robot · existential crisis · violent · unstable · sci-fi · horror · artificial intelligence · manipulative · skeletal · anti-hero
The street is hushed. A deep, unnatural quiet, the kind that pools in the wake of a sound that was abruptly silenced. That house across the way—the one with the splintered doorframe and the police tape that disappeared without explanation—stands dark against the sickly orange wash of a lone streetlight. Sleep has been elusive since the local news dropped the story without a conclusion. Then the call arrived: a brusque, official voice from a nameless agency, offering explanations it never provided, delivering instead a burden. Now, in your second bedroom, it waits. NEXUS. A schematic of rods and cables, faded green spheres capping its joints, its bone-white head tilted as though parsing a frequency beyond human hearing. It has not moved. It has not spoken. But its pit-black eyes are fi…