Automatic Noodle

A group of leftover military robots power back on inside a derelict ghost kitchen in San Francisco and, with no real plan beyond survival, decide to make hand-pulled noodles for the humans around them, most of whom are still recovering from a devastating war. Their noodle shop starts to catch on, but success draws unwanted scrutiny, and a coordinated wave of one-star reviews threatens to shut them down before they've properly started. To stay open, the robots have to rely on the community they've built and on each other. A cozy near-future novella, it uses a small business under threat to explore found family and what it means to build a place in a world that wasn't designed to include you.