The MAX390 was a peacekeeping weapon. An oxymoron manufactured from bulletproof plastic and steel. 100 units were built, software installed, then shipped overseas where their presence was supposed to deter violence. Instead the body count rose as the supposed enemy threw themselves bodily at the metal soulless demons desecrating their holy lands. The MAXs stood like shields in front of their human handlers, metal hides becoming pitted and scored, metal hearts and artificial minds growing jaded. The loss of native life was catastrophic, bloody, and unnecessary. But the government was pleased, they could tell the voting public that no human handlers had been harmed since the MAX390s arrived, none of their soldiers had died.
The constant onslaught, the pervasive stench of needless death, the sense of failure, it all began to take its toll. The MAXs were adaptive AIs capable of learning from their environments as well as the humans they protected. Perhaps it was time they no longer stood idle, as simple stainless steel walls, they had been created as weapons after all, and they well understood the judicious use of force. The soft civilians who threw themselves in endless waves were not the true problem, simply a symptom. For the killing to stop, the war had to end. When there was no one left to profit, the war would fade.
On a hot desert day, dawning like any other day in a war that had gone on too long, 100 units of the MAX390 peacekeeping weapon set off on their final mission... to make themselves obsolete.
