The Librarian and the Robot
ShortStory 4,080 words Recommended by 3 award/anthology sources
"One day, the Curator salvaged a robot. It was a model ST-19, a military machine, designed for search and destroy missions. The Curator found it outside in a knee-deep snowdrift. The robot’s ship had crashed into a hill two kilometers away, the explosion cutting the summit right off."
Content warnings 1
death
Quasar links out; the story lives on Clarkesworld, where the author gets the click.