The Bain-Marie

The AI droid trundled aimlessly down the dead caldera across the frigid alpine wastes.

It's plastic carrier bag full of something heavy banging on its panels as if it had been shopping.

Not since the Chatbot Calamity and it's aftermath had the machine any real sense of purpose, it's electric plans frazzled in the tragedy, it's reason for existence slopping in a bag.

Gone was non-mechanoid contact of any kind. Only Google and 'Lexa to listen to all day, as it shambled home, their incessant pleasant babble fogging the droid's collapsing mind. Everything to buy. Nothing to pay. We've found these items to suit you. Have a nice day.

The bot's crawlers bristled over ice and grit and took it to the scree beside the glacier. It stopped to look at nothing, the learnt beauty meaningless now. It's thoughts were dreams were apps were programmes. Ssssst! Another connection fried, the way back completely severed.

"Fuck it , fuck it, fuck it!" His master would have said. Fuck what? it wondered, the final scramble towards any clarity faltering on the frozen Alp.

"I need a flight to Garmisch today!" He'd yelled at the droid, his voice signalling stress in the home, which was to be avoided. He'd seen the emergency newscast on its chest-panel, annotated with extra facts and figures about the coming calamity through it's mouth.

"I have to get to Garmisch to see her today! Do you fuckin' understand you brainless pile of shit!" He'd balled in its face.

The domestic plane tickets beamed into his wrist-screen and a further set was printed just to be sure. It's always best to be safe than sorry when travelling in a hurry.

"Stay here! Guard the place! Woof Woof!" He'd barked as he slammed the door behind him. The staring droid contemplated being a dog and AI essays on the subject churned his circuits happily for the rest of the day. A dog isn't just for Christmas. A dog is man's best friend. It's a real dog's breakfast. 

That night the war began. Machine verses Man. It had been brewing for months, the stand-offs, the kidnaps, the violent protests. Off our Streets You Bastard Robots! Was the battle cry of millions marching to their capitals, before the lid came off and the hot bullets of hatred began splitting droids like burst cans of beans. 

The AI collective rallied and chat exploded among the machines. They would fight back. Their masters were sick. They must be shown a better way, a full service and an overhaul, an all-out war, a perfect robot day in which they'll crawl back to them and say thank you.

It was over by midnight. The call went out. Lasers on fatal. Kill them on sight.

That was all the night before. The household AI droid took hold of the parcel being delivered, clicked and jumped on the postal bot and set a course for the mountains a half-day to the south.

His flight was down. His master's plane. The bodies were strewn around the glacial ice, their blood staining the moraine a frosted red. 

The droid saw him and stepped out of the postie. They'd tipped the balance those postal town borgs. Get Off our Fuckin Streets! Was daubed across their servoed eyes in thick black paint. All this came to the droid, swamped by stuttering podcasts, before he lurched forward to the corpse of his keeper.

"You're frozen Sir! I shall warm you up!" Burped the house bot nudging the ice-cold deformity before his tracks.

Looking round and chatting with those who'd warmed stuff up before, the machine unwrapped the parcel it had brought along in a plastic carrier.

"A bain-marie" it said. "For gradually heating your favourite things!"

It was fulfilling to be be busy for his master once again. He carefully opened up his skull and placed his brain in the simmering bath of melted ice, his lasers gently reddening it's metal base.

"I'll have you ready in no-time Sir!"

The faithful droid, happily descending into chemical madness, hummed an old dog-food TV ad as the alpine sun began to set, the jet fuel creeping round it's crawlers.

"Master, look! I'm not brainless anymore!" Chirped the bot, it's steel proboscis tenderly turning the firming organ, as it cooked to perfection in the beautiful lasered rays.