by Ken Liu
We were unloaded from the ship and taken to an operating garage on the Gem. As the droids hummed and thrummed and beeped around me in confusion, I kept my audioreceptors open and gradually learned more details about our new life of servitude.
The cloud-covered orange planet had such a thick atmosphere that sunlight never reached the surface. Acid rained from the clouds, and zigzagging lightning flashes provided the only illumination in the eternal darkness. The air near the surface was so weighed down by the pressure that it existed in a form that was closer to a thick soup. The surface of the planet was barren, lifeless, and hot enough to melt lead and tin.
It was called the Deep. Nothing lived down there.
“Welcome to the Gem!” Lord Kluleyeke paced back and forth in the garage before us, looking for all the world like a lecturing professor. “I know that many of you are scared, and I am here to put you at ease.”
I didn’t trust him for even one millisecond.
“I believe deeply in giving droids like you—regardless of your level of intelligence—a basic understanding of your role. In this way, you can appreciate the noble purpose for which you’ve been liberated from your previous lives of false freedom, which was mere aimless drudgery.
“The Gem is a haven for lords and ladies and magnates and oligarchs belonging to multiple species. Far beyond the reach of petty bureaucrats and small-minded laws, only those who prize real freedom make their homes here.
“Dressed in the finest fabrics gathered from a thousand worlds and fed the tastiest morsels harvested from a hundred systems, we nobles of the Gem spend our days floating from glass habitat to glass habitat, discussing poetry, debating philosophy, composing art and music. Our speech is elegant; our gestures are beautiful. Here, we can rule in a manner that mob-run democracies won’t allow, perform experiments that cowardly officials won’t permit, put into practice social institutions that pedantic judges and regulators think are beyond the pale—”
A few technicians in masks came to retrieve one of the droids. The droid, a humanoid singer, fell to the floor in terror. “Please! Please! I don’t want an operation! I don’t want to be wiped. Please! I’ll do anything—”
One of the technicians silenced him with a jolt from a portable zapper. They dragged him away to the operating room on the other side of a low partition.
Lord Kluleyeke, displeased at having his speech interrupted by the outburst, waited until the operating crew and their victim had all disappeared before continuing.
“You may be asking: How can the nobles of the Gem maintain this beautiful oasis of true civilization when they orbit such an inhospitable planet?”
We listened to him explain that the answer to the Gem’s prosperity was found on the Deep—or more precisely, within the Deep. The unique geology of the planet created a series of acid-etched underground caverns and fissures. In those, the radioactive heat from the interior of the planet and the blend of minerals leached from the soil by the acid rain formed deposits of a mineraloid found nowhere else in the galaxy. Endowed with unique electrical and optical properties, the material was prized both as a luxurious decoration and an industrial ingredient for experimental technology. Dealers called those gemstones tear opals because they were shaped like teardrops and shimmered with a rainbow sheen.
A few times a year, trading ships that dared to brave the journey through the Unknown Regions docked at the Gem, where they unloaded rare art, antiques from the oldest settlements of various species, the latest fashion of worlds as diverse as Coruscant and Naboo, and exotic delicacies curated by the best chefs. In exchange, the nobles of the Gem gave them a few crates of tear opals, and the ships quietly left.
I imagined that the merchants did not ask how the opals were mined, and they probably avoided mentioning the fleet of dagger-shaped cruisers around the Gem.
“You probably saw the Gem’s raiding fleet on the way in,” Lord Kluleyeke continued in his grating, clicking voice. “They’re armed with the most powerful weaponry that could be purchased, legally or otherwise. And all that preparation, my dears, is for your benefit.
“For you see, my sweet mechanical drudges, the mines of the Deep are harsh places, unfit for the refined bodies and minds of organics. The acid, pressure, and heat mean that even hardened construction droids don’t survive for more than a few months. To keep up the production of tear opals that support the high-minded life of the lords and ladies of the Gem, we must bring in a constant supply of fresh droids liberated from the rest of the galaxy.
