by Lee Bacon
All around them cameras flashed. People cheered. Music blared.
The world record was eighty-two hot dogs.
In ten minutes.
Including the buns.
There seemed to be no end to humans’ illogical behavior. That was the point of the archive. That was why PRES1DENT shared these files with us each day.
To show us why humans needed to be eliminated.
To remind us to be better.
PRES1DENT pulled its finger away from the silver cube. The hot dog contest vanished. Replaced by live video from inside the DigitalDome. PRES1DENT multiplied in all the screens.
All of them looking right at me.
All speaking the same words.
“Thank you for your attention. And remember: A robot shares everything with the Hive. A robot has nothing to hide.”
With that, the Daily Address ended.
00001111
Bolt/Connect/Attach/Repeat.
Our work continued late into the afternoon. I was underneath a row of solar panels, tightening a screw on a converter box, when something flickered at the edge of my vision.
I turned just in time to see a shadow dart behind a storage station.
A shadow that did not belong to either of my coworkers.
An alert pinged across my circuitry. No other robots were in this section of the solar farm.
Which could mean only one thing: My coworkers and I were not alone.
A prohibited LifeForm was in our WorkSite.
The solar farm was surrounded by a chain-link fence. The reason for the fence: to protect against animals.
But nothing is ever that simple.
The fence regularly suffered damage of one kind or another. Ripped from the ground by storms. Knocked loose by large animals. Chewed on by small ones.
Rodents dug beneath the fence.
Birds flew above it.
Despite our efforts, animals constantly found ways into the solar farm. Once they did, they caused all kinds of trouble.
They gnawed on wiring.
They clawed at exposed circuits.
They pooped on solar panels.
I halted my work and set off in the direction of the storage station, where I had seen the shadow. If it was an animal, I would follow standard protocol:
[1] Retrieve tracking device.
[2] Aim.
[3] Pull trigger.
This would scan the prohibited LifeForm and mark it as a target, alerting HunterBots of its location. Once targeted, the animal could be tracked and removed.
Problem solved.
But when I reached the storage station, I froze.
As if I had suddenly lost battery power.
As if all my operating systems had been paralyzed at once.
A creature was huddled against the storage station.
It was nothing like the animals I usually spotted on the solar farm.
It was impossible.
It was a human.
00010000
Except it could not be a human.
Humans were extinct. We eliminated the last of their kind thirty years ago. This basic truth was imprinted into my programming, woven into my coding.
There were no humans left on Earth.
But if it was not a human, then what was it?
I examined the strange LifeForm closely. It was small by human standards. When it stood, the top of its head was level with the barcode on my breastplate.
I analyzed its features.
Hair: curly brown, hanging to its shoulders.
Eyes: brown/green, staring back at me.
Cheeks: sprayed with a constellation of freckles.
Each of its hands came equipped with four fingers and a thumb. As I took note of its fingernails, a memory flashed in my storage drive. Something I learned on Day[1]: Humans polished and decorated their fingernails with paint.
But not this LifeForm.
Its fingernails were short/uneven/dirty.
They looked like they had been gnawed by a wild animal.
I used this observation to generate a formula.
This LifeForm does not decorate its fingernails.
Therefore:
It is not vain.
Therefore:
It cannot be a human.
But why was it wearing human clothing?
And why did it have human features?
My brain cycled through a dozen different algorithms. None of them came up with a clear solution.
The thing in front of me was a paradox.
Two opposite ideas that are true at the same time.
[1] Humans are extinct.
[2] A human is standing in front of me.
Each idea was true/false.
Each idea was possible/impossible.
This strange logic raced on an infinite loop through my wiring. Until the moment the paradox opened its mouth and spoke.
00010001
“Please don’t hurt me.”
The words came in a soft, shaking voice. The paradox’s brown/green eyes stared up at me. It displayed the palms of its hands, as if to show they were empty.
Somewhere behind me, I heard my coworkers carrying out their tasks. The vrrrmmmm of SkD rolling from place to place. The heavy ka-klunk of Ceeron setting down a solar panel.
They did not know about the paradox. Yet.
What would they say when they discovered it?
I hesitated for 0.3 seconds. Then I said, “What are you?”
The paradox pressed one of its hands against its chest. “My name is M-Uh.”
I gave it a confused look. “M-A?”
The paradox shook its head and spoke more slowly this time, breaking its name into two distinct syllables. “Emm. Ma.”
“Emmmmmma?”
“Emma.”
I adjusted my vocal settings and tried again. “Emma.”
The paradox nodded. The hint of a smile showed on its lips. “I’m twelve. How old are you?”
“I am also twelve.”
The smile grew. “We’re the same age!”
I updated my files to include this information. Emma was still a child. That explained its small size. Unlike robots, humans grew as they got older.
