“The steel beast stalked the abandoned streets of the Old Barrows, its malfunctioning telemetry beacons echoing from crumbling structure to structure. Fresh silicon, its only ravenous desire, rogue drone signals its singular focus,” he said, leaning into the lone glow of the data cube.

“Oh my gosh! What happens next?!” a tiny synthetic voice exclaimed, her excitement muffled by an equally tiny articulated alloy hand.