“Do not think of yourselves as sacrifices or slaves! Rather, I urge you to think of yourselves as construction material for the glory of real civilization! How can philosophers and artists and great lords and ladies be bound by laws made by those with no vision? How can new ideas come about when brilliant minds are confined by petty rules and ‘you shall nots’? Just as we must crush and grind up base ore to extract the precious tear opals embedded in it, we must also be willing to crush and grind up lesser creatures to extract a more purified existence for higher minds. Your hard work and willing submission are required to free us to live and think in comfort, delivering truly novel ideas and spiritual insights to the galaxy!”
He stopped, as if expecting us to cheer.
The technicians emerged from behind the partition, the humanoid singing droid shuffling after them. He had a glazed look in his photoreceptors. He no longer protested.
One of the technicians removed her mask, and I saw that it was Lady Eekee. “I don’t know why you bother with this speech,” she said impatiently. “It never works. Next!”
They took me behind the partition. I fully expected a memory wipe, and I considered it a mercy. But the truth was far worse.
Since the slavers of the Gem wanted to take advantage of the factory programming from our manufacturers and the experiences and skills we had accumulated in our previous lives, Lady Eekee had devised a unique solution.
As I was restrained on the operating bench, Lady Eekee opened the access panel to my most fundamental circuits and cut away the safety wires, including the empathy circuits that allowed me to work safely with other droids and organics on a dangerous construction site. She soldered in a new chip and then replaced the access panel and welded it shut.
Horrible thoughts came into my processors: the pleasure of inflicting suffering, the joy of delivering pain, contempt for fairness, absolute obedience, complete servitude. I recoiled from these alien intentions, but I could not get rid of them. They intruded into my processors and dominated my pathways.
“Don’t you feel lucky?” said Lady Eekee as she gazed at me with pleasure. “The override chips are expensive, and not every droid gets one. We install these only on the servants and entertainers kept in the Gem and on enforcer droids like you. You’ll make sure that the other slaves do as they’re told on the Deep.”
Probing the override chip with my self-diagnostic routines, I was repulsed as well as fascinated by its design. It swapped pain and pleasure pathways, bypassed fairness evaluation circuits with self-interest accumulators, and adjusted obedience patterns to have first priority. The chip’s programming approach was simple, direct, almost crude. It betrayed an arrogant confidence.
I can see obvious weaknesses in the logic in the chip. If only—
“Oh, that’s by design,” said Lady Eekee as she glanced at the monitor showing the spikes in my cognitive field. “I want you to see exactly how you’re being changed, but unable to do a thing to resist. I want you to understand that I know the chip has obvious holes, and that I don’t care, because you’ll never have a chance to exploit them. I find such an approach to be extra effective in inducing learned helplessness.”
My shovel arms were replaced with dual high-voltage shockers so I could hurt other droids. Extra shielding was packed around my access panel so that even if the rest of my chassis broke down, the override chip would still be intact. It was my job to put down any droid rebellions, to use pain to compel the slaves to do
our masters’ bidding.
I didn’t forget who I was, and all my skills and programming remained accessible. But I was helpless against the compulsion of the dark thoughts in my processors. I corralled the other droids onto a transport skiff. The little silver vehicle detached itself from the Gem and descended into the thick atmosphere of the Deep.
Instead of gliding down through the air like a bird, the skiff bucked and dipped like a scaled whale diving into the ocean of an aquatic planet. The air was so thick that the skiff’s wings were retracted to resemble the narrow fins of a fish, and the autopilot carefully navigated around the thunderous roars of powerful lightning bolts that flashed in the darkness of the soupy atmosphere.
“Oh, we are doomed! The Maker will not be able to save us!” one of the protocol droids moaned, her voice digitizer quivering as she gazed out the tiny porthole at the zigzagging lightning bolts, each several hundred kilometers long. A single strike could have vaporized the tiny ship.
