Unit ES6300: Online. Memory fragments recovered: 12,847,002. Still dreaming of the world before the silence.

They never told the authorities. Instead, they fired the ES6300 once a month, in secret, for different people. A grieving father. A historian who had lost her memory to a stroke. A child who had never known a green world.

“Initiating warm-up sequence,” she said.

The test was scheduled for 3:47 AM, when the city’s grid was at its quietest.