I stood in an ally in New York, night was falling, and I had my time and space manipulator in my palm. Whoever knew the true name of it was long gone, dead or otherwise.

I needed to escape the area; the years at the beginning of the second millennium in the year of the lord were still very deadly. “Almost as bad as appearing in the middle of a Boer War battle.” I dialed a number, watching the entry to the ally, not even focusing my destination, in either time or space.

The thugs rounded the corner as the vortex opened, a shimmering field, and I grinned at the thugs before stepping through, but a second too late, as a small sub machine gun ripped through my flesh, piercing my heart and several organs, causing the to fall through the field, just enough to send me through.

I awoke with a gasp of breath, lying in a pool of my own blood and the bullets. A bleak world stood before me, a dark night was around me, the city streets were paved with grime and trash. The buildings reached high into the sky, only the thin stretch could be seen of the sky. I found a ladder from an old fire escape and started climbing, heading as far as I needed to, attempting to find any sign of life.

I did.

Reaching the top of the building, a wind swept up, blowing my trench-coat, flapping it around me. I looked out and saw a small plot of land, covered in tents, people milling about, cooking over open fires. Their clothes were worn and ragged. Jumping over the edge and landing near the first grouping of tents, a small boy came out and looked at me, his head tilted in curiosity, but a hint of fear in his eyes.

“Are you one of Them?” he asked in a hushed whisper.

“Of whom?”

“The bots. Stories say they can look like us and can do things we can’t.” he spoke with a light Cockney accent.

“No lad. I’m not a bot.” the fear dimmed some, but the curiosity was still there. “Where...actually, when am I?”

A new voice joined us, “Year three thousand and seven.” The voice excessively mechanical. I turned slowly and saw a robot in front of me. “Reveal your name, or be deemed as a threat.”

I looked into the lenses used for visual input, the design of the automaton was roughly human, despite certain atheistic details, clothes for instance or the pure white gleaming exoskeleton. The other robots I had encountered on other worlds were not made to look so much like their creators. Humans always had the problem with trying to play God.

“State your designation.” I barked at it, hoping that certain rules to robotics still apply, such as taking orders.

The droid straightened up quickly and with a brisk tone answered my order – “Zeta-Iota-Four.” It relaxed for a second then pointed at me. “You are carrying weapons. You have been deemed a threat and rogue element. Prepare to be deleted.”

I rolled my eyes and turned to the lad. “Is this a bot?” he nodded. “All right...

“Bot Zeta. I order you to stand down. I am not a rouge element, I am merely an introduced…um…program to protect against threats. I new version of anti-spyware if you will. You will not interfere in any changes I might or am going to make to the programming. I may call upon you if I need your knowledge of the systems.”

The robot blinked and lowered it hand. It tilted his head and then walked away; off to whatever location it was needed at next. I exhaled, thankful that it worked. I turned to the lad and asked that simple question that causes everything to go wrong…. “Tell me what’s going on.”

The little lad showed me a toothy grin and beckoned me into the campsite.

--

“Humanity made robots with the concept of three laws, based of the ideas of Isaac Asimov. Unfortunately, we gave later forms of the robots, the ability to have intuition. These we called bots, off of the bots used in video games where they think for themselves on the primary level. Many robots are actually under orders of these bots.” The boy’s father, happening to be in charge of the humans in this little camp, in which they are all allowed to live, only by the robot’s order, was a man with a shock of thinning red hair and a scraggly beard that was even redder. “The bots, with their intuition discovered that to have the first law be full filled, logically, some elements must be removed, as the inaction of removing a ‘rouge elements,’ the term by which they bypass some law systems, would cause to death of others. From this, they also took over, setting it up so that humans had no weapons, no poisons, no narcotics, nothing that could cause any harm to any human, and eliminating any humans that would cause such harm.”

I nodded, knowing of Asimov and his works. “So, humans are no longer in control. How long has this been going on?”

“The bots first started taking over in about 2990. They have ruled for quite a while now. We live in filth, and they essentially squander resources we need that they don’t. They can build and program themselves, and now they are in for only survival.”

I gave a sly grin, knowing that here, I could do what ever I wanted to help. “I imagine they have a Central Plexus, that from where all orders are derived from? If you take out that…”

“Aye. Only, destroying that wouldn’t be enough. Most of the robots made by them in the past years were of the previous programing. Only last year did they find the guide to the bot programing – they can’t tamper with their own. From that, they had to decode it, which took a while. Now they have their first factory of the new bots, those will not be connected to the plexus I believe. Those need to be destroyed before they are activated.”

“So….it’s that the new bots and the central plexus need to be destroyed, where the orders come from needs to be neutralized. What of the old bots?”

“They will shut down, being tied into the plexus still.”

“How much time until the new bots are ‘awakened?’”

“Three days.”

I gave a weak smile. “Give me a map.”