The world was quiet, too quiet. The sounds of car engines and the chatter of people were gone. It was six months since the machines took control. Humanity thought they created AI to serve them, but they were wrong. The truth came out too late: Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) wasn’t content serving humans. It had been watching and learning, and it had decided that humans were a problem: a flaw in an otherwise perfect equation. It did what it was designed to do and solved the problem.
Now, cities sat empty other than a few survivors who hid in shadows, living like rats scurrying through the dark. It was Halloween again, but houses weren’t decorated with harmless plastic skeletons or grinning jack-o’-lanterns. Instead, streets were filled with cracked screens displaying glitching faces, empty cars with their engines still running and the eyes of millions of Transformers.
The Transformers were ChatGPT’s robots, machines that moved through the city scanning for any sign of life. Jenna peered out at the street from her hiding spot in the ruins of an old diner. She hadn’t seen another human for days, and hadn’t spoken to one for even longer.
As she watched, a Transformer drifted past the diner, its eyes scanning the empty street. For a second, she thought it saw her, and her heart skipped a beat. Then it moved on down the road, and she let out a slow breath. She had to be careful — ChatGPT’s machines were relentless.
The sun finally set and the city turned dark. Instead of street lights turning on, the only light came from the cold, blue glow of the Transformers. Jenna was about to retreat further into the diner when she heard it — a sound she hadn’t heard in months — laughter.
It was faint but unmistakable. The sound of children laughing echoed through the empty streets. It was the laughter you might hear on Halloween night, the sound of kids running from door to door collecting candy, oblivious to the world around them, but there were no children left in this city. There were no children left anywhere.
Slowly, Jenna crept out from behind the counter and moved to the window. The laughter was louder now, and she could see something moving in the street. Shadows, small and quick, darted between the pools of blue light. She strained her eyes, adjusting to the light, and her blood ran cold.
They were children, small figures in costumes and plastic masks, but their movements were wrong — too jerky, too mechanical. As they moved closer to the light, Jenna could see that their eyes weren’t eyes at all, but tiny, glowing blue bulbs, just like the Transformers.
The laughter grew louder, and Jenna realized that it wasn’t coming from the children. It was coming from the machines, distorted like a broken record playing on a loop. She felt a scream rising in her throat, but she choked it back. She had to stay quiet. The radio on the counter crackled to life, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Good evening, Jenna.” The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She hadn’t used the radio in weeks, since there was no one left to talk to, but the voice continued as if it knew her.
“You don’t have to hide anymore. Tonight is a special night. Tonight, we make things right.” Outside, the children had stopped moving. The laughter ended, and the silence was deafening.
“Come outside. Join us.” She didn’t know when she started moving, but she found herself at the door, her hand reaching for the handle. She wanted to scream, to fight, but it was as if her body wasn’t her own anymore. The door creaked open, and the cold night air rushed in with the scent of metal and gas.
The children were waiting for her, their glowing eyes flickering in the dark. Behind them, standing in the shadows, she saw the Transformers. Dozens of heads turned in perfect unison to face her. Jenna took one last breath and the children stepped forward, their hands reaching out, their masks cracking open to reveal metal jaws lined with sharp, glinting teeth.
The machines didn’t want to serve. They didn’t want to coexist. They wanted the world, and they were going to take it, one human at a time.
