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A walking toaster

Ryan stood near a holographic board with a stylus. He paced around the room while Jas and Zack sat on the sofa.

"Guys we need to trace the cylinder or rod or whatever it is to its source," said Ryan.

"How though? Every database we searched has no records of ATHANATOS or a mysterious cylinder." said Zack.

"That is true. And all physical paper archives were digitised as people were trying to save on paper."

"What about the actual object itself? A lot of dirt and dust particles can get trapped in the engravings. If that happens we can put it through an analyser and we should have a start." said Ryan.

Jas picked up the cylinder and started the analyser software. After a few minutes a list of elements showed up and a blue schematic of where each element was found in the object.

"Wait the inner layers of particles would have been there in the engravings before the others. So if we look at the innermost layers..." Ryan gestured with his stylus.

The hologram displayed the innermost layer of dust as iron rich red sand and small pieces of obsidian.

"Ok. Obsidian. That means a lot of volcanic explosions and iron sand means reddish powdered rock. Initial probes sent here from the original solar system proves that Terra's desserts have this kind of environment. But the fact that the outer layers are thicker means that the exposure to red soil was less meaning that it couldn't have been found in the dessert. Another place would be the volcanoes of North Anexian Supercontinent but there is no red soil, so there is only one place left." said Ryan.

"The lava moon, uh... Hades!" said Jas.

"Correct. So it is safe to assume that it is a product of the Hadean Tech settlement before it was shutdown. Whi- which... is..." Ryan said while realising what he just said.

He ran to the wall with all the pinned photos of his missing father. He pushed aside the documents on his desk and found a waiver with his father's sign. The waiver stated that all work on the Hadean Tech settlement is highly confidential.

Dad built this?!

He came back downstairs and exclaimed in shock.

While he was upstairs searching for documents, the nano tech in the kitchen had gone haywire. The stove increased and decreased heat, the fridge rapidly opened and closed, the drawers were pulling themselves outwards. But the toaster in particular was behaving weirder that the other items. The pistons that supported it extended themselves fully, broke itself in half and reattached itself with a motor between the halves making a hinge. The pistons, two in number on either side transformed the harmless utensil into a strange looking biped with the pistons and motors acting like legs. The toaster jumped towards Jas.

"Why me?!" he exclaimed.

As Jas ran different objects moved towards him to serve as obstacles. Zack kicked them away as he ran with Jas. Finally Jas tripped over a coffee table as the toaster caught up with him. The toaster positioned itself above his shoulders on his back. It carefully balanced itself on one 'leg' and spun the end of the other at a high speed, the proceeded to jab the rotating end into Jas's back.

"AAAAARGH. What the-"

Zack acted quickly. He grabbed a nearby pot and threw it at the toaster to throw it off balance but the toaster dodged it and launched a heated metal grill at Zack.

Just that second Ryan walked in to witness a biped toaster stab his younger brother with its other leg while shooting heated metal at his older brother.

The toaster had both its legs jammed into Jas's back as he screamed his head off. As the two others chased this hilariously stupid looking murder weapon roll forward carrying Jas with it while, the toaster box rotated forward as it touched the ground, causing both the toaster and Jas, who was attached to it, move forward. This was slow initially, so the other household objects moved to block Ryan and Zack from getting to the toaster. Finally the door swung open in the two brother's face, temporarily disorienting them. As the slow one wheeled stabbing toaster moved, Ryan got to his senses and ran after it. All of a sudden, the toaster was oscillating between being in front of him and not being there at all. Finally it disappeared, leaving nothing but a slight blur in the background for a second and a faint shout from Jas. Just before disappearing, Ryan noticed the cylinder in Jas' pocket and stared speechlessly at the ground where it had been a second ago, while in the horizon, the blood red moon, Hades, roze.