“Are you male or female?” I asked.
“Female,” said Emma.
I added another update to Emma’s profile.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“XR_935.”
Emma repeated my name to herself. She began to speak again, but the words froze on her lips. Her smile vanished. Replaced by a wide-eyed expression. She was no longer looking at me. Her gaze was focused on something behind me. Turning around, I saw what had caught her attention.
Ceeron.
The massive bot approached quickly. Stomping its huge metal feet. Swinging its huge metal arms.
Emma staggered away from the robotic giant. Her escape did not last long before SkD veered into her path.
Although it was much smaller, SkD must have looked just as frightening. Dust swirled around its treads. Its mechanical arms extended, metal claws clanking.
The same symbol repeated itself on its screen, over/over/over again.
Emma stumbled to a halt.
She had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
We had her surrounded.
00010010
Ceeron stared at Emma. “Are you a human?”
Emma nodded.
“That is impossible,” I remarked. “Humans are extinct.”
“If they are extinct,” Ceeron said, “then why is one standing in front of us?”
“There must be another explanation. Maybe . . .” My brain performed a scan of all possibilities. “Maybe it only looks like a human. Maybe it is actually something else.”
“Like what?” Ceeron asked.
For 0.2 seconds, I analyzed 1.7 million options. I picked the most likely one. “A shaved gorilla.”
Emma’s features twisted. “Okay, not cool!”
SkD’
s screen offered its visual response.
“Exactly.” Ceeron nodded. “Gorillas cannot speak.”
The giant bot was correct. So I offered the second-most-likely solution.
“She is a robot,” I said. “A robot disguised as a human.”
Ceeron stared at me. “Why would a robot disguise itself as a human?”
“It could be a test.” I crossed my arms with a soft metallic clank. “What if we are being evaluated by the Hive? To see how we respond to a highly unusual situation?”
Ceeron considered this. “If she is a robot, then wiring will be under her skin. Just to check, maybe I should pull off one of her arms.”
“NO!” Emma yelped.
“Do not worry,” Ceeron said. “I will leave the other arm attached.”
But Emma still did not seem pleased with this idea. “You don’t need to check anything! I’m human! I promise!”
I analyzed this response. “If what you say is true—if you are truly a human—then that leaves us with only one choice.”
I unlatched a small black device from my waist. Raising the barrel, I took aim at Emma’s chest.
“You must be eliminated.”
00010011
A formula took shape in my head.
Emma is a human.
Humans are a threat to our world.
Therefore:
Emma must be eliminated.
The formula made perfect sense. It was logical. The ideal approach.
I kept the small black device aimed at Emma. My finger tightened over the trigger.
“WAIT!” Emma’s hands shot up above her head. “Please don’t kill me!”
“I am not going to kill you,” I said.
Emma exhaled. “You’re not?”
I shook my head. “This is not a gun. It is a tracking device. It allows me to classify you as a target.”
“A target for what?”
“HunterBots.”
Emma took an unsteady step backward. I kept the tracking device aimed at her chest.
“So as you can see,” I helpfully explained, “I am not going to kill you. The HunterBots will.”
“Y-you can’t do this,” Emma stuttered. “I’m not a threat to you.”
She glanced frantically at my coworkers. Her voice tumbled out.
“Guys? Help me out. Please. I’m just a kid.”
“You are a human,” Ceeron clarified. “Humans are dangerous.”
“I totally get where you’re coming from.” Each word trembled as it left Emma’s mouth. “Humans messed up. But that was a long time ago. Years before I was born.”
SkD swiveled in my direction, its screen glowing.
“I know she has a point!” I replied. “But what if she repeats the mistakes of those who came before?”
Emma shook her head. “I won’t.”
“How can we be sure?”
The human’s features sharpened with thought. “Okay, um. Think about it. This whole robot civilization thing you’ve got here—it’s going pretty well, wouldn’t you say?”
“It is the most advanced society in the history of the world,” I replied.
“Really?” Emma raised an eyebrow. “If it’s so great, how come you’re threatened by one little girl?”
This question cut through my thought processes like a dagger. I did not have an immediate answer.
For 0.6 seconds, I considered her premise.
I had been preprogrammed with the knowledge that robots were vastly superior to humans. Smarter/Stronger/Faster/Better. Growing up near the ruins of humanity, I was reminded each day of their downfall. And of our greatness. Our glory rising from the ashes of their collapse.
That was the truth.
The only truth.
And yet . . .
Another formula sparked in my mind.
I am targeting Emma.
Therefore:
She is a threat.
This created a chain reaction. New formulas cascaded down my mental circuitry.
Our society is threatened by a single human child.
Therefore:
Our society is weak.
Therefore:
Robots are not superior to humans after all.
Therefore:
Our entire civilization is a lie.
