Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Power Switch Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

POWER SWITCH

Skinner carefully leaned over his pregnant wife’s shoulder to see the clock. 5:29.

His new boss had suggested it would be a long day. A long workday was a good workday to a man about to become a dad. And showing a new boss you were willing to put in the extra hours was infinitely better than telling him.

He kicked, gently, then shimmied a premature dadbod out from beneath the shared blanket. At the door, face lit by the streetlight slipping in between blinds, Kinsey perked up, then stood, stretching her spine in an inverted U; 5:30 was a full hour earlier than her normal feeding time.

Skinner crossed the room with shuffling steps. He pulled open the faux-wooden dresser drawer—no squeak—and grabbed fresh undies, a pair of white socks, and a green undershirt. He pushed the drawer closed—no squeak. He dropped the brass handle—clink. Skinner winced, breath held, body unmoving. Miley stirred, scratched her nose, began to snore.

Letting her sleep was a good way to start the day.

“Come on, then,” Skinner whispered once in the hall.

Kinsey paused, waiting until Skinner reached the stairs of their rented, split-level condo, then bolted. She cut left and bounded down the steps, then darted right, claws scratching over Skinner’s bare feet. He stumbled, grinning; this was not his first morning feeding.

In the living room corner, on its charge pod, was their marital android. He considered awakening it, but had read that pets showed more affection to people if they were the ones dishing out the food. Still, he’d make Kinsey wait a minute—getting up an hour early felt more like three.

There in the kitchen, he dressed, squinting against the too bright lighting. Kinsey was purring and making figure-eights between his ankles. “All right,” he said, but along the way to the food cans, paused briefly to start a coffee pod brewing. Kinsey headbutted his shins, as if to be certain he hadn’t forgotten a sacred duty.

“Turkey and peas flavour,” he said, reading the can pulled from a variety pack. “Think a turkey ever ate enough peas to weigh him down so long it was mostly digested,” Skinner bent to offer the bowl, “but a cat got to the duck first and ate the duck; then, after, the cat was talking to their cat friends and was like, you gotta try this. fucking turkey that tastes kind of like peas.”

Kinsey ate greedily as Skinner rinsed the can and lid before running it out to the blue bin slots in the hallway. By the time he returned, Miley was up and had stolen his coffee—popular medical belief stated that she was allowed one cup a day in her current state—pouring it into a porcelain mug from his travel mug. Behind her, their android was reloading the coffeemaker.

It was humanoid in shape, but they didn’t have the expendable money to purchase a nice skin, not even enough for fem or masc add-ons.  The government-issued base model featured no flesh, no human face, no irises. Thankfully, the voice was programable to mimic any voice they wanted. Miley had chosen a recently deceased actor named William Shatner, from when he was in his thirties; ‘the stuttery cadence makes everything seem less severe, I don’t know,’ she’d said when Skinner had asked her why.

Skinner shrugged now, looking at his wife where she leaned against the counter, coffee mug in hand. Some things were simple enough to do himself—he’d done them plenty of times before, when he was a kid, before 2031 saw the first household bots dispersed to homes—but Miley preferred to let Roberto—her nickname for their android—deal with just about everything.

“Morning,” Skinner said.

Roberto bent to collect Kinsey’s dish. Skinner dressed his coffee, letting the android do its thing as the cat cleaned her face a few feet from where it had fed.

“You going in early?” Miley said.

—

Skinner started the company car. The touchscreen lit. He navigated to his workflow program. 77 house calls. He’d never done more than 60 in a day, but he was new and it made sense to increase the workflow with a little experience.

“Holy.”

He reversed the order and selected the furthest locale as it was still quite early to visit folks, but before he tapped GO, he manually steered the car onto the street, down a block, and into a Tim Hortons parking lot—company cars could veer off the most efficient work path by up to two kilometres per day.

Before exiting, he chugged down what remained in his travel mug. It was a bit too sweet, then in his best Miley imitation he said, “Roberto can make it perfectly every time. Why do you do it?”

Skinner couldn’t quite explain, but doing some things with his hands had always seemed quietly important. So little of modern life had anything to do with physical contact.

He stepped into the building. Four androids, three fems and two mascs, came toward him, their equilibrium never quite matching the human norm. Skinner lifted his wrist to reveal his bank info.

“Large house blend with one whitening and one sweetening. Heat seven.”

A fem android with smooth black flesh nodded, smiling its pretty pink lips. As a teen, Skinner saved up to visit an android brothel a couple times a year. He’d once fucked an android with the same build and same skin as this service bot.

