Reprogrammed

Well that put the wind behind them. With nearly half of them being taken out in less than five seconds, the rest of them decided their wallets and boners weren't worth their lives so they hightailed it away from there. Brigitte was grateful and lowered her gun. She looked at the carnage in silence, only the wind and the distant braying of her distressed farm animals breaking the deathly still.

"Robert, stop!" Brigitte said. "I'll have to call the police, and if they see you attacked fleeing humans, they'll wipe your programming!"

"Do you not remember?" Brigitte asked, running her hands through her hair as she looked around. "Because, um... I-I did most of it. So don't worry about it." Would a robot feel guilt for killing? Whether or not he did, Brigitte wanted to protect him from it for some reason. "Robert, can you, um... Can you fix the generator there? It just needs a little juice." She pointed to the drained shield generator by the side of the gate. "I have to phone the police about this."

While it did that, Brigitte called the police. They considered her a VIP so they were there pretty quickly, in the meantime Robert had fixed the generator so she sent him out to try to fix the advanced outer shield. By the time that was done, Brigitte had done speaking to the police and they were setting about cleaning up the cornfield. There was no need to do a crime scene analysis here, no one cared how cartel were killed. "Merci beaucoup," Brigitte was saying when Robert returned. "If you don't mind officer, I have to tend to my animals and I'm pretty tired. May I?" She was allowed to leave, and she gestured for Robert to follow her. "Let's get the animals back to bed."

It took quite a long time to wrangle the animals back into the barn because they were all scared and cranky, but with Ferrari and Moses' help they eventually got everyone settled once more. The police were still working on things, but they said they'd be done by the morning. They'd be in contact with Brigitte in the coming days for an official statement, from both her and her new robot, but for now she could go to bed. "Ugh, what a nightmare!" Brigitte bemoaned as she collapsed onto her bed at long last. "Ow." With the adrenaline finally dulled down, she finally realised that a bullet had nicked her arm and she was bleeding a little. "Oh, crud, this t-shirt was my father's," she whined, looking at the blood on the sleeve.

"You silly sausage," Brigitte said, patting Robert's head. "You protected me perfectly! Or, 99% perfectly, which is 99% more than I protected you." She nudged his shoulder, where there was one of many bullet scuffs all over his metal body. "If it weren't for you, I'd be full of actual bullet holes. This is just a glancing blow. If it weren't for you, those cartel would've gotten in here and... Well, we don't need to think about that." Brigitte would be having nightmares about what might've been for months to come. "You saved me, Robert. You are my hero." Her head pats turned to head rubs.

"I am in a safe state, thanks to you," Brigitte murmured, wincing as Robert tightened the bandage around her arm. "Thank you, sweetie. You did wonderfully today. Tomorrow I'm gonna clean you up, okay? And make sure the farm is clean, and test the shields, and clean the orchard, and the barn, and harvest the honey, and..." Her voice trailed off as she collapsed back onto her pillow, sound asleep.

Brigitte slept for the few hours until about 5am, when she woke unpleasantly. Robert would learn about dreams, and nightmares, pretty soon. Brigitte wiped sweat from her forehead as she sat up and stretched. "Jesus... Oh, good morning Robert," she said, noticing that the robot was standing over the end of her bed. "Have you been awake- um, active all night?"

"Yeah, I was having nightmares," Brigitte said openly. "Nightmares are bad dreams. Um, dreams are images and sensations your brain makes you experience while you sleep. No one knows why we have them, though people say dreams turn to nightmares when people go through bad things. Hmph." She rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck. "Well, I'm up now. May as well get up." She awkwardly got out of bed and went to her desktop to check if her video had done okay. "Huh, wouldja look at that?" She pointed to some writing on the screen. "The people seem to like you."

"You were in the video," Brigitte pointed out. "Lots of families watch my videos. All the kiddies are saying 'your robot is like my robot' and stuff. They like relating to me, I guess. I think this can be a learning experience for them. A lot of people aren't very nice to their robotics, so maybe I can teach some of the next generation to be... Ah, I'm getting ahead of myself. C'mon, let's go get some breakfast!" She tugged on some thick socks, grabbed Robert's hand, and led him to the kitchen. "Oh, and that thing about help me experience nice events? I'd like that."

"Oh, yeah, good idea!" Brigitte said, thinking of more dumb ideas for videos as she padded into the kitchen with Robert clunking behind her. "I'll teach you how to cook, that'll be fun for everyone. Gooooood morning Moses," she said warmly as her dog came to greet her with big kisses and happy yelps at the kitchen door. The other, smaller Moses waddled over and licked Brigitte's knees. "Good morning Amos," cooed Brigitte. "Oh, Robert, this is Amos. She's Moses' mate. Amos, say hi to Robert." Amos yawned and waddled over to Robert, and licked his metal knees too. "Sorry. She's a little strange."

Amos enjoyed the robotic head scratches and she licked Robert's hand in response, though Moses didn't seem too pleased as he growled. "I didn't think you would," Brigitte said, tugging things out of the cupboard. "Don't worry, I'm gonna teach you everything, I promise." Brigitte got out some food and taught him what each of them were: bread, homemade she said, which she cut two slices of; eggs, they came from the chickens somehow, which she was going to make into an 'omelette'; butter and cheese, of the 'vegan variety'; onions and mushrooms; and a selection of fruits which she was going to make into a 'salad'. She put the toast in the 'grill', and got out a 'frying pan'. "Okay, so melt the butter in here until it's bubbling," she started, putting a small chunk of butter into the frying pan. "Go on, take the handle and swirl it around."