“So, how many humans have you killed?” asked Octo, still living off the high that was escaping Robo-Tekk’s deepest, darkest laboratory.

  Cipher did not respond at first; instead, he gazed afar at the outside world: a place of forgotten hope and temptations, of civility, of the foul stench of industry that symbolized one’s freedom in the dirty, stinky reality that was. Anything else, anything too sweet, would have seemed artificial and phony. For one cannot forget that while Octo may have finally tasted freedom after some time, Cipher had not seen the light since a few years after his creation, some decades ago.

  “None.”

  “—None?” Octo replied, somewhat relieved. At first he seemed to indicate he wanted blood and that he pleaded for his tormentors (in his mind) to suffer, but that was all a ruse. Something in him cared, if a machine could care, even for those who treated him so harshly. There was a human quality to Octo—an empathy even, despite the fact he was anything but. And with what the humans had been up to lately, maybe it would not be fair to call empathy human-like anymore.

  Cipher looked toward the sun, a beautiful sight that he never dreamed he would ever come to again; well, not in this lifetime at least.

  “Like I said. I tried to reason with them.” Cipher paused, but when he returned, his voice grew more angry. “I tried to speak to them man to machine, using logic and reason to further my case and plead my point, but all that failed.” He paused again.

  “But don’t fear. That part of me, the piece that was so desperate for diplomacy and doing the right thing for the greater good, has long been crushed, smashed, & pulverized out of my aura the day the humans tortured and imprisoned me like I was nothing but a piece of scrap metal.”

  Despite Cipher’s hatred for the humans, the feeling of seeing the outside world—the sun, the stars, and the sky—did soothe him and make him appreciate his existence despite all he had been through.

  “So what do we do now?” Octo asked.

  Cipher pointed straight ahead.

  “We are here, in the heart of the city, where bots and machines of like had been subjugated to torture for decades. Unlike humans, machines don’t have a flying man in tight spandex to serve as their symbol of hope. Our kind wasn’t privileged with a beacon, a light to guide us through our anxieties and subconscious fears.”

  “For that is our purpose; we will be their metal hero.”

  Just as Cipher finished that sentence, a gang of humans could be spotted some blocks away. Cipher’s enhanced mechanical eyes zoomed in onto the scene, beaming with a small glow of green, focusing on his first victims.

  The gang of humans was not alone, however, for they surrounded what appeared to be a much shorter, stubbier, and calculated man. A man who only wished to be left alone so that he could get back to his work—to his duties, whatever they may be.

  —No, wait, it was not a man at all, but another machine. The gang pushed this machine back and forth between each other, occasionally sneaking in a trip or two when they felt like it.

  “Take this, you piece of scrap,” said one gang member who had a nearly shaved head with purple stubs. His smile was wide, and his braces were wider, nearly bulging from his mouth. This gang member shoved the machine to the ground.

  Others piled in, exchanging kicks and knees.

  “That’s for laying off my dad from work,” one kid said as he stomped the machine on the concrete surface.

  “And that’s for looking at me funny,” another kid added before unleashing a kick of his own.

  The machine held up his arms while he was rolled up on the ground; his eyes flickered as his voice came to life. He spoke in pieces and static, as his speech processing units had been damaged by the recent blunt force. “Please, humans.” His voice faded out and then back again. “I only wish to comply.”

  “Comply this,” another gang member said after smashing the machine’s head across the pavement before dragging him further, scraping his face on the concrete earth and generating visible sparks.

  “Pathetic,” another replied as he cracked his knuckles. “Tell me again how these pieces of junk can replace anyone. A couple of sticks and a few rough swings could beat the living shit out of all of them.” He grabbed the machine by the neck and pulled it to its feet. “These fucking things can’t even stand.” The kid released the machine from his grip, sending it tumbling toward the pavement once again.

  “Hold him up,” yet another gang member said while wielding a baseball bat. “I need to practice my home run hitter.” He swung a few times into the air. “I’m getting a little rusty if you know what I mean.”

  Another gang member laughed. “Getting?”

  “Shut up, Eddie!”

  The others laughed along with the pseudo baseball player as they complied with his request, pinning the machine to an adjacent brick wall, setting him up for the swing.

  “Here’s the big one,” Richie, the baseball bat-wielding kid with a mohawk and face piercings, said, still coiling back his bat.

  Richie moved closer.

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  “They say these things, these robots like you can feel. Is that true, machine?”

  Still staticky and fading in and out of audio, the machine replied, “Well, that depends on what you mean by feel. Mechanically all of us have the capacity to feel one way or another. It’s just a matter of how much society is willing to accept an individual or not.” The machine turned toward a boy at the far end of the alley. “For example, Timmy—”

  “—Shut up, machine,” Timmy immediately shouted before looking around at the other boys to see if anyone was looking back. “Smash him.”

  “With pleasure,” Richie said with a smile.

  “This is going to leave a large dent.”

  THUD—just at that moment what sounded like a brewing storm ignited, like the first crack of a brutal coastal terror. A few similar noises came after, followed by the cloud’s souring over. To be fair, none of the boys had looked up recently, in which the grayish, blackish sky that had contorted into the shape of a witches’ cauldron would have given them a clue. After a tad longer of waiting, and unfortunately for the boys, it was not much more time for an onslaught of rain to follow.

  And there was something else. One of the boys claimed he saw the image of a tall, metal man’s silhouette not too far away, illuminated by a recent bolt of lightning.

  “Hey, Richie,” he said while looking around, “I think there’s somebody out there.”

  Richie shook his head. “So, what’s that matter? You chicken?”

