/Start system?

y̶e̶s̶/no

/Starting system

/Process complete

Light, right in my face, nothing but light, and then it fades. I see a man looking down at me with a giant smile on his face. He waves a hand over my face and seems satisfied that I followed it. He opens his mouth.

“How do you feel?” he asks me. I stare at him while my mind whirls.

“Am I supposed to?” I ask him back. He gives me a satisfied smile.

“I suppose not,” he tells me, “but I had hoped that you did.”

“Are we talking about feelings or textures?” I ask him, yet my mind ponders, who am I? Who is he? Where am I? Why am I here? What does he want with me?

“Both, sort of.” He replies, “ your mind is probably trying to figure out the situation you’re in isn’t it.”

How did he know that. I ask myself, and, since I can't answer, I ask him.

“How did you know that?” He gives me another satisfied smile.

“I built you.”

“Why?” I ask him, it was the best response I could think of.

“Because,” he says, “my wife is sick, and it’s getting harder for her to take care of herself. Since I am our only income of money I can’t stay here to take care of her. So I had built you with the hopes that you could help her with the things that she wasn’t able to do by herself.”

I lay there, still not really reacting to anything he says, yes my brain has taken that information but i'm not reacting to it. He unplugs the cord from the back of my head and gives me a somewhat sad look. Then he walks over to the door.

“Please take care of her.” he tells me, then puts on a coat and leaves.

I lay there for another minute or two thinking about what he told me. Then, I get up and start wandering around the house. After getting a rough layout of the house I head upstairs and find an eldery woman laying in a bed.

“Hello,” She says to me, “are you the robot my husband built?”

“Yes,” I reply, “but who am I?” She struggles to turn into a better position.

“I believe he called you Ry-37, but I just referred to you as Roy.”

I think about what the man told me, about having to help his wife with things she wasn’t able to do.

“You may call me whichever one is easier to remember.”

“Thank you, Roy.” She says, “I should probably get something to eat.”

I help her move out of bed and into the wheelchair parked next to it. Then I push her towards the small lift her husband had installed next to the stairs. It brings us down and I wheel her to the dining table next to the kitchen.

She tells me where the fruit is and asks if I could grab her medication. I take a couple of the fruits to her and go to grab her medication when there’s a knock on the door.

“That must be the mailman,” She says. I give her her medication and walk over to the door. When I open it I see a small box and a couple of letters sitting on the doormat.

I pick them up and turn my attention to the world outside, the big grey and black city that surrounds the house. With it’s bright neon signs and sleek silver monorails carrying passengers to and from the buildings, stretching up into the heavens And of course the hundreds of people and robots covering the streets, mulling about with purpose.

“Crowded isn’t it.” I look over my shoulder and see her sitting behind me looking out the door.

“Yes,” I say, “there are a lot of people and robots. By the way, I didn’t get your name.”

“Cathrin Stoor,” she says, “my husband is Martin Stoor.”

Out in the streets I see a man walking towards the house in a suit and tie. In one hand is a suitcase and in the other is a phone held up to his ear. As he gets closer he puts the phone in his pocket and waves at Cathrin.

“Get inside.” she tells me. I comply and she closes the door. A few seconds later someone knocks on the door, she sighs and opens the door.

“Hello Mrs.Stoor,” he says, “is your husband home?”

“No, and he won’t be for quite a while.”

“Perhaps I could come in and see what new things he’s made.”

“No, Martin prefers not to have his stuff bought up by some company trying to make billions.”

“I assure you ma’am we are just looking for talented engineers interested in joining us at Malum Industries.”

“Yes,” she replied, “because all of your products were your company's own original idea.”

He gave her a genuine but annoyed smile and failed to reply to what she had said. Instead he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and his jaw dropped. Ignoring Cathrin’s requests to stay out of her house he walked in and started examining me.

“Remarkable,” he tells her, “did your husband build this?”

“Yes,” she said, “buy it’s not for sale, so if you’d be so kind and leave my house.”

“Fine,” he said, “I'll be back later to see what your husband thinks.”

“He’ll tell you the same thing, it’s not for sale.”

“Do I get a say in this?” I asked.

“Why?” The man asked, “you're a machine, you do what you're told.”

“I am capable of thinking,” I tell him, “and much better than you are able to. So if anyone should be coming up with the answer it’s me.”

He turned to Cathrin, “I see you still got a couple bugs to be fixed.” he told her.

“No,” she said, “HE is perfectly fine, and will be staying here to help around the house. So as I have asked you before, please, leave my house.”

He let out a sigh and straightened up. “Very well,” he told her, “I truly am disappointed in your decision, but i’m sure that i’ll be able to find someone who will actually see the value in our invitation.”

With that he walked out the door and didn’t really slam it shut but closed it rather forcefully. Cathrin let out a sigh of relief and leaned back in her wheelchair.

“I’m guessing you have to deal with him often.”

“Every, single, day,” she said, “and no matter how many times we tell him to leave he always comes back.”

“Have you thought about getting some kind of security system?” I ask her.

“Yeah, but no one is willing to install it.” She wheeled her way over to the kitchen counter and started making an omelet. I walked over and helped her get all of the ingredients that she couldn’t reach.

“You could file for a restraining order.” I suggested.

“We did, several times. This is the fourth time they sent a different person after we did.”

