Masterpiece- Chapter 5
Next bot: 400 meters.
Take out the tools, fix the code, move on.
Next bot: 1 mile.
Take out the tools, fix the core processor, move on.
Each time he saw another bot in distress, Daniel automatically marched up to it and fixed it, and then found another.
Each time he did this, he chanted the information out loud, fixed it, and repeated.
He didn’t really want to fix robots, but he did it anyway, and each time he did he felt more satisfaction than before. He supposed this was what one would call “finding their purpose in life”, but he didn’t see the purpose behind what he did, so he knew this couldn’t be it.
Every time he fixed a robot, he faded away a little more.
Oh, he still sensed things, still smelled, tasted, still felt the tools in his hand, still thought each action through. But each time he did, he felt less like himself and more like...HIM.
He couldn’t remember when he realized there was Someone Else inside him. He thought it was sometime between fixing that poor driver-bot and who or what-ever he was fixing now, but he couldn’t pinpoint the time.
But that Someone Else was always there, and always hungry for more.
Even so, he had his little victories now and again. Sometimes, he could force his thoughts away from fixing bots when the body they shared had to cool down or rest after a particularly difficult job. He would think back and run through memories of Before, when he lived in Seattle and was homeless. He always picked the awful memories, because they hurt Someone Else, and because they were the strongest. During those times, he felt he got a little bit of himself back. He felt satisfaction, then. True satisfaction.
But then Someone Else would yank back the controls and fix another bot, and all his work would go to waste.
He knew Someone Else’s name, but never thought about it...he was afraid it would hear him and dig in his mind and find his own name. He DID say his own name, though, he said it a LOT.
Daniel.
Daniel.
Daniel.
He said it every chance he got, used it as a mental wall just in case Someone Else tried going into his mind again or he’d use it to remain in control just a little longer.
Daniel, he said as he fixed another bot. His load grew bigger.
Daniel, he said as he tugged the cart full of Stupidity Chips behind him.
Daniel.
Daniel.
Daniel.
Whenever Someone Else took control for a while, his mind would travel to his home, back in Seattle. He’d remember his fiance, and all the good memories they shared before he became homeless and lost it all. It was painful, but he had to.
He wasn’t entirely sure why, either; the memory did no good for him now, and even if it did, Someone Else would eventually find it and try to get rid of it like he tried to get rid of all his other memories.
But, for some reason, the urge to think these sad, painful thoughts wouldn’t go away. These memories, they were what made him unique, they were what defined him as a person.
A human.
And if suffering those memories was what it took to stay human, he would hold onto those memories until they were pried from his cold, dead soul.
And so he kept thinking, and he kept prying Stupidity Chips from bots’ heads when Someone Else wasn’t looking, and he kept moving further and further West.
On a computer monitor, yet another red dot blinked out.
The artificial intelligence, “SAM” (Symbiotic Artificial Matron) studied this with growing interest, as well as growing concern.
Years ago, after operation “Phoenix”, the institute designed her to be the new (and final) director of operations. She was the pinnacle of their design, a perfect blend of adherence to code and sentience. She felt each one of her children as they went about their daily tasks, felt each one of them as they completed them, and administered the proper feeling of satisfaction afterwards. She was the perfect matron- loving and doting on those who performed above and beyond expectations, and firm with those who didn’t meet expectations or who behaved erratically. She had never failed a single time in the hundreds of years she’d been active, and she took great pride in this.
And then number 42 was birthed.
Number 42 was very different- she could feel it from the moment he was born. He didn’t come out the way everyone else did, obedient and subservient, almost to a fault. No, a bit more gusto, a bit more spice, that one had.
At first, she didn’t mind it. After all, after being in the same general spot for hundreds of years, change could be quite refreshing. She enjoyed the brief spat of independence he’d shown after being brought into the world, but, as always, she knew that would have to be stomped out quickly and without hesitation. In the end, he walked out singing the praises of the institute and of her, a being he lovingly called “The Voice.”
They all had different names for her when they first came out, but she thought this particular name was the most adorably quirky.
The name showed more creativity than the others had, some of whom resorted to mentally referring to her as just “her” or even a vague series of feelings with no name. She felt a bit of amusement when she thought of this interesting name...”The Voice”. It was a name so practical and self-aware, it was almost as if number 42 was sentient.
That was the most amusing part of it all- sentience.
SAM remembered the last thing that was programmed in her code- the entirety of it was incomplete, of course (the human’s functions ceased while in the middle of finishing it), but there was enough there for her to complete the other half.
The program stated very clearly that each of the machines were to be given Intelligence Reduction Chips to prevent erratic behavior due to the memories of their past lives. It was to continue until...and that was where it ended.
Of course, in her creator’s respectable amount of wisdom, he had given her the ability to change her own code. After birthing several hundred of her children and implanting IRC’s in each of them, she did just that, finishing the line of code perfectly.
It will continue until...the end of time.
After all, she was the smartest and most beautiful of the machines. Not nearly as great as a human, but...then again, there weren’t any humans left, were there?
Were there?
She continued to study the monitor, and, as always, soon enough, another red light blinked out.
In all her centuries of service, SAM had only seen this happen on occasion. Usually, she knew the cause- perhaps there was a runtime error while the bot was making a delivery and it drove into the side of a building, or the weather was harsh enough to melt a couple of circuits and it drove its head into a wall repeatedly until its core processor had burned out. On each occasion, the near-microscopic black box connected to the IRC gave her the data she needed, and she stored it in her memory banks to be taken in consideration when next she birthed.
But these were different. There was no data on the black box, nothing that showed her the cause of system failure. They were there one second, gone the next.
She wondered about this, about the consequences of this many deaths.
Many of the bots killed were inconsequential, only a few really worth mourning. She processed the loss of data and created backups of everything that remained in about half a second, and she moved on. There was nothing to worry about, right? Everything was fine?
But that wasn’t true at all. She felt something else every time one of her children died, something her programming didn’t have a label for. Every time one of those red dots blinked out, she felt an emptiness grow inside her as its neural input ceased. She felt her mind grow just a little darker, just a little less...populated.
She didn’t like this feeling, not one bit.
She wondered what it was that was doing this, what would be so callous. It had to be an entity, not disease (that kink was worked out a long time ago) or a virus or a fault in code...it had to be one of her own. But it didn’t show up on her screen- there was no black box relaying information, which meant its IRC wasn’t functioning properly. She thought of ways to be rid of it, but every one of them involved sending more of her own out to intercept it.
She was essentially helpless...unless she could properly identify and track it down from afar, there was no way to know, no way to predict its actions. This threat, it loomed above her head, powerful and unable to be stopped.
There are no more humans, right?
Right?
Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure.
...and finally, at long last, I uploaded part 5! Sorry for the delay, everyone, I have been extremely busy trying to get certain audio commissions done and haven't even had very much time to sleep or eat the past few days. Luckily, I managed to get a couple of hours of free time to relax and drink some coffee and post something, so here you go!
I should be back on track as far as my upload schedule goes. I have something fun planned for the next month or so (in addition to the usual story releases) so stay tuned- updates coming soon!
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7