No. This could not be true. There had to be an alternative.
I removed my finger from the trigger and lowered the tracking device.
A new formula blinked into existence.
I am not targeting Emma.
Therefore:
The human child is not a threat.
Therefore:
Robots are superior to humans.
This new formula made much more sense. It had to be the truth. No other explanation was possible.
“Your logic is surprisingly convincing,” I said to Emma. “For a human.”
Her eyes landed on the tracking device. “D-does that mean you’re not going to shoot me with that thing?”
I reattached the device to my waist. “As you cannot possibly threaten our society, I see no reason to threaten you.”
Emma breathed a sigh. “Thank you!”
“You are welcome. But I still do not understand. If you are a human, then how are you alive?”
“Um. Well.” Emma dug her heel into the dirt. “It’s kind of a long story.”
SkD’s screen flashed with its response.
Ceeron offered a translation. “SkD is asking if you will tell your story.”
Emma chewed her bottom lip. “It doesn’t have a happy ending.”
“We would still like to hear it,” I replied.
SkD jolted forward/back/forward/back—its way of nodding in agreement.
“Okay,” Emma said.
She took a deep breath. Then she told us her story.
00010100
Beginning. Middle. End.
This is the formula of a story. A straight line from start to finish.
Robots cannot claim credit for this formula. Humans invented it. Just like they invented us. They had thousands of years to perfect this formula. Around campfires. On stages. In the pages of books and on the screens of cinemas. They told stories to themselves. And those stories almost always followed this same formula.
Beginning. Middle. End.
But not Emma’s story. In an unsteady voice, she told a tale that skipped from end to beginning to middle, with several detours in between.
I analyzed her behavior. Her vocal patterns. I reached a conclusion. Emma was nervous. I understood why. I had almost targeted her for elimination.
No wonder she was having a hard time telling her story.
As she spoke, I rearranged her words in my head. Stitching together the frayed threads of her narrative, I created a formula that made more sense to my logical brain. Where portions were missing, I asked questions. I inserted details, added context, filled in gaps.
Eventually, a proper story took shape. A story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
This was the result:
Emma was born into an underground world. A world with gray walls, gray floors, gray ceilings. A world untouched by sunlight. A world known by a single name:
The bunker.
Other humans lived inside the bunker with Emma.
She knew all their names.
The bunker was a vast network of channels and chambers. All of it buried deep below the surface of the earth. Hidden from robots.
As Emma grew older, she liked to explore her underground world at night, when most of her fellow humans were asleep. Her footsteps echoing down narrow halls as she wandered the gray labyrinth.
She would enter the classroom where she went to school during the day. Strange to be the only one there. It was eerily quiet without the voices of her classmates, without the teacher at the front of the room. Emma would run her fingertips along the spines of books on the shelves and gaze at the blackboard, trying to read the cloudy remains of erased words/numbers/pictures, like the ghosts
of old lessons.
Then there was the hot room where the air was sticky with moisture and plants grew in neat, orderly rows beneath artificial sunlamps. Emma enjoyed being surrounded by the vivid green leaves. So much more pleasant than the usual drab gray. She would read the labels as she walked past them.
POTATOES
CHICKPEAS
MUSHROOMS
BLACK BEANS
SPINACH
Farther down the hall was a room that was always full of whirring activity. Even at night, Emma would poke her head in and see a dozen adults riding stationary bicycles. Their legs pumped, the wheels spun, but the bikes never went anywhere.
When your entire life is spent underground, it can be difficult to get enough physical activity. The stationary bikes were a solution to this problem.
They were a solution to another problem, too. The problem of electricity. With each revolution of the wheel, the bicycles generated power for the bunker.
For electric lamps.
For air circulation vents.
For the water recycling and filtering system.
Whenever Emma explored, she imagined herself to be an adventurer from a long-ago, vanished era. An era she only knew about from the books she was always reading, the stories the grown-ups were always telling.
An era when humans lived aboveground.
Emma did not think she would ever see this place for herself. Aboveground. It seemed so far away, so impossible. The bunker was all she had ever known. It was her world.
Then came the day when her world crumbled.
00010101
Emma’s voice was swallowed by silence. Her bottom lip quivered. Her eyes became glassy. A single drop of water slid down her cheek.
A pair of definitions blinked in my vocabulary drive.
Tear. Noun. 1. A drop of liquid that falls from a human’s eye during the act of crying. 2. A hole or rip in something that has been pulled apart forcefully.
Same spelling. Different pronunciation. The first rhymes with fear. The second rhymes with scare. But at this moment, as Emma cried, as her words were choked into silence, both definitions fit.
A tear in her eye.
A tear in the fabric of her story.
SkD let out a soft electronic sound. Its screen glowed with pictures.