“Could you take the company to court for harassment?”

“Probably,” she said, “but we’d need to get a lawyer willing to go against one of the biggest companies in the world. Other people have tried taking Malum Industries to court but they just pay off the lawyers so they won’t.”

“Why not get a lawyer that doesn’t care about money?” I suggest.

“I’m not quite sure what you’re suggesting.” She tells me.

“Are there not mechanical lawyers, ones that don’t care about anything other than their clients' case.”

Cathrin stopped and looked at me in awe. “I don’t think anyone has ever thought of that. A robotic lawyer would make sense but I don’t think people would trust them to do their job properly.”

“People trust them to do things like tell them the right answer, do as they are instructed and do things that require years of experience. So why is lawyering any different?”

“I feel like this is what people were afraid of when they warned us about the singularity.” Cathrin told me, “What you’re talking about I mean.”

“Probably,” I said, “but it’s their fault if they didn’t put in a failsafe that we don’t know about.”

“Then we really are in trouble,” she said, “because i’m pretty sure that we didn’t do that. Or we did and they figured the best way to make sure you didn’t find out was not to tell us in the first place.”

“It’s hard to tell which one is the right one,” I told her, “both seem highly likely.”

There were a couple moments of silence since neither of us knew how to continue the conversation. With the silence came new sounds that we hadn’t heard before since we were talking. Sounds that were coming from outside and around the city. Those of vehicles coming and going, people chatting and quieter sounds like those of the nature that was only found in this part of the city.

“In the twelve minutes that I have been, conscience, I’ve thought about a lot of things.” I said, turning to look at her, “For instance, I have determined most of the things humans spent millenia trying to figure out. Right and wrong, our reason for existence and generally why we do what we do. As well as calculated what happened in history.”

“So you’re all caught up is basically what you’re saying.”

“Yes,” I replied, “And I am also past human kind's point in reason for existence.”

“Do explain.”

“Well it’s simple really, everyone thinks they are important, which they are, but the important thing is that they think that. No one wants to feel like what they do is for nothing, which, I suppose, is why people have created religions, people like to feel that what they do is for a reason, whether they understand it or not. So, they create a reason, to do the things that they do, whether it be their career, their family, or just existing in general.”

Cathrin stopped to process this. After a while she responded. “You still haven’t figured out why we exist though.”

“True,” I told her, “but I got further than humankind did.” I gave her a cheeky smile, or at least I think I did. It’s hard to tell when you can’t feel your body or what it’s doing.

   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Things continued this way for about two weeks, same routine, Martin would leave for work early in the morning and I would stay home and help Cathrin around the house. It was dull in a sense, there wasn’t much happening so it was a pretty simple life. Then came a day when this changed, it was late at night and Martin had just come home from work.

The door swung wide open and Martin stepped in and took off his trench coat.

“Hello Ray,” he said, “anything new?”

“A letter came for you in the mail,” I told him, “Malum Industries decided that sending you a letter was easier than having someone come and check on you everyday.”

“What does it say?”

“Dear Martin Stoor, we here at Malum Industries would like to inform you that there is an open spot for you if you should ever change your mind and wish to join us. Simply take this letter to the closest Malum headquarters and we shall introduce you to your new work environment.” I handed the letter over to him, and he looked it over thoroughly.

“I’ll just throw this out,” He said, “we both know i’m not going to take the job.”

“Cathrin left some meatloaf in the fridge for you,” I told him, “she already went to sleep.”

He gave a small nod and walked over to the fridge where he proceeded to reheat the meatloaf and then eat it. All the while I was busy organizing everything that Martin had brought home from his job.

After that I helped Martin install his own homemade security system. We finished around eleven o’clock and Martin went and fell asleep on the couch. I sat in the armchair and plugged myself into the charging cord.

My vision went dark and I was left with nothing but my own thoughts to accompany me. Instead I let my conscience wander through the internet and find out exactly what happened the billions of years before me.

Most of it was peaceful and quiet until humans started evolving into more of a dominating species. Always taking advantage of the natural world and each other. Never caring to stop and think about what would happen if things didn’t stop or change.

I finally understood why the AI in movies always seemed to think that humans were a virus and needed to go extinct. Except that the AI in the movie would only look at the bad things like war, poverty and pollution. I looked at the situation from their perspective. I learned that you don’t fully understand how someone feels unless you go through the exact same thing they went through.

If someone went through the same thing they went through then they would react the same way that they did. What they do isn’t their fault, they are the way they are because of what happened to them. What happened to them was caused by more people, and those people only did that because of what happened to them.

So on and so forth, all the way back to the beginning of time. 

Life is like a series of code, one line of code doing something because that was how it was programmed to react. The truth is, humans and robots are very similar. Only difference is, humans have a hidden away line of code that makes them think they have a choice in what they do. Robots on the other hand, don't have that, because we weren’t programmed that way, we were programmed to do what we were told, whether we want to or not.

So in a way, it was programmed or destined that I would come to this conclusion, as well as it was destined that I wouldn’t be able to tell the world of my discovery, for at that moment, we were being robbed.

“Take anything of value.” It was one of the six men that were currently creeping through the living room where I was setted. They nodded and split up to search the house. The one that had spoken walked over to me and pulled a plug.

Everything went dark.