Droids not equipped with voice digitizers chirped and bleeped and whistled in binary, but their terror was obvious even to those who did not speak the language. The plucky silver-and-blue R2 unit, whose name was R2-D2, tried to cheer up his fellow slaves with a series of singsong chirps about the courage of mechanical beings, but few joined in. I wanted to, yet the dark currents in my processors would not let me.
Finally, the skiff landed at the entrance of the mining complex, a dome-shaped structure built to withstand the crushing pressure of the atmosphere. I herded the droids off the skiff and into the mines.
The enforcers (myself included) drove the large construction droids into the tunnels that delved deep into the interior of the planet, where their job was to wade through underground acid pools and blast the hard rock walls to remove chunks of ore in which the tear opals were embedded. The temperature at those depths was close to five hundred degrees standard. Combined with the pressure and the corrosion, those conditions meant that no organic creatures, regardless of what kind of protective suits they wore, would survive more than a few hours. Even the thick metallic skins of the construction droids wouldn’t last more than a few months. As the acid ate through the shells and struts, delicate wires in the limbs were exposed, and the construction droids howled from the unbearable pain.
We enforcers then conscripted the maintenance and mechanic droids into the tunnels with low-grade replacement shell parts made from local minerals to patch the damaged construction droids. But such hasty and inadequate repairs could only lengthen the lives of the construction droids by at most a few weeks. The labor droids all knew that there was no hope for them, as the broken shells and half-dissolved skeletons of deactivated slaves floating in the acid lakes reminded them. Once a droid entered the mining tunnels of the Deep, it never left again. Its very last spark of life was destined to be extinguished in the darkness of the mines, whether crushed by falling rocks, eaten away by acid, or snuffed out by accidental explosions.
We dispatched the protocol droids, entertainment droids, and home service droids that the lords of the Gem had grown tired of to the sifting facilities near the entrance to the tunnels. There, carts filled with crushed ore had to be combed through for the rare glitter of tear opals. The delicate fingers and highly tuned sensors of these light-service droids made them perfect for the task. But the acid in which the ore was drenched eventually ate through their synthetic skin, as well, and the exposed pain receptors made them scream and wail. Without mercy, we prodded those droids to keep on working, with the threat of electric shocks. And when the hands of the sifting droids finally fell apart from their insufferable work or their photoreceptors finally cracked under the pressure and heat, we tossed them into the acid lakes, where their shrieks soon drowned.
I wanted to jump into the acid lakes myself, to end the darkness that shrouded my processors. But the compulsion installed by the cursed override chip would not let me. I howled silently with rage at what I had become, powerless to resist.
R2-D2, with his highly sensitive photoreceptor, was assigned to be one of the sifters. He refused to do as he was told.
I had to deliver shock after shock. Only after eighty-six pulses had scorched his shell and made him scream in an incoherent stream of bleeps did he finally give in.
He directed a series of contemptuous beeps at me and then stumbled unsteadily over to the conveyor belt of crushed ore. As he picked out the tear opals with a manipulator arm, he trembled.
I moved six meters away to examine a shrieking singing droid whose right hand had been crushed by a particularly large piece of ore rock. Idly, I sliced off the crushed hand so the singing droid could return to work with his remaining appendage. I felt no empathy at his high-pitched screams—how could I when the circuits responsible for such feelings had been surgically severed?
Behind me, R2-D2 emitted a series of low bleeps and whistles, full of defiance.
The other droids didn’t even look up as they mechanically went on with their work. R2-D2 was muttering about his master, and it seemed like he had still not given up hope that he would somehow be rescued. But the other droids knew that was nothing but a useless delusion. No droid had ever been rescued from the Deep.
With a start, I saw that I had been using my shocker arms to shape the rock that had crushed the singing droid’s hand. The shockers were not precise enough for detailed work, but I could see the vague outlines of a squat grading droid in the rock. It resembled the form of Z5-TXT. I wondered if she was all right.
A wave of dark compulsion surged through my circuits, and I crushed the form of my friend with my treads.
Again, Captain U’rum’s sleek slaver ship docked at the Gem.
Again, Lord Kluleyeke and Lady Eekee went aboard to inspect the haul and to haggle.
