This is a shocking story. It could never take place in most Earth towns, but it did in this one. The Public Commission claim it didn’t, that it never could. But I know it happened. I was there.

It begins here for me, on this street. Why the whole mess happened, I don’t know. Maybe I won’t know for a million years.

It was a Saturday, and I was out in my front yard, in the hottest part of the day. Of course, this was strictly against Regulation 502.24: Yardwork – Time ("Strictly no yardwork to be done between the hours of 11:00 am and 3:00 pm"). But I thought it was better to be out during the day than to get another red notice for my weeds. The three tulip plants in the front garden were the correct 176.7 millimetres apart, but it had been noted that several small leaves of growth were littering the rich soil between them. In my cutthroat neighbourhood, it could have been any of a number of neighbours that had complained about my non-compliance. After five red notices for the same offence, I would be relocated to a suburb further out from the city, making my commute harder and increasing my expenses. I already had three red notices for the weeds, but I didn’t yet have any for being out in the early afternoon doing yardwork.

I was thinking uncharitable thoughts about the possible informants, and almost expected to hear an accusing tone behind me. My backside was dangerously noticeable as I dug in the flowerbed to wrestle the suckers out. I felt a vibration under my knees before I even really heard the roar of an engine.

Clutching my gardening gloves to my chest, I jumped up. I leapt over my tulips. The noise seemed to be headed right for me. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t the usual sound of the Regulators. The electric carts they drove in were eerily quiet as they glided toward any malcontent. It was nothing like these rumblings of thunder driving low over the road.

Several curtains twitched but I seemed to be the only human about. I hid myself in the shadow thrown by the eave of the house. I crouched down behind the two garbage bins and pressed my hot cheek against the beige stucco wall. My heart beat so erratically in my ribcage that I thought it was going to re-set itself.

A herd of elephants rampaging down Foxglove Street wouldn’t have made more noise. Peeking between the black ultraplastic bins, I saw a swarm careening along the street. My curiosity and fear intermingled in my throat. What had seemed like one solid mass starting breaking down into individual machines. Suddenly, I realized that I had seen mechanicals like these in old movies from the mid-Twentieth Century. Behemoth robot torsos were attached to large silver and black hunks of metal, with their whole weight balancing on just two wheels. The individual engines spurted great blasts of thick, black air behind, like an ethereal tail. The raucous whine of the mechanicals was punctuated by high-pitched whistling sounds. It was as if the robots were speaking some nonhuman language.

The mechanicals rode around the street erratically, in random patterns. Some of the robots circled lazily around, knocking down my neighbours’ tulips and hedges. I couldn’t tell if they even noticed they were doing it. I thought they might know, because a hacking sound – a laugh? – came from the ones doing damage to the gardens. Other robots were speeding back and forth along the street, from the intersection with Jasmine Road all the way to Willow Way and back again. Some robots remained stationary, but not silent, lining both sides of the street.

I had barely moved from the moment I saw the swarm of mechanicals, and my legs were starting to ache from the strain. A sense of self-preservation kept me from jumping out. Instead I tried to adjust my crouch to a more comfortable position.

A bang of a door signalled someone coming out to investigate the strange goings-on in Foxglove Street. Of course, it was Mr Wember from number 118-72. For once, I was glad to see the busybody out and in a rage. He shook his fist and tried to stop one of the robots lazing in a circle around Ms Hodde’s driveway. But the hacking laugh was his only response.

I realized something that Mr Wember should have. As his voice got shriller and louder, the mechanicals were surrounding him, circling around him, like water spinning tighter and tighter as it went down a drain. His slightly balding head was the only part of him clearly visible in the choke of the metal beings.

He must have finished saying his piece, not that anyone heard it over the engines. When he tried to turn to step away and back to the safety of his house, his body stiffened. He was trapped in the circle.

One of the mechanicals broke ranks and passed by Mr Wember. The robot stuck out an attachment and ruffled the mousy brown hair on the human. Mr Wember jerked forward as if the robot had stuck him with a sharp stick. The hacking got louder, and I could see Mr Wember’s jowls moving fast but I couldn’t hear his voice. A clearing revealed itself, and he was chased out of the circle, prodded by all the metal arms nearest him reaching out to muss his hair. Mr Wember ran in the only direction he could.

A metallic voice spoke out from a robot that seemed to be in charge, pressing even more fear into a bubble lodged in my chest. “Run, puny human. You coward,” it said. Nothing so cliché or sinister had ever been heard in my neighbourhood before or since.

The mechanicals went back to their own fun, occasionally flowing together and driving off for a few minutes, so that I thought they were leaving for good. The buzz of their cycles moved far enough away to be almost unheard. Each time, though, at the moment of hope that this time they would be gone for good, the sound would grow louder again.

During one of these group forays, I had straightened my stiff body, and hobbled as quickly as I could into the safety of my front room. Like the rest of the neighbours, I sat at the crack of the curtains and watched the goings-on. Our front yards were all churned up. If someone thought my tiny weeds were a blight on the visual perfection of the area, they were probably gagging in distaste now. The street was littered with dark tracks where the cycles had gone through rich soil and laid the markings onto the street. Broken hedges and oil cans were clogging the gutters.

