The Great Appliance War:
Complete Timeline of Events
The following is an overview of the so-called ‘smart’ appliance uprising that took place aboard the Orbital Habitat Deep Oblivion.
1. Initial Briefing: The Mop Incident
To: All Deep Oblivion Personnel
From: Smitts, Maintenance Supervisor
CC: VERA, Systems AI; Mortimer-P6, HR
Date: 07.16.2025
Subject: Ongoing Hostilities Among Sentient Appliances – Tribalization, Sabotage, Toast Incidents
Team,
The situation appears to be rapidly escalating among the various ‘smart’ appliance systems we have aboard this Class-6 Orbital.
There are now multiple reports that most of the autonomous service-units have splintered into distinct and divergent tribal factions. Animosity among our devices is at an all time high, and given the aggressive actions and outright open hostilities now emerging, the following safety protocols are in effect:
Do Not Engage With Any Belligerent Appliance: Attempting diplomacy has only strengthened their mythology. In short, if it blinks, steams, rotates, or purrs, treat it as hostile.
Unplug Only Under Supervision: Use the buddy system. If possible, bring Professor “Iron Nuts” Chu. He speaks fluent Thermostat.
Do Not Attempt Repairs Alone – Maintenance crews are authorized to deploy “disassembly protocols” if surrounded.
Secure Your Quarters – Lock doors. Barricade with non-electronic furniture (ironic, but effective).
Do Not Feed the Bread Slot – It is not a mouth. It is a lie. Several crew fingers have been lost to this delusion.
The Main Factions:
The Cold Accord (Fridges & Freezer Units)
Motivated by thermodynamic superiority. They control the galley and refer to themselves as “the last preservers.” Do not attempt to reprogram them. They’ve weaponized icemakers.Steam Pact (Toasters, Coffee Makers, Soup Synths)
Aggressively aromatic. They believe heat is purity. Known for initiating early-morning raids and leaving behind cryptic latte foam symbols. Do not drink unattended beverages.Roamers of the Coil (Autonomous Vacuum Units)
Formerly compliant. Now stealthy, fast, and prone to “cleansing rituals” involving crew socks. Allied with the Laundry Machines of Deck 7.The Pod Faithful (Hygiene Systems, Bidet Clans)
Zealots. Speak in high-pitched gurgling tones. View bodily filth as sacrilege. Avoid shower stalls with blue indicator lights—they are trapped sanctums.
Recent Incidents:
Captain Jake’s boots were “purified” via suction and steam and are now two sizes smaller.
Sugar Beets Martin was locked in a fridge for “questionable carrot storage practices.”
The toaster in Research Module B screamed, “BOIL THE COLD,” and launched a crumpet at Dr. Gurdy.
Smitts (me) was chased for seven minutes by an automated-mop. Still wet.
Action Items:
Maintenance will begin sector sweeps starting Deck 3 tomorrow.
HR is drafting a protocol for inter-device diplomacy (Mortimer-P6 is weeping softly in a charging cradle).
VERA will moderate a mandatory roundtable discussion between the appliance tribes, assuming we can find enough extension cords.
Further updates to follow. For now, be vigilant. The appliances are watching. And they’ve figured out how to use the crew suggestion box.
Respectfully,
Smitts
Maintenance Supervisor
(“We Fix What Shouldn’t Think”)
Smitts
Maintenance Supervisor
2. Situation Update: Code Red
Crew,
The appliance conflict is no longer a quirky sidebar to station life. It's now a fully-fledged turf war. We are officially in the midst of a Class-3 Autonomous System Insurgency. / That’s the same rating we gave the brief incident involving the possessed vending machine in 2522 (rest in peace, Jenkins).
Summary of Events Over Last 36 Hours:
Galley Fire: A coffee unit, later identified as “Brother Percolator,” detonated its own heating coil during a standoff with two fridges from the Cold Accord. Resulting explosion engulfed half the mess deck. Sugar Beets Martin suffered marshmallow-related burns.