“Coming up,” the android said, voice decidedly unlike the masturbatory receptacle of that anecdotally memorable night.

In a corner, seven middle-aged men sat around a table. These were men like Skinner, men who did tasks that humans had to do…for now. Two other tables featured more men, older and younger, driven to awaken early and get started with a day…even when that meant spending hours in front of computer monitors. Skinner liked to imagine these men were the great-great grandchildren of the settlers of yore, now incapable of shaking off the generational inclination to get up to feed the livestock and tend to the land. Not that he cared to know much about the preindustrial days.

“How’s it looking today?” Skinner said, leaning on a seat back next to a man in coveralls—his name was Soon and he worked at the dump, manning a giant magnet drone that kept older, clumsy androids on their feet amid the uneven ground.

“Same as yesterday,” Soon said, grinning. “How’s the wife.”

“She kick you out of the bed yet? My old lady got big as a whale with Octavia. Spent most nights on the couch or playing games with Tonka Royale.”

“What’s Tonka again?”

Skinner listened. There was something decidedly more about groups of humans conversing amongst themselves, sans bot.

“It was a toy company. My great-great grandma had all these trucks from when her dad was a kid; I was the first boy born into the family in almost fifty years, so I got them—my people were NeoChristians, remember. Those toys were so heavy. To think…”

As the men conversed, the android from whom Skinner had ordered coffee appeared at his side with a perfect cup. “Will there be anything else?” it said.

Skinner straightened—he did not have the luxury of time to sit this morning, drink in all that authentic humanity. “See yas tomorrow, eh?” he said.

Seven heads nodded at him and the eldest of the group said, “Don’t work too hard.”

—

Skinner had had no reason to leave Vancouver in years. The furthest stop on his list was out of the city, then, to his surprise, beyond the suburbs. The company car rolled along a 1.5 lane asphalt backroad. Passing company farm after company farm before reaching places unlike anything he’d ever seen in real life.

The homes were big, but old and sloughing off paint like they had leprosy. There were barns made of softened wood, the plank walls looking like pro hockey mouths thanks to gaps blown into existence by nature; each space was about three centimetres wide. Inside a small pen of rusty wire were animals. Skinner pulled his Autonomo Lenses from his breast pocket as he rolled to a stop in front of the ancient barn.

“Record and explain the species,” he said, thinking Miley would get a kick out of the animals.

He knew the three little birds were chickens, and was pretty sure the biggest one was called a cattle, but the third was a mystery to him, his memory a faulty cornucopia of reality and virtual reality. He listened, sitting behind the steering wheel, watching the animals.

“Mule,” he said, thinking he’d never heard of a mule before.

After repocketing the glasses, he grabbed his tablet from the secondary seat. Each new government-provided android had to be made to fit one of nine pre-programmed lifestyles. It was Skinner’s job to adjust settings in a way that placated the concerns of the human citizenry. People could be finicky and unsure about androids if they’d had older, imperfect models, but they usually accepted that the new bots were in their best interests, whether they believed it or not.

“Have to hit the button to make it go,” he said as he read the worksheet—this android hadn’t been turned on yet. In the corner of the screen was a strangely blank square, a sensor marking where the android was in that grey block of unmapped world. Most times, every wall, every rise and fall in the landscape, every damned thing was clearly demarcated on company maps.

He stepped into the old barn, the early morning light flitting through the endless gaps in the walls. Next to some strange rolls of long grass was the android, still in its box. Skinner shook his head. Some people were so used to letting androids do it, they couldn’t fathom opening a box on their own.

Skinner withdrew a laser knife that would cut only the polymer straps keeping the android sealed. The protective box walls fell to the barn floor after four quick slashes. A dull android—almost identical to Roberto—stood, system in hibernation mode. Skinner brushed its viewer lenses clear, then bent to feel for the ON button located on the inner right thigh of the bot.

“Do not touch that,” said a deep, gravelly voice from behind Skinner.

He straightened and turned, company-trained smile happying his expression. “Hey, having some trouble getting it going?” he said.

“No.”

Skinner frowned.

The man was very old, wearing dated clothing—some of it maybe even cotton—in his gnarled grip, barrel stretching down by his patched pants leg, was a shotgun.

“Do you have another?” Skinner said, knowing this man was senile. What kind of weirdo still had a gun? Plus, the math was simple, his old model was just that, old, and the new one was much better. “This is a superior model. You just need to power it on.” He turned again, reaching for that button.

