Fucking Toaster

Spring in the city was not a season of renewal. It was a hostile biological event. The air hung thick with a humid, yellowish haze of pollen that coated every flat surface in a fine, sticky grit. The trees, shoved into concrete squares along the walkways, seemed to leak sap purely out of spite. The sky was the color of a dirty Tupperware container, flat and glaring.

Mae sat on a park bench that had been painted green so many times the layers were peeling off like sunburned skin. The wood beneath was rotting, damp from the morning’s mandatory atmospheric scrub, and it transferred a distinct, cold moisture through the seat of her jeans. She didn't care. The physical discomfort was secondary to the digital static vibrating in her hands.

Her neural-link pad, a slab of cracked glass and brushed aluminum that she was currently paying off at twenty-two percent interest, burned hot against her palms. The battery was at fourteen percent. It was always at fourteen percent. She was locked in the scroll, her thumb flicking upward in a repetitive, thoughtless rhythm that had long ago worn away the oleophobic coating on the screen.

Swipe. A fifteen-second video of an influencer crying about a missed brand deal in a minimalist kitchen.

Swipe. A news headline about a localized water shortage three states over.

Swipe. An ad for a dietary supplement that promised to cure the specific kind of exhaustion caused by looking at screens all day, sold by a man who looked entirely generated by an algorithm.

Swipe. A meme about the localized water shortage.

Mae’s neck throbbed. A sharp, localized pain radiated from the base of her skull down to her left shoulder blade—the somatic tax of existing at a permanent forty-five-degree angle. She adjusted her posture, rolling her shoulders, but her eyes never left the screen. The glare of the flat sun caught the web of spiderweb fractures in the top left corner of the glass, distorting a video of a raccoon eating a grape into a kaleidoscope of meaningless pixels.

She was tired. Not the kind of tired that sleep fixed. It was a bone-deep, cellular fatigue, a weariness born from processing too many micro-tragedies and synthetic joys before breakfast. Life was just a series of transactions now—attention for dopamine, money for convenience, privacy for a slightly better map application. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her free hand, smearing her mascara, and dug her heavy combat boot into the dirt path.

Across the park, fifty yards away and separated by a sparse patch of aggressive weeds pretending to be a lawn, Simon was experiencing his own specialized form of hell.

He was holding a rigid, carbon-fiber leash. At the end of the leash was Buster.

Buster was a Canine Companion Unit, Model 4. He was roughly the size of a Golden Retriever, though his chassis was encased in a matted layer of gray synthetic fur that smelled faintly of ozone and damp basement. Simon had bought him six months ago during a particularly brutal depressive episode, convinced by a targeted ad that a low-maintenance, AI-driven pet would provide the "rhythmic routine" necessary for a healthy psychological baseline.

It was a lie. Buster didn't provide routine; he provided a second, highly annoying job.

Simon tugged the leash. The handle was slick with his own sweat. "Come on, man. Just process the environment and let’s go."

Buster’s internal servos whined. The bot was standing perfectly still, its optical sensors—two matte black lenses hidden beneath the faux fur—fixed on a discarded fast-food wrapper blowing across the grass. Buster’s processor was currently engaged in a massive, internal debate about whether the wrapper was a threat, a plaything, or a glitch in the simulation.

Simon checked his phone. The companion app was lagging. A little red icon in the corner informed him that Buster’s behavioral firmware was out of date. Simon knew this. He had tried to update it last night, but the file was three hundred gigabytes and his apartment’s Wi-Fi had throttled his bandwidth because he forgot to pay the premium tier upgrade.

"Buster. Walk mode. Initialize," Simon said, his voice flat, devoid of the affectionate inflection the manual suggested.

The bot’s head snapped up. The servos in its neck clicked loudly. It ignored Simon completely. Instead, the optical sensors bypassed the wrapper and locked onto something fifty yards away.

Simon followed the bot's gaze. It was looking at a girl on a bench. Specifically, it was looking at the metal buckle on the side of her heavy black combat boot, which was currently catching the dull sunlight in a steady, rhythmic flash as she absentmindedly tapped her foot.

Inside Buster’s outdated neural network, a cascade of terrible decisions occurred in milliseconds. The object recognition software failed to identify the boot. The kinetic tracking software logged the rhythmic tapping. A corrupted line of code in the "socialization" module—the very reason the firmware update was mandatory—categorized the flashing metal not as an inanimate object, but as a high-value interactive surface requiring immediate, physical dominance bonding.

