Pardoned

“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.

“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 ...”