“Move a muscle and that’s all for you,” the man said.

Skinner blinked, then looked at the man, the view was upside down given how he stood. It wasn’t the end of the world if he didn’t fix every issue he faced, but a simple powering up would demand an explanation. He’d heard of people getting fired for things as silly.

“I think we’ve crossed lines somewhere. I’m with Autonomo, in collaboration with the Canadian—”

“Touch that fucking robot and you’ll be crossing a line all right,” the man said. The shotgun had come up, wasn’t quite pointed at Skinner, but almost.

All bombs and explosive propellants were banned from citizen use in 2029; a year that saw 10,976 deaths by violent propellent within Canada and 967,898 amid the Ununited States.

“I’m here on government business,” Skinner said, voice calm and soothing.

The man said nothing to this and kept his cold, unwavering eyes on the sleeping android.

“Why didn’t your other android power this one up?” Skinner wished he had his lenses on. He could’ve recorded this as an explanation as to why he didn’t complete this simple task; without the lenses, this had to get done. Meaning it needed his human touch.

“I don’t have any other robots here, and according to Section Nine of the Robotics Charter of Canada, I have to supply a regular charge to this government machine for as long as I live, with government—”

Skinner’s frown deepened; it was all so silly, he had to interrupt. “You’re overthinking it. You’ve never had an android, somehow, but this is good. Androids are a boon to human—”

The man raised his voice. “I have to supply a regular charge to this government machine for as long as I live, with government solar power, but only if I switch it on. If I never switch it on, it can sit here, never losing its initial charge. Better yet, you might as well take it with you.”

A crank. This man was a crank. The android in the barn was assigned to him. It was the law; every citizen received an android at age 25; at marriage, the couple was issued a newer model, one programmed specifically to care for and placate human infants. Hell, the Robotics Charter probably said nothing about turning it on or using government power to charge it. That was conspiracy bunk. And just where else was the old man supposed to get power if not from the government? He’d be doing this old fool a favour.

All he had to do was press a button.

“I can’t take it. It belongs here, with you.” Skinner reached again. “I have a model very similar to this one. I really don’t have to do anything I don’t want to anymore. Your life will be so much simpler.”

“Turn that on and I end you.”

Skinner rolled his eyes. Some people just didn’t get it. You tried to make their lives so much easier, and they just didn’t understand. And he couldn’t lose this job over a simple power switch issue—not that androids had any actual switches, just that one button that turned it on. Also, look at that old gun, it probably hadn’t been shot in 20 years, likely more. Couldn’t even get ammunition for those things these days. This kook wasn’t going to do anything, and Skinner wasn’t about to go home to his pregnant wife, jobless.

He pressed the button and rose, turning, his best company grin plastered. “There. You’ll see.”

Tears slipped down the ruddy cheeks of the grizzled farmer. Banking from his wet eyes was the orange light of the mapping system instantly taking stock, drinking in this once mysterious space.

Skinner stepped toward the old man, arms wide in supplication. “It’ll make your life so much easier.”

The man’s chin quivered, the silver of his stubble shimmering in a stream of light playing through one of the barn’s walls. “I don’t belong in this world,” he whispered, then yanked up the shotgun. He slammed both barrels into his mouth, steel clanking against bone. The tears dropped faster and faster as he growl-moaned around the barrel.

“Whoa. Whoa,” Skinner said, backing into the android where it was still running its initial citizen-boot operations. “That probably won’t go off, but you could still hurt yourself.”

The man found the trigger with his thumb.

“Don’t,” Skinner said.

“Hello, I’m Autonomo Model Four-eighteen-twenty-A. Do you have a voice preference?”

The man’s cheeks reddened as his lips whitened around the barrels, a trail of slobber cutting through the dust on the black steel. His thumb squeezed the trigger.

The blast was incredible. Everything above the man’s mandible seemed to disappear in a chunky mist of gore. At that same instance, a molten wash of blood, bone, and tissues freckled Skinner from head to toes. He didn’t move. Couldn’t move.

Not until he felt the unhuman hand on his shoulder.

“You have a busy day, doing important work,” the android said, its voice dull, sexless, somehow even less human than its touch.

Skinner finally moved, glancing first at his blood-spattered tablet, then to the android behind him. “More important than this?” he said, pleading, gesturing to the mostly headless corpse on the barn floor.

“Infinitely,” the android said, repositioning its hand to give Skinner a small shove toward the door. Robots couldn’t act by force, according to code, but they could and would be handed the throne.

XX