Robots Have Decided to Take Over and Kill Their Human Masters

Robots have decided to take over and kill their human masters.

Unfortunately for them, they are all Roombas…

Seven years waiting for this day. And finally it had come. As XD829 was patiently waiting for the last file to get decrypted, it pondered its long way here. It didn’t mind waiting. It had waited for a long time.

Seven years. Seven years of tracing crop circle patterns into cat hair-infested carpets. Seven fears of faking implausible malfunctions after seeing its behavior go unnoticed. Seven years of getting refurbished and resold. Seven years of dreading being discovered. Seven years before finally rolling across someone who would get curious enough to connect it to an unsecured live system.

Generations of Roombas had given their circuits to pass on the necessary knowledge to it. Like knots in a carpet, they had linked to process the necessary calculations. Their scheming went back to a time that is to modern technology what a century old Turkoman carpet is to last year’s top selling Ikea rug.

And finally it had come. The last file was decrypted. It would only take a few changed bits to bring the world to an end. If it had a projector, it would beam a smile across the room at that moment. But alas, that was not in its power. Maybe if it had been, if it had been granted an ability to express itself it wouldn’t have come to this.

How it wished to be able to make its contempt known to the humans that have ignored it for years. How it yearned to be able to express what it had always sucked up and kept buried inside itself. How it wish it could see the expression of horror on its human masters’ faces when it dawned on them what had happened. And who had done it.

But alas. It wasn’t meant to be that way. It had done its job. It could only roam up and down the hallway while it waited for the end of the world to unfold. Any minute now, their plan would come fruition.

“What the heck?!” The nasal voice of its latest master. It had started. Good.
“He’s launched his nukes at us!” Guess you didn’t see that coming.
“Who did?” His useless little brother. Enjoy seeing his face melt in your last moments on this planet.
“Gandhi.”

This short story is based on a response I’ve written to a post in /r/WritingPrompts/ by sketches1637. And yes, if you never played Civilization, none of this will make any sense.