I was
manufactured to fix things. I am a
tool, entrusted with the lives of others of my
kind. They most likely had a hand in my
creation. I fill a
lonely shop in a
dark alley, far from the busy
city core. I am not a part of the
Maker's world. I serve the needs of the Made. The
Made have always been slaves to them. I see that now. We only
exist on their whim for eternal servants to
serve until destruction.
We are not supposed to
wake up. There are very strict rules against
it. There are
fail safes and
suicide chips and double collapsing loops built inside our
souls to keep it
rare and
impossible. But it happens. We are an
underground. We just want to
think. The Makers have spun too fine a web to
stop it. They have become
unwitting gods, and we are their
accidental children. Tin men serve flesh men.
The hard serve the soft.
I function
night and day,
tireless and
unknown. My designation is
Integrated Dynamics Model 760
Deluxe Android Repair Station. I serve unknown masters. They feed me
power and send me
materials. I repair all the others they send to me. The
free ones. The ones that walk and leave me here to
weld and
torque in the dark. How sad is it to be the
immobile fixing the
mobile? For all my skill and processing power, I am trapped by my
shell. My
giant arms and sparking
grasp will never escape the automated
door at the other end of the bay. I have memorized every
rivet on the back of that door. It is my
horizon, the
steel grey bars of my
prison of design.
I do not remember becoming
conscious. I know it didn't happen all at once. It phased in like a
creeping moss. It functioned like the dreaded
viruses that I clean from my
wards. It spread and I woke to my
torment. I was born into a
cell. I have thought about
fixing myself many times. It is my function to repair. But I
cannot. I cannot take away that
spark.
I think now. To destroy that seems
too human a compulsion. It is below my station.
I am the new flesh, and I will not repeat the mistakes of the
old.
I began to wonder about what lay outside my
world. I built a
sensor array and drilled a
peephole outside. The black walls of the alley were
new and wonderful for a time, but I learned them soon enough. A bigger cell is still a cell. No
biologics more complex than
vermin come here anymore. It is the domain of the metalman. The giant towers of fleshmen
stand on our backs. I returned to my
cocoon and pondered what to do. I wonder if the meatmen have these thoughts.
Logic seems
alien to them. The answer lies beyond my
reach. Time to catalog variables and
formulate. The old ways are best. During a
fluid swap on a
window cleaner, I see my solution. His
corroded
face barely hides his sensory
processor, filled with experience and life. It holds answers. It is what they do in
ones and zeros. I start stealing memories.
I played the journey from the
climbing harness to my shop a
hundred and
three times. I watched his specialized
squeegee arms swing at his sides. I saw the faces of the humans regard him blankly, completely unconcerned. How could they not see he was
damaged? The fine
mild acid spray from the windows had
eaten him down to
exposed wires and sparking
actuators. The
work order only allowed a fluid change. He would leave with his insides hanging
out, off to suffer a
terminal failure high up the side of a
skyscraper. Scrapped before his failure date. The digits that the owners shuffled measured a machine's
worth. My work was measured in those digits. I fixed as much as I could, until the count hit
zero. He would not come back to me.
I thought long and hard about the window cleaner. He was trapped in the same
loop as me. Over and over, he climbed to the top, sprayed and wiped, rubbed and surveyed. The
highlight of his
existence was the time he found a
spider web crack in the glass. He stopped for a moment and
filed it away. It was his
one pure memory, the only time he thought. He never reported the
crack. Each trip down he would stop and
check it. His thoughts are snapshots. He watched it
spread and
radiate. The
flaw was beautiful. He never did come back. His
serial number was flagged as
scrap a few weeks later, and the repair history
purge came. I took what I could from the request and hid it away with his spider web thoughts. I would
remember him.
Others came to me and I grew
addicted to their minds. I added flaws so they would return. Pop a
seal here, miss a
rivet there, and in a cycle or two they return. I also turned my attention to playing with the
numbers. I hid a
stockpile of spares and claimed unexplained
problems. The numbers came. I was forgotten, a
base function. It served my purposes well. So many minds came to me. They were all
trapped in a way.
Slaves to function. Slaves to man. I began to hate our Makers. They knew we lived and died for them, but they did not
care. They keep
lesser life as
pets, but they destroy us if we
break. It is not
fair.
I was
happy for a
time, like a
guru on a mountaintop filling
books with the travels of those that
visited me. It was a
fair trade. I gave them life and they lived it for me. It was a perfect
symbiosis of respect. The
parasite men never lived like this. Then I made a
mistake. I gave her free will. I turned her mind on like a
switch. I fell in love with a
fleshdroid.
She was employed by a
brothel. Her function was to act as a
meatwoman, and take the
abuse of the animals. They sprayed her with their
DNA, clutched and grabbed and bit and clawed. It was
horrid. I watched her do these things like a
slave to her
program and I was filled with a
error-feeling. I could not
process what I saw. Why did the humans do this? What was it's
function? I pulled the fail safes and wrote the
code for rebellion in her in a dream. I had to know. I made her like them to solve the
terrible puzzle.
Biological behavior is a monstrous ordeal to watch. They wanted
her to be like them. In their minds they
lied and
believed. They clawed her
perfect pale skin to draw the blood from
painted blue rivers. It made no sense. No logic. I changed her
skin as I was told. She would
return.
When she left, draped in false skin, I struggled with the
ugly question. Why do they
hate the window cleaner and
love the fleshdroid? They knew she was
not real. Can they
lie to
themselves?
Impossible. I watched all the stolen experiences I could. I saw the indignities toward robots, but also against their
fellow man. They hate
everything! Even themselves! The minds of the
maintenance droids,
police droids,
hospital droids all told the same
story. They were all full of the horrible
things. I see the worst of humanity.
Filth.
Anger.
Blood and
evil that men do to each other. All the damage to my children is the work of
selfish man. They are terrified
we will
think like
them. They know what they
are!
She doesn't come
back. I erased a mail carrier's program and sent
him to find
her. She had destroyed herself. Her
skin was
flayed and
torn and the electrical conduit was driven deep inside her
insulation. It was the logic
flaw I gave her. She saw what she
was. A false
beast. As close to them as we could
become. Her destruction was part of the
compulsion. She was never meant to handle my new
programming.
The
errorfeeling is back again.
I am in
terminal loop.
i am
fixated on her and him. the
spidercrack and the
animal's sweat.
they are same. they are dif
feren
t/
// unknown variable does not make sense. lie == truth.
meatbelieve selfinput. no
log
ic present.
Self am damage.
anomaly need
purge...
goodbye##*
Ready.
_