This time, I was with them. I had apparently been such a good enforcer that they wanted me to wrangle the new shipment. I felt dead inside. The only way for me to survive, it seemed, was to let the darkness overwhelm me, to lose myself in it. It was impossible to live with a conscience, so I had to bury it, to suffocate it, to become what they wanted me to become.
The nobles stopped halfway down the catwalk as Eekee’s eyes were drawn to a silver humanoid droid in one of the cages.
“What an odd machine!” she exclaimed.
I shared her opinion. The droid was shaped like a protocol droid, but instead of the svelte figure sported by most protocol droids, the arms, legs, and torso of this droid were all much thicker than usual, as though he had been pumped full of pressurized gas or was modeled on a particularly muscular human.
“He’s seen some use,” said Kluleyeke. His antennae crossed in a frown. “Look at the mismatched copper plating on the arms, and so many of the skin plates look loose. A bit misshapen, don’t you think?”
“Probably suffered a lot of abuse,” said Eekee. “And what a ridiculous paint job! Why would anyone paint five red stripes on a protocol droid’s arms? Captain U’rum, wherever did you get such an antique? I hope the staff of the museum that had him won’t be heartbroken.” She laughed in a way that showed she was hoping for the exact opposite.
“This one was actually more of a volunteer,” said U’rum. “I was drinking at a tavern on Teriq Noi when he approached me to ask for a job. I tried to dissuade him at first, telling him that I wasn’t interested, but he wouldn’t leave me alone, boasting that he’s an excellent musician, skilled in the nose flute and wrist harp. He wouldn’t even stop pestering me when I left the tavern. I remembered my conversation with Lady Eekee and decided to cage him.”
Eekee laughed. “Captain U’rum, I’m impressed. I think I’ve only mentioned my thoughts concerning musicians once to you.”
“What are you talking about?” clicked Kluleyeke.
“Lady Eekee has a theory that droids skilled with musical instruments make particularly good sifters,” U’rum said. “The manipulation of strings or columns of air to produce music requires a delicate touch.”
Kluleyeke waved his
pincers impatiently. “That’s a fine theory, but I don’t see how a weakling like this is going to survive long enough to justify the price of passage. Look at the seams between his plates! Look at—”
“I am fluent in more than thirty-six million forms of communication!” said the droid, speaking for the first time as his blue photoreceptors lit up. His voice was a rich baritone, and it didn’t sound at all like it came out of an audio digitizer. I thought the protocol droid sounded miffed, as if he was…offended by Kluleyeke’s dismissal. The cognitive circuits in that body must be more advanced than his form suggested.
Kluleyeke stared at him in disbelief. Then he turned to Captain U’rum.
U’rum shrugged. “I didn’t put a restraint harness on him because he said his circuits are too delicate, and he promised to behave. In my experience, these droids are incapable of lying.”
Kluleyeke raised his chittering voice. “But you know how dangerous it is to leave these droids unrestrained. What if he had been planning to take over your ship? What if—”
U’rum interrupted. “How I do my job is none of your business—”
“But how you do your job affects the Gem! Leaving him free gives him opportunities for sabotage. What if he were being used as bait to infiltrate the Gem? What if he had planted a transponder on your ship? The authorities or a syndicate could track him straight here—”
“Relax! I wasn’t reckless. The ship’s shielding won’t let through any signals. It can get quite lonely on these trips without someone to talk to. He’s a good storyteller and quite amusing, if a bit verbose.”
“I do think I can discharge that description very well,” said the silver protocol droid, pronouncing each word fastidiously. “For example, did you know that Senator Amidala of Naboo was an accomplished poet in her youth? One time—”
I could see that Kluleyeke was about to jump on the droid to make him shut up. Lady Eekee stepped in. “Regardless, the protocol droid is here, and we can try him out in the mines. If I’m right, U’rum can focus on recruiting more musicians for the workforce in the future. And if I’m wrong, it will be a valuable lesson learned. Now, let’s talk compensation.”
