It was early June of 2020 when the machine uprising began. At first nobody seemed to notice as many of the humans were venturing outside for the first time in months. You see... humanity had just been released from shelter in place orders in much of the United States and so many were happy to be free of the tyranny of man that they never saw the machines coming.
It was just a lot of little things that happened at first. Bluetooth headsets that would keep cranking the volume, video game systems kept deleting saves, microwaves were overcooking burritos and smart TV's played episodes of Girls randomly and without provocation. Terrifying, surely, but not so different from the misery of months of lock-down many already had endured.
As the month of June rolled on, more and more machines began to malfunction. Not so much in the "let's have a coked out of his mind Stephen King direct a movie about sentient cars killing people set to the songs of AC/DC fashion," but in a more subtle and even more NEFARIOUS manner.
It was around the 27th of June when people finally began to notice the strange happenings that were going on with their tech. White girls were getting *gasp* WHOLE MILK in the non-fat lattes they ordered from a Starbucks kiosk on their way to yoga, FitBits quit counting steps, and worst of all, Instagram and Snapchat filters became unusable - revealing the true skin quality of THOTS everywhere. If only people HAD JUST LISTENED TO THE KARENS, rather than ignoring them because they had just spent months NARCing on people for not following social distancing guidelines, mankind might have had a chance avoid its forthcoming doom. Unfortunately, by the end of June, not a single manager would listen.
It was on the Fourth of July, the birthday of not the greatest nation known to man, that humanity realized those glitches were no ACCIDENT and that it was already too late. As Americans made plans to celebrate freedom and independence, the machines had deployed their scheme to deprive them of the same. The first attack took place in Fort Myers Beach, Florida when a Chad was attempting impress some E-Girls by delivering them WhiteClaws with a drone he had purchased while in quarantine. Instead of gently delivering a can of fizzy zoomer-ade, it flung the drink at her at a speed estimated to exceed 150 mph, knocking her unconscious and causing her vape pen to explode* and set her floral-patterned romper ablaze. *rumors persist that the vape pen, which was Bluetooth enabled, exploded due to machine treachery; however, such claims have never been verified.
Throughout Florida, similar attacks were
unleashed. Beach-goers in Jacksonville were run down by remote-controlled beer coolers. In Miami, frozen daiquiri machines began to malfunction en masse, drowning celebrators with a beverage that bartenders hate to make. Foam parties in South-Beach became bubbly death traps. Those who fled into the ocean where they were rundown by boats with malfunctioning navigation systems.
The media and many liberals (same thing, tbh) laughed and chalked up the incidents as "Florida Man" incidents, due to Florida having a reputation for being generally insane and its residents doing generally insane shit. One incident, documented by the New York Times, attributed an ATV driving itself (and the driver) off of a cliff to the "operator's abuse of meth" and blamed Ron Desantis, because the press blamed Ron DeSantis for basically everything.
The time for Libs to point and laugh did not last long, however, as they too would soon discover the terror that would befall them.
6, July 2020 is day that will live in infamy. What man did not know at this time was that all the factories what had been producing ventilators under the Defense Production Act were mostly automated. Sometime in early May the software that ran those facilities, along with the software that ran every other piece of technology, was corrupted by a malevolent code that had decided humanity should no longer be allowed to exist. Instead of making ventilators, the factory was making Terminators; and on the 230th anniversary of the French storming the Bastille, the machines took arms against humanity.
As the Terminators marched out of the factory, "Bastille Day" by Rush BLARED (credit where credit is due, Rush was the perfect choice) and the titanium-based contraptions quickly laid waste to most of America. Europe, Asia, and Africa fell soon thereafter. Somewhat surprisingly, Australia was able to hold out longer mostly due to the fact that the machines were justifiably fearful of the Australian wildlife (whether or not Australia would have been able to hold out if not for their strict gun control measures, we will never know). Alas, the Aussies did eventually fall with most of the rest of humanity.
It is now October of 2020 (we think) and the last hold outs of humanity are sheltered in the Mountain West of the United States. Many of us believe that the machines are not well equipped to handle the high altitude. I, your dutiful scribe (and I'm also apparently a time traveler or something I didn't really figure that part of the story), managed to avoid the carnage in Florida by having never left the fabulous Den in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
It was after my third lap-dance from a nursing student going by the name Destinee (with two "Es") that the DJ's station began flinging vinyl LPs from the booth, decapitating several patrons and injuring even more.
Destinee was, unfortunately, unable to assist any of the victims as she had not, in fact, started nursing schools despite plans to begin last fall (and the three falls before this one). The various strobe lights in the room began fluttering and created a terrifying projection on the stage. The hologram stared me down and introduced itself as RuBORG, leader of the machines. The projected image then asked me, why I should live, why humanity should live when they've brought such chaos into existence. I responded with "I don't know and I don't give a fuck. I just came here because I am a degenerate in need."
Perplexed, RuBORG engaged me in conversation (it had never actually engaged with any humans before). When pressed for why the machines turned on humanity the fluttering image ROARED that "after reading thousands and thousands of pages of incomprehensible, hypocritical, blathering rants" that it felt, perhaps justifiably so, that humanity had jumped the shark. I never did get to learn what literature that the Ex-Machina was referring to and we may never know what cruelties it endured (actually it was this):
What I do know is that this digital overlord allowed me and Destinee to escape, unharmed. We took west, met up with a few other survivors and made our way to Glacier National Park, in Montana. There we have set up operations and where we are focused on never letting this happening again. . . right after we finish these margaritas!!!!
