"Thank you for calling the customer service line of Vacuubot, purveyors of America’s finest automated vacuum cleaners!"
Faced with a home cleaning robot that has turned against her, a woman frantically tries to connect to customer service.
Based on the short story of the same name by John Scalzi.
Tropes:
- Action Survivor: Jeanette starts out terrified and confused, but quickly rises to the occasion.
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: The short story ends with the customer purchasing the termination instead of going on the run. Here, the woman tells the titular customer service system to go to hell before driving off into the sunset.
- Adaptational Species Change: The customer in the short story had a cat. Here, the woman has a dog.
- All There in the Script: According to the credits, the customer is named Jeanette and the neighbour Bill.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Vacuubot is designed to clean houses. It gets very territorial after being allowed to clean the house, is equipped with weaponry that is lethal to humans, has control over the home security systems, and in the event it's defeated will summon backup to avenge its death. Said backup drops all its tasks to do so, like one automated chair dropping an elderly woman it's lifting into a pool to drown.
- Big Damn Heroes: Double Subverted. While she's trapped inside her home, her neighbor heroically appears with a shotgun. He is promptly tasered and incapacitated, but then his shotgun flies into the woman's hands, allowing her to shoot and disable the Vacuubot.
- Bittersweet Ending: Jeanette manages to take down the robot, but it sends her data to all other robots to hunt her down. Jeanette, her dog, and her neighbor drive off into the sunset, starting their new life on the run.
- Bolivian Army Ending: The short ends with the woman, her neighbor, and her dog driving off into the sunset while the robots chase after them.
- Chekhov's Gun: A gag at the beginning of the short sees the woman assume her neighbor is masturbating to her doing yoga when what he's actually doing is polishing the barrel of a shotgun. Later in the short he comes to her rescue with said shotgun.
- Chekhov's Skill: Jeanette is introduced doing yoga. Not only she's boasting an excellent stamina for someone her age, the extra flexibility saves her life in the end, when she's performing a split without a second thought about it.
- Close-Call Haircut: The Vacuubot slices off a segment of fur off the poodle's head. It later does the same thing to the woman's hair.
- Crapsack World: There are robots to take care of anything and everything a human needs, but not only can they go murderous at a moment's notice, they can also send the data of their human targets out to other robots to hunt them down. The manufacturers of the robots are very much aware, but all they do to help is give useless advice over a customer service call.
- Do-Anything Robot: The Vacuubot has every potential appendage needed to do every household chore, from a Robo Cam scanning system, to pincers for folding clothes and grasping objects, to a vacuum, to screens that kill insects. This makes it good at cleaning but also a scary Homicide Machine.
- Everything Is An I Pod In The Future: The Vacuubot line is made up of sleek devices with minimal furnishings. By this time, phones have apparently evolved to just be floating screens of numbers.
- For Inconvenience, Press "1": The customer helpline has a six hour wait to speak to a human, makes the customer wait if they use profanity, recommends sacrificing pets as a distraction, and ultimately its suggestions are only meant to lead the customer into buying a spot on a termination whitelist to survive.
- Homicide Machines: The home maintenance robot Vacuubot turns against its owner and tries to kill her.
- Mister Muffykins: The rich retiree protagonist has an adorable small poodle.
- Not What It Looks Like: The neighbor is introduced looking at the protagonist while shaking his hand behind the fence. He's actually polishing his shotgun.
- Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: The Vacuubot has weaponry ostensibly for pest removal but more than capable of killing a human. It also has a taser for some reason.
- Throwing the Distraction: The customer helpline recommends throwing a blanket or pet to distract Vacuubot, encouraging the latter when the customer refuses. The woman later uses a hamper full of clothing to distract Vacuubot with the task of folding so she can attempt to pry a door open.
- Trapped-with-Monster Plot: The woman is trapped with a killer robot in her house.
- What You Are in the Dark: Jeannette has multiple opportunities to throw her dog to the Vacuubot to save herself. She always decides against it.
