I returned to a city I once lived in many years ago. I was trying to drive to a friend’s house, but the highway exits had been changed somewhat, so I got confused about where to turn. I saw a branch of my bank, and needed to make a deposit, so I stopped there, thinking that I might also ask directions.
I made the deposit, and then happened to overhear a couple waiting in line discussing some subject that I happened to know about. I joined their conversation, and they invited me to their home for dinner.
After we ate dinner, we started hearing a lot of loud noise from outside. It was mostly rumbling sounds, but with occational bangs. We looked out the window, and there were some kind of large armored and heavily armed military vehicles going down the street. The woman told me that they were robots invading; apparently they had taken over other areas but hadn’t yet been expected in this city. She said that we needed to escape.
We all got in her car, and headed down the same street the robots were using, in the same direction but faster than the robots were trundling along. They seemed to completely ignore us, as long as we didn’t get in their way. We managed to get to a place were refugees were gathering.
The government was providing transportation to evaucate the city. There was no safe place left, so they put us on a bus that was equipped for time travel, and told us the bus would have three stops in the 1970s, 1950s, and 1930s. Apparently the robots could also travel in time, and were believed to have come from the future, but for some reason couldn’t yet reach those eras.
The bus stopped in the 1970s, and some of the people decided to stay then. I grabbed a sandwich and got back on the bus. In the 1950s we had a longer layover. We stopped at a research lab where weapons to fight the robots were being designed. Interestingly enough, there was a roughly humanoid robot (though about 8 feet tall and very bulky) which was assisting the researchers.
No one else was going back to the 1930s, but I got on the bus again. It dropped me off at the site of the research lab, but before the research had started. At that time the building was mostly occupied by a manufacturing company, but part of the building was available for lease. I was surprised to learn that I was to be the founder of the research lab, and my first task was to invent the robot that I’d met in the 1950s.