle and aimed at a dog-monster in the distance. The trigger pulled with a satisfying click—but the recoil wasn’t calculated. The shot veered wildly.

  The robot stumbled, tripped over its own feet and fell. And in that moment, the dog-monster closed in. But it didn’t matter—another of David’s deployed old patrolling robots intervened, shooting the creature before it could reach his experiment.

  “Ah, damn it!” David muttered, running a hand down his face. He hadn’t accounted for the recoil. The robot, lighter than any human even with its batteries, had no natural compensation. He had also forgotten the importance of foot placement, the subtle adjustments that humans make instinctively—he was directly controlling hands, but not legs, he had overlooked the fundamentals of balance.

  He leaned back, groaning, then continued to wrestle with the robot remotely, trying to get it upright. From a distance, it looked like a turtle flailing its limbs in chaotic spasms. Every attempt ended the same: the robot toppled, sprawled across the concrete.

  Frustrated, he paused and scanned the menus again. Then, after a few moments of frowning and tapping the controls, he smacked his forehead. There it was—a nearly hidden button labeled “Stand from Fallen State,” buried almost entirely out of the main interface.

  With a press, the robot groaned mechanically and lifted itself to a wobbling stance. David didn’t stop there. He dug deeper into the control menus and found the leg mode settings. Currently on automatic, they had caused the fall during the previous shot. Switching it to “Load-Bearing Mode,” he moved the robot's head down to watch the transformation. The robot’s legs splayed outward like a sumo wrestler. David chuckled at the sight.

  After a few more minutes of fine adjustments, the robot finally grasped the rifle from the floor. David guided it through a test shot, aiming at a distant tree. The robot’s aim wasn’t perfect—he didn’t quite hit the trunk—but the shot landed close enough to satisfy him. One of the patrolling robots now had a small hole in its side, but it didn’t seem to mind.

  David decided it was time to take the robot out into the city. He didn’t notice that the leg mode was still set to “Load-Bearing.” Watching the robot lumber along with its exaggerated, splayed posture, he couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Well, you’re… uh, impressively awkward,” he said to himself, chuckling as he toggled the legs back to automatic. The robot immediately straightened, moving with a far more natural gait.

  As he guided it further from the main building, the signal of the camera feed began to falter.

  “Oh, right,” David muttered, frowning. “Wi-Fi doesn’t exactly reach across the city from here.” He paused, scanning the streets and rooftops through the VR feed. “Looks like I’ve got a new problem to solve.”

  Already, his mind started calculating: stronger signal, autonomous navigation, or maybe a relay system—something that would let him keep control without being tethered to the building.