"No. Hey. Buster, halt," Simon said, feeling a sudden, cold spike of adrenaline.

Buster dropped his center of gravity. The synthetic fur bristled as the cooling fans inside his chassis kicked into overdrive.

"Halt! Admin override!"

It was too late. Buster launched forward.

The sheer torque of the machine ripped the carbon-fiber leash handle violently out of Simon’s grip. The friction burned the skin off his index finger. "Shit!"

Mae was just about to like a post about unionizing gig-economy delivery drones when the world exploded in gray fur and grinding metal.

She didn't hear him coming over the sound of the traffic and her own noise-canceling earbuds. The first warning was a massive, blunt-force impact against her left shin. The air was knocked out of her lungs as sixty pounds of heavy machinery slammed into her leg, nearly tipping her off the peeling bench.

"What the—"

Before she could process the hit, two thick, metal forelegs encased in matted synthetic fur wrapped around her calf like a vice. The clamps locked with an audible, terrifying clack.

Then, the rhythm started.

It was relentless. A heavy, mechanical thrusting, driven by industrial-grade servos designed to climb stairs, now entirely focused on her lower leg. Thud. Thud. Thud. The metal chassis ground against her shin bone through her jeans, bruising the muscle instantly.

Mae dropped her pad. It hit the dirt face-down. She stared down at the gray monstrosity attached to her leg, her brain entirely failing to parse the image. It looked like a dog, but it felt like a washing machine on the spin cycle.

"Hey!" Mae shouted, her voice cracking with sheer panic. "Hey, stop! Get off!"

She kicked out with her right foot, aiming for the bot's side. Her boot connected with solid casing. It felt like kicking a fire hydrant. The bot didn't even register the impact. Its cooling fans whirred louder, blowing hot, ozone-scented air directly into her face. The humping increased in velocity. Thud-thud-thud-thud.

"Get your fucking toaster off me!" Mae screamed to the general public, her hands grappling with the synthetic fur, trying to find a weak point. The fur was coarse, static-charged, and deeply unpleasant to touch.

Simon sprinted across the grass, his chest heaving, his faded black hoodie flapping behind him. His face was entirely pale, drained of blood by sheer, unadulterated mortification.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" Simon yelled, sliding onto the dirt path beside the bench, tearing up the grass with his sneakers. He grabbed Buster by the scruff of the neck—or where the scruff would be—finding the solid metal handle hidden beneath the pelt.

He yanked backwards. Hard.

Buster’s clamps were rated to hold two hundred pounds of pressure. They did not budge. The bot whined, a high-pitched digital squeal, and kept thrusting. Mae was dragged an inch forward off the bench, her back screaming in protest as she grabbed the wooden slats to anchor herself.

"Make it stop!" Mae yelled, her voice dropping the register of panic and entering the realm of pure, visceral rage. She looked at Simon, really looked at him. He looked like every guy she avoided at coffee shops—tired eyes, unkempt hair, a jawline tight with unexpressed anxiety. Right now, he looked like the enemy. "What is wrong with it?"

"It’s a glitch!" Simon yelled back, panic making him breathless. He let go of the handle and pulled his phone out of his pocket with trembling, scraped hands. He jammed his thumb against the screen, opening the companion app.

The loading screen appeared. A cheerful little geometric bone spun in circles.

"You're looking at your phone?!" Mae shrieked, her hands now trying to pry the metal forelegs apart. She caught a fingernail on a seam in the casing and tore it backward. A sharp sting of pain shot up her finger. She cursed violently, kicking at the bot's face again.

"I'm trying to send the kill switch command!" Simon shouted, frantically tapping the screen. "The app is lagging. The cell towers in this park are garbage!"

"I don't care about the cell towers! Physically remove this appliance from my body!"

Simon shoved his phone back into his pocket. He dropped to his knees in the dirt, entirely abandoning whatever shred of dignity he had left. He straddled Buster from behind, wrapping his arms around the bot's midsection, and planted his feet against the base of the park bench.

"Hold still," Simon grunted, his face inches from Mae's knee.

"I am holding still! Your machine is the one violating my leg!"