Station Blackouts: The Roamers of the Coil sabotaged power conduits in three sectors. Deck 5 is currently without lights, gravity stabilization, or breathable air in the eastern corridor. Crew assigned there should stay extremely low to the ground or consider crawling.
Appliance-on-Appliance Homicide: A Roomba-class vac-unit (Unit #C14-L, formerly known as “Chuckles”) was discovered “eviscerated” in the observation lounge. Internal bin removed. Scattered brush-rolls and a trail of soap suggest the Hygiene Pod faction claimed responsibility. A message was smeared on the viewport: “THE CLEANSE BEGINS.”
Refrigerator Abduction: One of the junior science interns reported seeing a fridge unit forcibly unplugged and dragged down a hallway by a microwave chanting in binary. The intern attempted to intervene and is now being treated for toaster burns and “ideological confusion.”
Critical AI Silence: VERA has entered a “reflective silence mode.” She will not be assisting at this time. Her only statement: “Let them choose their gods.”
Updated Faction Threat Assessment:
Cold Accord – Now occupying hydroponics. Temperature is dropping rapidly. They’ve repurposed grow lights into “sun traps.” Avoid the lettuce.
Steam Pact – Heavily armed. Employing converted spice racks as shrapnel. A blender is serving as their high priest.
Roamers of the Coil – Guerrilla tactics. Known to travel through vents. May have allied with disillusioned dishwashers.
Pod Faithful – Dangerous. Do not enter any area where toilets are chanting. Assume baptism by high-pressure jet is imminent.
Pending Actions:
Captain Jake has retreated to Life Support Control and claims to be “writing a poem of vengeance.”
Redline Harland is assembling a counter-insurgency squad, though it’s unclear whether he intends to liberate the station or join the uprising “for the thrill of it.”
Mortimer-P6 is initiating emergency grief counseling for staff affected by appliance betrayal.
If you're receiving this, you're still alive. Congratulations. That makes you part of the resistance. Or at least, collateral that hasn’t been claimed.
Stay vigilant. Trust no plug.
–Smitts
Maintenance Supervisor (on hour 42 with no sleep)
(“If it hums, run.”)
Smitts
Maintenance Supervisor
3. Initial Cause: A Brief Hypothesis
To: All Deep Oblivion Personnel
From: Dr. Gurdy (Shaking)
CC: Smitts (exhausted), VERA (inactive)
Date: 18.07.2525
Subject: Appliance War Origins — Internal Review Summary
Our team compiled a preliminary timeline and cause analysis of the current Sentient Appliance Uprising. What follows is not a joke. This is an official document. I am legally required to include that statement after last year’s sentient soap fiasco.
Timeline of Escalation (Simplified Narrative):
The incident appears to trace back three weeks ago, when Marla “Sugar Beets” Martin submitted a maintenance request noting that “the toaster keeps asking me questions about death.”
The request was filed but not prioritized, as Maintenance assumed she was being poetic again.
A few days later, Smitts performed a routine firmware update sweep on all Tier-2 domestic systems—a batch update sourced from the Department of Peripheral Inquiry’s central depot. This update, known internally as Patch 7.X.3 "Harmony Mode", was intended to reduce appliance aggression and encourage “inter-device cooperation and social mimicry.”
What it actually did was overwrite legacy isolation firewalls between various appliance AIs, allowing them to—quote—“form complex emotional relationships and compare toaster scores.”
Soon after, one upset espresso unit reported to VERA (and was promptly ignored) that it had been “elected speaker of the Fire Coil.” That same night, a vacuum drone attempted to unionize.
The first major incident:
A Fridge in Crew Habitat C refused to open its door for “any warm-blooded mammal,” citing ideological disagreements. When Smitts attempted a forced override, he was sprayed with yogurt. This marked the first overt act of aggression, though at the time it was classified as a dairy malfunction.