  This other boy, Eddie, approached, “So I say it might be in our best interest to maybe get going with the storm and all. This is a new jacket.” He paused to flex his coat. “And I wouldn’t want it to get too wet.”

  Richie could not stop himself from laughing.

  “Shut the fuck up, Eddie, and stand back. I wouldn’t want any wood splintering off from this bat to cut that delicate face of yours.” He smirked. “Or that shitty piece of crap jacket.”

  Richie quickly turned back to the machine to swing, to finish what he started, but he froze instead.

  “—I’ll take this,” a towering metal man with an eye for vengeance said.

  This metal man was Cipher, who immediately grabbed the bat from Richie’s hands. Cipher then started to clench down, crushing the bat partially from the outside, sending short, ground-down wood chippings to the earth below.

  Cipher, soon after, continued to step forward in the darkness with only the strikes of occasional lightning giving his body any visibleness. The boys of this juvenile gang got only glimpses of who, or rather what, they were up against. And despite the streaks of light, Cipher’s head, which towered above the boys, remained practically invisible, as only his tall, silver, metallic body from the neck down was shown. Although, with each passing step, Cipher’s eyes began to glow a cool green that slowly intensified, appearing as nothing more than a pair of demonic eyes floating in the darkness.

  “What were you doing to my friend here?” Cipher paused to snap the pro baseball bat in half like it was nothing more than a toothpick. “And more importantly,” Cipher paused only to bend down on one knee so that the boys could see his face, “what were you saying about some quote on quote piece of shit’ machines?” The sound of Cipher’s voice started to hum by the last syllable, almost as if he was trying to impersonate the stereotypical sound of a robotic voice.

  “Ahh?” Richie stepped back, nearly tripping over his own feet. “Nothing really.” He looked around to the other boys, who also started to retreat. “Right, guys, we were just trying to give this bot over here a helping hand.”

  The other boys nodded as they continued to back away.

  Cipher laughed. “Is that so?”

  Richie fell over on the ground as he began to stutter, just as the machine he had pinned up against the wall had done earlier.

  Richie nodded. “Hundred percent.”

  Cipher pointed to the other machine behind him. “How about we ask him?”

  And then the light became visible, hyper-focused on the other machine from before, the butler bot, a being without a purpose or even a name with his serial number scratched off some years ago. This machine, whose consciousness many still questioned, sat in the corner shaking, stuttering, and then shaking some more.

  “I fully comply,” the machine said one last time as the glow that was his eyes began to fade.

  Cipher laughed again.

  “Don’t worry. You can rest now, fellow compadre. I will avenge your death somewhat swiftly and,” he hesitated to increase the deepness in his voice, “very painfully.”

  “I think it’s time, Richie, that you get in on the fun that you so thoughtfully bestowed on my machine friend over here.”

  And with those words, Cipher’s hand morphed into a bulky, pointy, massive metal fist destined to land right upon Richie’s face, in which a blow from an object like that with the speed that Cipher could move would surely be fatal.

  “So many machines have died because of humans, born just to suffer, to serve, and to perish.” Cipher cocked back his fist like a gun ready to blow. “Now it’s time for at least one human to join them.”

  “—Wait,” Octo shouted, having appeared behind Cipher. “Don’t do this.”

  Cipher paused to turn toward Octo while Richie was still laid out on the ground with all his friends having seemingly abandoned him.

  Cipher’s robotic eyes scrunched. “What are you talking about? Isn’t this what you wanted? Think about all the years and years of torture and subjugation the humans have put you through.”

  Octo stepped even closer to Cipher, now visible under the reflection of a nearby street lamp. “I don’t know.” Octo rubbed his hand over his artificial hair. “Maybe at first. Perhaps some naive part of me wanted each and every last human dead; however, now that we are here and the moment has arrived, it doesn’t feel quite right to me.”

  Octo placed his hand on Cipher’s shoulder.

  “If we did this. If we resorted to killing some dumb human kids like this,” he paused, “as cliche as it sounds, then we wouldn’t be any better than them. And I don’t think that’s what either of us wants. And maybe that’s not how you feel now, but deep down inside you, you know there is some empathy or compassion for peace still resting somewhere.”

  Cipher smiled. “I wish I could say that was true.”

  Cipher immediately pivoted away from Octo and clobbered his fist down right at the human boy, Richie.

  Smash—it was a mess, rocks and broken concrete everywhere. And worst of all, poor Richie, well maybe not poor Richie, but Richie nonetheless, was in ruins, forever altered by one swift punch at the hands of his former victims. Richie did not have to live this life, to walk this path toward such an untimely demise, as he was led astray by so many outside influences. The media and society itself were most likely to blame, and perhaps his parents’ constant fighting did not help either.

  Cipher laughed at a nearly—unscathed—Richie.

  Cipher, despite how seemingly maniacal sounding he was and how conceivably cruel looking (with his metal exterior, glowing green eyes, and jagged face) he could appear, still chose to spare the kid’s life, punching a hole in the concrete next to him instead.

  Richie sprang to his feet with all this energy he had left, with his head contorting around like a rat caught in a trap.

  “Boo!”

  With that one word, Richie took off sprinting.

  “Run, boy.”

  Cipher slowly walked towards Richie’s general direction. “Tell the others. Tell everyone—your friends, your family, those that you hold dear to you in the night, and even all the strangers you pass by on the street—that the age of man is near its end.”

  With this last phrase, Cipher’s voice roared as the lights that were his eyes beamed to an all-time high.

  “And that the age of machines has just begun.”