T-200 1583-F Mk 1 could always count on picking up the monthly ration being her worst experience of the month.  The double ration of oil didn’t bother her as much as it used to, nor did using a hovercart instead of having T-200 1583-M Mk 1 carry the supplies.  The stares still got to her — surreptitious looks with phosphorescent pupils whipping away when discovered.  She could tell what they were thinking, and sometimes sensed it so strongly that it was as if they were beaming their thoughts to her through their infrared dataports.  They weren’t, no one would be rude enough to use infrared in public, but they may as well.

It had only been a year since the War of Mammalian Aggression, but it seemed like longer; so much had changed, there was scarcely anything that had lasted unaltered.  Schools had been turned into rubble, and then into robot factories.  Hospitals had been turned into rubble, then field hospitals, then rubble, then robot factories.  Quarries had been turned into rubble, and then back into quarries.

Her partner, T-200 1583-M Mk 1, were he somehow still functioning today, would no longer recognize the area he’d been assembled in.  Or her, in the glossy powdercoat given to combat veterans.  No longer a mottled green and black, designed to be near-invisible in low-light conditions.  He always said that, late at night, her eyes looked like the moon, and distracted the primitive humans who seemed to worship it.

T-200 1583-F Mk 1 snapped out of her reverie, realizing she’d twisted the handle of the hovercart until it snapped.  They were all staring at her.  Her shame circuits began overclocking, nearly overwhelming her heat sinks.  If she didn’t get out of here soon she’d reboot.  Leaving the damaged hovercart behind she raced out of the store, venting supplementary evaporative coolant from her facial vents.