Robots are automated boxes of betrayal and face-melting rays. Despite this being a totally obvious scientific fact, misguided robotic engineers continue to add intelligence and weaponry to their monstrosities under the alias of “scientific advancement.” Until recently, we considered a groundbreaking robot improvement to be roller skates, or maybe a banjo. But say goodbye to your fairy tale world of not being fed into a flesh powered laser reactor, because today’s technology is fully capable of killing you, and fully capable of enjoying it. Here are some of the hot new robots for you and the soft parts of your body to be on the lookout for this fall.

Attack from the Seas: Roboshark2
You’ve probably witnessed the horrors of robots first hand. Maybe a robotized paper towel dispenser decided it wasn’t yet your time to have dry hands, or maybe you watched as a child’s body flailed in the chomping jaws of an automated department store door. Those of you who’ve read my survival book, Suck My Flesh, Metal Bastards, know that these and other robots are of little real threat, since most public places are equipped with emergency robot-killing fire hoses. However, engineers and part-time horrifying death hobbyists at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth Devon, UK, have worked out a way to make water an ally of the robots. They created Roboshark2, seven feet of underwater death. Roboshark2 has been placed in a tank with real sand tiger sharks where it will remain for three years, presumably to learn from them new and exciting ways to eat us.

Roboshark2 is equipped with sophisticated sensors and thrusters that allow it to move freely about in shark society, or say for example, through an orphanage recently flooded by evil automated sprinklers. Inventor Andrew Sneath told reporters that in case of emergency, he can override Roboshark2’s controls from the surface, to which Roboshark2 replied, “Ha. Ha. Ha.” The remaining chunks of Sneath’s body parts had no further comments.

Attack from the Sky: Flyborg
Earlier this summer, a team of scientists in South Yorkshire were moving their flying robot, Flyborg, from one building of the Magna Science Adventure Centre to another when it escaped. A freak gust of wind broke Flyborg free from its tethers and it escaped into what experts are calling... a mystery. The escapee is a 60-foot blimp filled with helium and equipped with a computerized brain that allows it to dodge obstacles and apparently outwit robot technicians. Employees of the Magna Science Adventure Centre rushed to inform airports of what they unleashed, most likely while Flyborg’s creator stood on a nearby mountaintop in front of crashing thunderclaps shouting, “Run free my creation! Let this world drink from your cup of dirigible death!”

Flyborg represents the ultimate in technological irresponsibility. I’m not a birthday party scientist, but I estimate that a balloon with a brain has about as much practical use as an underwater hair dryer. There can’t be enough uses for a thinking balloon to justify the obvious risks in giving evil, artificial minds the power of flight. No one is ever going to say, “Finally, our children will not have to live in a world without flying robots!” Not only because that’s crazy, but because I’ve written enough screenplays of Buck Rogers vs. The Transformers to know that right before you finish saying something like that, a mechanical arm comes out of the balloon above you and punches through your skull. [At press time, Flyborg has still not been found.-Ed.]

Political Espionage: Asimo
Asimo, a frighteningly functional car-selling superbot (and Honda’s creepy spokesthing) recently attended a state dinner with the prime ministers of Japan and the Czech Republic. Why? Well, no one can know for certain whether or not the two countries have cut a deal with the machines, but let’s just say that if Japan and the Czech Republic are miraculously spared in the first round of robopocalyptic deracination, I’m going to fight my way to the top of the slave pit to tell the world I told it so.

We’ve reported on this robot before, and, oh holy crap is it from the future. It can recognize voices, speak multiple languages, walk up stairs, track and pursue human targets, and can only be defeated by the love of one who is pure of heart. While at the state dinner, the damn dirty machine greeted the attendees in their native Czech, “I have arrived in the Czech Republic, where the word robot was born, together with Prime Minister Koizumi as a Japanese envoy of goodwill.”

By the way, the thing was right. The word “robot” was originated by a Czech playwright in 1921 from the Czech word “robota,” meaning drudgery. “Shut up,” you might say, but this speech showed a glimmer of sentimentality in the creature... something we may be able to use against it. Anyway, after it was finished with its greeting, Asimo opened fire on all personnel below level 28 security clearance and laid out its plans to liquefy panda babies for sport.

Cultural Infiltration: The touching artwork of MEART
What happens when you combine the warmth of a robotic arm with the giving thoughtfulness of a rat? You get the hybrot MEART (M.ulti-E.lectrode A.rray ART). A hybrot is a robotics system working alongside biological material, much like the Six Million Dollar Man, only less rad, and it wants to digest you. There’s no way to break MEART to you gently, so I’m just going to say it: it’s a robotic arm in Australia being controlled by a culture of rat brain cells in a petri dish here in the US. In an effort to let this sick team of vermin brain and filthy robot to express itself through art, they gave it different colored markers and let it scribble. In the future, when we’re living in caves with other pockets of survivors, it may hit us how strange it was that people intelligent enough to get a chunk of brain on a plate to take up painting didn’t see a problem in mixing superhuman strength with the thought processes of an animal that instinctively swarms for its victim’s eyes and genitals.

Death by Fashion: HAL-3
In Japan, they’re nearing the commercial release of a robot suit designed to help the physically disabled and the elderly walk. It’s called HAL-3 (Hybrid Assistive Leg), which irony fans might recognize as the name of another famous evil computer. The HAL-3 consists of four actuators attached to its victim’s hips and knee joints powered by a backpack and controlled by a small mounted computer, all of which weigh about 37 pounds. The wearer will be able to move at 2.5 miles per hour while they slowly come to the realization that they are completely surrounded by robot. The user then watches helplessly from the core of HAL’s spinning blades as their own limbs dismember their family and friends. The suits are estimated to cost an affordable $8,500!

Robots, in moderation, can enhance pizza parties and comic mischief. A sidekick bot’s cute chirping can add a light-heartedness to an otherwise dangerous situation in space, and their clumsy naivety may eventually teach us all a thing or two about what it means to be human. But these few positives do not make up for the massive fireball blasting negatives. You might think it’s great to have a little robot buddy scribble you a picture, fly a balloon or swim with sharks for science, but don’t expect a thank you card from the man in the center of the crater that was once his non-robot-destroyed house. If we want to avoid being mechanically separated for worker bot fuel, we need to start acting. Next time a talking toy learns up to 20 voice-activated commands, do the right thing and destroy that adorable little prick. Next time a urinal detects the end of your fluid evacuation with it’s motion-sensing eye, blindfold it and bury it in the desert. Next time your neighbor cuts their grass with an automated lawnmower, you... actually, with that you might want to run. The point is, we have a responsibility to future generations to not replace ourselves with killdroids, and if that means Japan has to go without jogging suits made entirely out of robot, so be it.