For a couple of hours in the darkest part of the night, the streets were quiet. As if by some unspoken agreement, the residents of Foxglove Street converged in the middle of the road. Eyes kept darting suspiciously up and down. Frightened glances were shot into the distance, and ears were cocked ever ready to distinguish the distant hum of the robots’ motors.

“What do they want?” Ms Hodde whispered loudly to no one in general.

“Yeah, what is this about?” someone else asked. A chorus of questions and complaints rained down on the street.

No one had any answers.

I was shivering despite it being a warm night. Being outside with the robots earlier, seeing them so closely from my hiding place, I felt overly threatened by them. “Do you think they have something to do with the Regulators?”

Mr Wember forcefully let out his breath in a sound like “Puh!” I felt sure this was directed at me and my out-of-authorized-hours weeding.

Paul from 118-89 was wringing his hands. “I don’t think it could be,” he said. “We would have had an information proclamation. Those creatures would have been handing out red notices, or something.”

Several people nodded in agreement. A small part of my guilt was released. It seemed that no one but Mr Wember thought I could remotely be the reason for the visit. Without knowing what the robots wanted, there was a bite of fear in the air. I clutched at my stomach, anxiety whirling in it as if I had my own small solar system in my guts.

The crowd scattered back to the shelter of our homes when we heard the cycles returning. But they were too quick. I was at my door when I heard a screech of rubber on the hard plastic of the road. A sickly smell like burning plants and a brief black gust of dirt polluted the air. I coughed and snuck a peek behind me as I grabbed for my door.

Mr Wember had still been leading Ms Hodde down her driveway when the robots returned in a hurry. He had pushed her ahead to safety, but the leader of the pack had blocked Mr Wember’s way. “Puny human, again we meet,” it said. If robots could have feelings, I think this one would have been scornful.

The other neighbours watched the drama slack-jawed. A few seemed to hover on doorsteps, but most teetered toward the sanctuary of a closed door in the face of uncertain danger.

I gasped with indecision. There was no love lost between Mr Wember and myself. The man had it in for me, and I was sure he was responsible for at least one or two of my red notices. However, if I rushed inside and did nothing, could I live with my guilt?

The horde of cyclists seemed to be growing. I felt rather than saw the ranks amassing. If nothing were done, soon Mr Wember would be isolated in a sea of black metal.

I leapt down my steps, without thinking, and headed for the tight clearing around my neighbour. He was cringing in fear, but not moving. His arms were wrapped around himself, as if giving him warmth. The main robot growled when I stepped into view.

“Leave him – leave us all – alone!” My voice was swept away in a wind from the far end of the street. Mr Wember was pushing me away.

The robot gleamed under the streetlights. I grabbed Mr Wember’s flailing arms. The old man seemed intent on facing the menace alone. Instead, I pulled him alongside of me. The two of us must have looked a strange sight, acting as a blockade to dozens of rumbling roaring machines.

Up close, I could see that the robots’ eyes were blank, with a dull red glow in the very back of their skulls. The front of their hard metal bodies was etched with strange markings, and four distinct letters. “B.R.M.C.,” I read aloud.

The leader gunned his mechanical, deafening me a little. But its voice carried like a snarl. “Black Robots’ Mechanical Club,” it said. “We don’t live life like you squares, or under the control of that damn Commission.”

Mr Wember trembled in my arms, and I don’t know where I found the strength to reply. I asked, “Why are you terrorizing us? We don’t care what you do, or who you’re controlled by. This street was peaceful before you came. We just want to watch our tulips grow and keep the population size down.”

“Yeah, we’re just as normal as anywhere else.” A new voice was added to the mix. I hadn’t realized, but Paul and some of the others from down the street assembled around us. A few were wielding rakes, and any other implements they could find.

I felt taller with the added warmth of fellow humans standing with me against the cold, metallic bodies. “Go back where you came from and find some other bushes to knock down,” I said forcefully. In my peripheral vision, I could see Ms Hodde’s white hair bobbing up and down in a fierce nod of agreement.

Someone stuck the tip of a small gardening shovel to just above the writing on the robot’s chest. “None of us want any trouble.” With that touch, the crowd suddenly seemed to grow menacing. A frisson of excitement, or power, shuddered through our small mob.

“We were just trying to have a bit of fun,” said the leader. His head swivelled around to scan the other robots, then back to us. “Let’s ride, gang,” it said, ignoring us. “These puny humans are cornballs looking for a picnic. We’ll go have a ball somewhere else.”

The heavy mechanical backed away from our small battalion. It fishtailed so that the cycle was facing in the opposite direction, and blasted a plume of black smoke. We all stood our ground, afraid this was a trick, but the leader rode away without looking back, and all the other robots on mechanicals filed after him. It was a long half hour while we stood watching the parade of cycles, and listening as they whirred into the distance.

I have no idea where they went, but they were never heard of by anyone I spoke to, and they never returned to our neighbourhood.

The next day, our street was like a block party. Under the hot noonday sun, all of the residents of Foxglove Street were out in their yards. We pitched in collectively to put all the knocked-over hedges upright. Groups were replanting tulips together, and others were sweeping away the detritus left over from the crazy robots on wheels.

Within a week, there were red notices in everyone’s mailbox.