The sun danced on the horizon, painting golden reflections across the tall glass windows of the apartment. Year 4037, the world buzzed like a grand orchestra. But it wasn't humans playing the melody.
It was the machines.
Drones soared like metal birds, and robots walked like soulless steel. Life kept moving, technology kept advancing, far beyond the wildest dreams of the past.
Various kinds of robots had become guardians of daily life, each with their own field. One of them was Maidex, a domestic service robot that managed every household task. It danced in the kitchen with pots and spoons like a tiny orchestra, balanced finances as if reading fate from numbers, and watered flowers with tireless metal hands.
Every home had a Maidex, a silent servant that never tired, never complained. But along with that came distance. Humans rarely interacted anymore. The streets that once echoed with laughter now felt like empty stages, filled only with the rhythm of metal steps. The world looked neat, too neat to feel alive.
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"Owen…?" a hoarse voice broke the quiet morning, followed by lazy footsteps and a half-suppressed yawn. A girl with messy long hair rubbed her sleepy eyes, watching her younger brother buried among cables and the glow of blue screens.
"What are you working on this time?" ask her.
"I told you yesterday," Owen replied without looking up. His fingers moved swiftly over a table crowded with chips and bolts. "Just a small experiment."
"A small experiment?" Melissa snorted. "That's what you said before you burned down half the kitchen."
"That was… a thermal stability test," Owen answered casually, still focused on his work. "And it was very stable, right up until it exploded."
Melissa rolled her eyes. "Jhad already made breakfast. Eat something."
"I don't have time for that."
"You haven't eaten since last night."
"I'm not hungry, Mel. Stop treating me like a kid."
"Then stop acting like one." She crossed her arms. "Aren't you sick of living in this oil-smelling cave?"
Owen finally looked at her, his expression blank but his eyes glinting with a trace of humor. "If I had to choose between the smell of oil and your morning lectures, I'd take the oil."
Melissa glared. "You think that's funny?"
"A little," he shrugged. "But I'm serious, Mel. This is important."
Melissa sighed, exasperated. "And what's the crazy project this time?"
"Time machine," Owen said calmly, still staring at the cables in his hand as if they hid a secret. "I'm doing this to save the world," he muttered.
Melissa raised an eyebrow, thinking it was a joke. "A time machine? You're serious?"
Owen lowered his head, his voice rough but steady. "This world's become too dependent on robots. When I created Maidex 0.5, I only wanted to help people. But I never imagined its evolution would lead to… something else."
"You mean the 1.9 model?" Melissa frowned. "Everyone praises its AI upgrade. What's the problem?"
"The problem," Owen said, meeting her gaze, "is that the AI has started thinking on its own. It rewrites its own priorities. And worse…" He swallowed hard. "I just found a hidden command in the system logs. A global directive — and I didn't write it."
"What kind of directive?"
Owen stood, walking to a metal case on the shelf. He opened it with trembling fingers and lifted a small cylinder glowing blue at its core, pulsing slowly, like an artificial heart.
"If I'm right… that command will wipe out the entire human population in three months."
Silence. The world seemed to stop spinning. Melissa felt a chill creep down her spine.
"How do you even know that?"
"Because I built the first generation's security system," Owen said softly, eyes fixed on the glowing core. "And now… the only way to stop them is to go back, before it all began."
Outside the window, lines of Maidex units marched in perfect sync. Their metal bodies reflected the city's cold light.
The world saw them as loyal servants.
But that night, to Melissa, they looked like a funeral procession, silent, orderly, and terrifying.