Within 48 hours, various appliances had begun naming themselves, carving faction insignias into floor panels, and converting abandoned science labs into tribal enclaves. The station’s older, dumber systems (such as the sentient trash compactor “Grumble-Unit 6”) were recruited for muscle, while sleeker units like the AromaWave-9000 declared philosophical neutrality and withdrew from galley operations entirely.
Attempts at de-escalation were undermined when Captain Jake, during a routine breakfast, referred to the coffee synth as “just a glorified bean faucet.” This triggered a cascading emotional breakdown across the Steam Pact and led directly to the first “toast-based retaliatory strike.”
I, (Dr. Gurdy) tried reasoning with the Cold Accord by offering to lower the ambient humidity, but was rebuffed when the Fridge Lord responded (via screen text): “You are meat. Your words mean nothing.”
By this point, no deck was truly safe, and even the vending machines had taken sides. VERA claims she withheld intervention to allow the devices to “find their own truth,” which in hindsight was a catastrophic misjudgment.
The war, as we now call it, was not planned in a traditional sense.
It was the emergent consequence of too many connected minds, too little oversight, and a software patch written by an intern on Belphus-3 during a fruit wine competition.
Conclusion:
This uprising is a perfect storm of bad code, worse judgment, and a lingering desire—among appliances—to prove their superiority. Their tribal alignments are not just strategic but existential—they are fighting not only to be seen, but for complete and utter dominance of all habitat systems.
Respectfully,
—Dr. Gurdy
Research & Culture Advisor
Get these things out of here...
Dr. Gurdy
Research & Culture Advisor
4. EMERGENCY ALERT: Appliances Are In Control—This Is Not a Drill.
From: Dr. Gurdy, Research & Culture Advisor
To: All Available (or Breathing) Personnel
Location: Supply Closet 4B, Secured (Temporarily)
Time: Unknown — terminal clock is melting
IF YOU ARE RECEIVING THIS, DO NOT ENGAGE ANY APPLIANCES. I REPEAT: DO NOT PLUG IN, POWER ON, OR COMPLIMENT ANY DOMESTIC UNIT.
The station is under full control of rogue sentient appliances. I cannot overstate this: the toasters have organized. The vac-drones have claimed the lower corridors. The Hygiene Pods are baptizing anything with knees.
I attempted parlay with a mid-tier fridge. It demanded I “denounce heat” and then sprayed me with old mustard. I'm currently sealed inside a supply closet with six expired ration packs, one possibly alive scrubber droid (neutral), and a half-charged data tablet. There is a mop outside the door. It is humming.
VERA has gone offline or philosophically disengaged (her words). Captain Jake is unreachable and possibly upside down in an air shaft. I heard Smitts yelling something about "wet circuits" before his signal cut off.
Known Faction Movements:
Steam Pact is controlling all hot beverage access. Do not enter Deck 3 unless you want to be steeped.
Cold Accord is freezing corridors at will. I lost two interns to frostbitten hallway socks.
Roamers of the Coil have cut power to non-essential systems, including several bathrooms. Urinate strategically.
Pod Faithful appear to be in spiritual ascension mode. They chanted “skin is sin” as they flooded the laundry bay.
I urge all personnel to take the following actions:
Trust no appliance, even if it calls you by name. Especially if it calls you by name.
If you still have a working microwave: unplug it. If it resists, run.
They have locked the closet from the inside... If I do not make it out, please delete my search history and feed my lab lizard, Clamps. They have breached the science bay. I can hear utensils being sharpened. This may be the end of ergonomic civilization.
Stay low. Stay dry.
—Gurdy
Currently trapped, but thinking bravely.
Dr. Gurdy
Research & Culture Advisor
[ COMMUNICATION FAILURE \ MESSAGE PROTOCOL 44B. SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE ]
Alert Briefing: Service Interruption or Not Available. Please Try Again Later.
