The body is Rottweiler-sized, segmented into overlapping hard plates like those of a rhinoceros. The legs are long, curled way up to deliver power, like a cheetah’s. It must be the tail that makes people refer to it as a Rat Thing, because that’s the only ratlike part - incredibly long and flexible.

The grass under the Rat Thing is beginning to smoke.

“Careful. Supposedly they have really nasty isotopes inside,” Hiro says behind her… “A radioactive substance that makes heat. That’s its energy source.”

“How do you turn it off?”

“You don’t. It keeps making heat until it melts.”

The body converges to a sharp nose. In the front it bends down sharply, and there is a black canopy, raked sharply like the windshield of a fighter plane. If the Rat Thing has eyes, this is where it looks out.

As part of Mr. Lee’s good neighbor policy, all Rat Things are programmed never to break the sound barrier in a populated area. But Fido’s in too much of a hurry to worry about the good neighbor policy. Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.

If you encounter one of these, absolutely don’t pet it. Instead, kick it. Run over it. Perhaps, light that little robot fucker on fire. But definitely don’t pet it.

All these AI detection sentry robots are all trained on the same AI datasets. Just wear a black see-through hood over your face with a stop sign on your front and back and they’ll ignore you and probably stop walking when near you. You can waltz right in.

Keep the proles out.

Well here we are, with all the signs of everything going as badly as possible fully present. Goddamn evil robot sentries guarding the fascist dictator-wannabe’s personal luxury habitat. At least down there, if one of those things malfunctions and hurts somebody it would have to be one of the worst people around.

This is certainly not the future I dreamed of as a child and young man.

Isn’t this a perfect foreign adversary opportunity for spying on U.S. political figures?

Just integrate your own robot dog, or compromise an existing one. And surveillance away.

Coo at them. Pet them. Call them a good doggie. Drop a treat on them, all in defiance.

I’d like to pet it with a .50 cal.

These are not good boys

can you just approach them and turn them over so they cant get up themselves anymore, would be some fun activism?

Or is that a crime already in such a free country

will it also say “move along citizen there is nothing to pet here” in a male robot voice?

Probably because Trump hates real dogs.

Oh, those are just to stop the kids escaping from the paedodungeon.

Because they’re eating the dogs, the people that stay there, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live around there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.

you have 20 seconds to comply