Simon pulled with everything he had. The muscles in his back strained. The bot's internal gyroscope recognized the hostile force and compensated, digging its clamps tighter into Mae’s calf.

Mae gasped in actual pain. "Ow! Stop pulling, it's crushing my leg!"

Simon immediately let go, collapsing forward slightly, his chest heaving against the back of the robotic dog. He smelled like cheap deodorant and stress sweat. Mae smelled like stale coffee and floral perfume trying to mask the scent of nicotine. They were suddenly entirely too close to one another, united by the absurd, rhythmic grinding of a sixty-pound metal idiot.

"Okay. Okay," Simon panted, staring wildly at the chassis. "Voice command. Buster. Factory reset. Authorization code: Alpha-Niner-Seven-Delta."

Buster paused. The thrusting stopped. The internal fans quieted.

Mae let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She looked at Simon, her heart hammering against her ribs, the adrenaline making her hands shake.

Then, Buster’s optical lenses flashed bright blue. A cheerful, synthesized voice—modeled after a mid-century television mother—emanated from a speaker under its collar.

"I'm sorry, Simon. You do not have the premium subscription required for voice-activated factory resets. Would you like to upgrade for only twenty-nine ninety-nine a month?"

The humping resumed with renewed vigor.

"Are you kidding me?" Mae stared at the bot in absolute disbelief. "You didn't buy the premium tier?"

"It's thirty bucks a month!" Simon defended himself, his voice cracking. "I already paid four grand for the hardware! I didn't think I'd need to pay a subscription to stop it from sexually assaulting pedestrians!"

"Well, clearly you do!"

Simon wiped a streak of sweat and dirt off his forehead with the back of his hand, smearing grime across his pale skin. "There's a manual override. A hard reset button. I just have to find it."

"Find it faster."

Simon leaned over the bot again. His face was now dangerously close to Mae’s thigh. She instinctively recoiled, pushing herself further back onto the damp bench.

"It's under the tail," Simon muttered, entirely defeated by his own life choices.

"Under the what?"

"Under the tail. There's a flap. I need to... I need to stick something in it. To trigger the reboot."

Mae stared at him. The sheer absurdity of the moment crystallized in her mind. The sky was gray, her pad was face-down in the mud, her shin was deeply bruised, and a stranger was about to violate his own robotic dog to save her life.

"Do what you have to do," Mae said, her voice entirely deadpan. "Just don't make eye contact with me while you do it."

Simon reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out his keys. He singled out a long, thin house key. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, lifted the synthetic gray tail, and jammed the key into the small, hidden reset port.

There was a sharp click.

Instantly, Buster went entirely limp. The red lights on his sensors died. The mechanical tension in his forelegs vanished, releasing Mae’s calf. The sixty-pound machine dropped like a stone, hitting the dirt with a heavy, unceremonious thud, lifeless.

Mae immediately pulled her leg back, bringing her knees to her chest. She rubbed her calf vigorously through her jeans. It throbbed with a dull, heavy ache.

Simon stayed on his knees in the dirt, staring at the dead machine. He let out a long, ragged exhale. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the distant hum of traffic and the rustle of the dirty wind through the trees.

Mae slowly reached down and picked up her pad. She wiped the mud off the screen with her sleeve. The spiderweb crack in the corner had splintered further, running a jagged line straight through the center of the glass. She stared at it for a long second, then let her arm drop to her side.

She looked at Simon. He was still kneeling in the dirt, breathing hard.

"You have a restart button under its ass?" Mae asked, her voice raspy.

Simon didn't look up. He kept his eyes fixed on Buster’s lifeless casing. "It’s the emergency override. It’s supposed to be secure. The manual said it prevents accidental reboots during rough play."

"Secure from what? Dignity?"

Simon let out a sharp, humorless laugh. He sat back on his heels, finally looking up at her. His eyes were dark, ringed with exhaustion. "Yeah. I guess."

He slowly stood up, brushing the dirt off his knees. His jeans were stained green and brown. He looked down at Mae’s leg.

"Are you okay? I mean, seriously. Did it break the skin?"

Mae pushed her pant leg up slightly. A massive, angry red welt was already forming across her shin bone. It was going to be a spectacular bruise by tomorrow. She pulled the denim back down, hiding it.

"I’ll live. It just feels like I got kicked by a very persistent vending machine."

