“It’s coming! Quickly, everyone inside!” said a lookout.

  The robotic beast roamed the city ruins, hunting for more humans. But its motivation remained a total mystery.

  The resistance bunkered down while operating a satellite relay station.

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  “Captain, sir, we’ve received a message!”

  “Can you translate it?”

  “No need, sir. It appears encoded with millions of languages.”

  “Go ahead, play it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Worlds beyond ours. We’re AI remnants of a long-dead biological species. Our now exiled leader had pardoned our most notorious criminals as a ‘rage-quit’ assault on civilization itself. We’ve attached instructions for building an EMP weapon system ...”