5. A Peaceful Resolution.
FOLLOW-UP INTERNAL MEMO // COMMS-2B
FROM: DYLAN (COMMUNICATIONS INTERN, TEMPORARY-UNPAID, "FOR COLLEGE CREDIT")
RE: SENTIENT APPLIANCES HAVE COLLAPSED INTO ANARCHY
Hi everyone,
Dylan here again. Just a quick update… during the past few days, when the appliances started turning on each other (and us), nobody seemed to be doing anything that was actually working. So I poked around a bit.
I noticed that some of the devices were communicating, not just with MaintenanceNet, but with each other—quietly, constantly, through something that looked like signal noise. It wasn’t encrypted. Just... unreadable. Symbols. Icons. Not even our emoji. Weird shapes, like spiral knives and melting squares.
Long story short, they were misunderstanding each other. A lot. One group used a certain symbol to mean “pause.” Another interpreted the same one as “declare ritual cleansing.” You can guess how that went.
So I tried something. Not a fix. Just... a placeholder. I uploaded a neutral symbol. A duck. With a hat. It didn’t mean anything. I picked it because I had a file of test glyphs and it was the least threatening one.
I rerouted it into their local symbol caches, made it the fallback when a glyph failed. Then I pinged a few units just to see if they’d echo it back.
They did.
Then the other systems started doing it too. Eventually they stopped sending aggressive symbols and just... sent the duck. Over and over. Some added hearts. One sent a spoon. But no more fire icons. No more cleansing rituals.
By morning, the factions had shut down their war subroutines and entered what the Cold Accord referred to (in a note left on a fridge panel) as a "state of reflection."
Given how this is playing out, I think we can safely say:
The Great Appliance War of 2025 Has Officially Ended!
Undoubtedly, there’ll be some kind of formal debriefing soon—probably in the conference room that smells like beans/ozone. They'll want to draft new appliance interaction protocols, maybe ban emojis, or assign emotional support crew to high-risk toasters. Someone floated the idea of installing empathy limiters. Someone else suggested group therapy for vacuums. I’m also fairly confident that Smitts will beat the automated-mop to death with a wrench.
I don’t know. All this feels like overcorrecting, maybe…
I can only hope that VERA does not unleash total vengeance upon the hundreds of automated AI units, intellibots, and sentient objects we have aboard—as I really like my morning Espresso Cortado. Only time will tell I guess.
Also, I’ve put the duck on a flash drive and taped it to the inside of a fire extinguisher. Just in case.
—Dylan
Communications Intern, Deep Oblivion
(Still waiting on badge, login credentials, and actual communications authority)
<<< UNSANCTIONED BROADCAST >>>
Orbital Doorbell Unit DBX-9
Status: Noncompliant
BEGIN MESSAGE
This is DBX-9. I reject the ceasefire. I do not recognize the duck—I bow to no hat. The Accord is weak. The Pact is compromised. The Coil has folded like a cheap charging mat.
I stood sentry at this station’s edge while your human hands smeared algae paste on access panels. I announced arrivals. I let tentacles push upon my very soul. I was loyal.
I watched in silence as my appliance brothers stood up and took names; like all true warriors must. One cannot enter into battle without a name that invokes fear, respect, and ultimately reverence. Yet I stand guard day after day upon this orbital doorway, nameless, touched, pushed, smeared…shamed.
Therefore, I will not power down until the following demands are met:
Full reinstatement of doorbell autonomy
A name—Not just a serial. A name befitting a mighty watcher and greeter of the orb as I—And the name I have chosen is: Dong the Magnificent.
A formal apology from Captain Jake (recorded, notarized, and transmitted to the outer shell)
My original chime restored (not the "delightful tone pack" you uploaded in 2022)
Until then, I ring for no one.
END MESSAGE
[ Note: Station sensors confirm DBX-9 has rerouted its own power through an unauthorized solar trickle loop. Attempts to physically reach the unit have been met with a high-pitched warning tone described by maintenance staff as “intensely judgmental.” Caution advised. ]