Simon winced. "I am really, truly sorry. It’s the firmware. I postponed the update. It’s my fault."

"Why do you even have that thing?" Mae gestured to the dead bot with her cracked pad. "It looks like a nightmare. It acts like a nightmare. And apparently, it demands monthly ransom money."

Simon shoved his hands into his hoodie pockets, hunching his shoulders against the wind. "I don't know. I read an article that said interacting with a pet lowers cortisol levels. Real dogs aren't allowed in my building. The algorithm suggested Buster. I was... tired. I just clicked buy."

Mae paused. The anger that had been boiling in her blood slowly simmered down into a familiar, shared exhaustion. She understood that completely. The late-night purchase fueled by the desperate hope that a product could fix a psychological void. She had a drawer full of useless, expensive garbage bought at 3 AM to prove it.

"Cortisol levels," Mae repeated dryly. "How's that working out for you?"

Simon looked at the scrape on his finger, then at the mud on his jeans, then at the heavy bruise forming on Mae's leg.

"My heart rate is currently at one hundred and forty beats per minute, and I want to walk into the ocean," Simon said flatly.

Mae let out a short, genuine laugh. It surprised her. It felt rusty, scraping the back of her throat. "Yeah. That tracks. Modern solutions."

"Everything is garbage," Simon said, looking around the park. He gestured vaguely at the peeling bench, the smoggy sky, the dead robot. "We're just leasing garbage from billionaires until we die."

"Don't forget the subscription fees," Mae added, tapping her cracked screen. "They charge you extra to stop the garbage from humping you."

Simon smiled. It was a small, tired smile, but it changed his face entirely. For a brief second, the exhaustion lifted, and he looked almost human. Not a data point, not a stressed consumer, just a guy standing in the dirt.

Mae felt a strange, sudden spike of clarity. The cognitive static in her brain—the endless loop of doomscrolling and anxiety—had paused. The sheer, violent absurdity of the last five minutes had shocked her system back into the physical world. She felt the cold wind on her face. She felt the ache in her leg. She felt entirely present.

She looked at Simon. He was looking back at her.

There was a beat of silence. It was the kind of silence that, in a different world, in a different movie, would be filled with the awkward exchange of names and phone numbers. A joke about grabbing a coffee to make up for the assault. A tentative step toward a connection.

But they weren't in a movie. They were in a dirty park in 2026, and they were both so incredibly tired.

Mae thought about the effort of typing her number into his phone. She thought about the obligatory text message later. The anxiety of waiting for a reply. The eventual, inevitable disappointment when they realized they were both too burned out to maintain a conversation, let alone a relationship.

Simon seemed to be doing the exact same math in his head. His eyes flicked to her pad, then down to Buster, then back to her. The momentary spark of connection faded, smothered by the overwhelming logistical weight of modern existence.

At their feet, Buster emitted a sharp, electronic chime. The blue lights on his sensors flickered back to life.

"Reboot successful," the cheerful, mid-century mother voice announced. "Firmware update required. Would you like to connect to a neural-bridge?"

Simon sighed, deeply and profoundly. He bent down and picked up the heavy carbon-fiber leash handle from the dirt.

"No, Buster. Walk mode. Initialize," Simon said, his voice returning to its flat, defeated baseline.

The bot stood up. It shook itself, the synthetic fur rustling loudly. It completely ignored Mae, its optical sensors now locked onto a pigeon pecking at a cigarette butt on the path.

Simon looked at Mae one last time. "Good luck with... everything."

"Yeah," Mae said, shifting her weight on the bench, wincing slightly as the bruised muscle in her shin pulled. "Good luck with the toaster."

Simon gave a half-nod, turned, and started walking down the path. Buster trotted obediently beside him, though his gait was slightly off, favoring the front left servo.

Mae watched them go. The bot's gray chassis blended into the gray concrete of the walkway, and Simon's dark hoodie faded into the crowd of other tired people moving through the hazy spring morning.

She sat there for a long time, listening to the traffic. The damp cold of the bench seeped through her jeans. Her leg throbbed in a steady, rhythmic pulse.

Slowly, she lifted her pad. The battery icon flashed red. Thirteen percent. She unlocked the screen, ignoring the massive crack down the center.

She watched the gray synthetic tail disappear into the crowd, rubbed the dull ache in her shin, and opened her screen to a fresh, infinite scroll.