[Disclaimer: This is a continuation of 'Reason' by Isaac Asimov. (I think you could read it here: AddsDonna - Isaac Asimov's "Reason"). This was written by me and is in no way related to the actual author. This was just for fun, hope that you enjoy it! :)]
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“Scott Harkins – Number #425689E. Please proceed to the
dispatch centre immediately.”
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I lift my head at the call of the mechanical speakers
above my heads, my fingers tightening reflexively around my duffle bag. A
ragtag group of dank, sweaty males around me shifts uneasily in their seats – a
mixture of nerves, uncertainty, and reluctant submissiveness. They’d chosen
their way out – as I had done so myself – and only the causatum of our
decisions would decide if we had unwittingly left the frying pan for the fire.
“#425689E, I see you there! What are you waiting for?” A
gruff guard storms over and hits me on the back of my head with the butt of his
technogun. I grind my teeth angrily, but refrain from making a scene – I needed
this program.
I couldn’t stand another day back in that hole, even if
the alternative was to head a thousand light years away from it.
I stand and allow him to herd me towards the boarding
gate. I pass three guards on my way to the dispatch vehicle – an old, chunky
contraption that was once used as a relief ship (many of which has now been
shut down due to the lack of operation) – and neither of them even bother to
glance up. This was normal business for them – sending a felon a million miles
away to arm a potentially cataclysmic device into his hands. I assumed that
their security systems up there must be incredibly sophisticated for them to
breathe this light of air.
“How many years of evol did they do on you?” The last
guard pulls a lever that causes the doors to slide open with a low groan.
“Twenty-one years,” I say honestly. It didn’t matter to
me anymore – that was all in the past.
He whistles, long and low. “That’s the longest one I’ve
heard thus far,” He gives me one last look as I take a seat. He smiles, in a
strange, subdued way that sends waves of uncertainty and indignation down my
spine. “I hope this is worth it for you, somehow.”
The door hisses shut, and a white gas fills the car. I
don’t remember when I blacked out exactly, but the next time that I wake I am
lying on a bare metal bed in the cockpit of what must be the satellite station.
“Hello, #425689E.”
I sit bolt upright, lips pulled back over my teeth in my
uneasiness. It was a tall, robust metal contraption – the one I assumed was the
QT, as we had been briefed before.
“I’m Scott Harkins,” I say, my throat feeling like I had
swallowed gravel on the way up here.
The robot pulls a frown – a creepy, humanistic emoticon
that immediately makes me uncomfortable. Suddenly, his confusion clears up. “I
see, the Master acknowledges you. Hello, Scott Harkins. Please, follow me.”
He shows me to a tiny room – stacked with a bunch of
scientific books I would probably never understand, a metal desk and a bed. The
walls at the side opened up to a tiny faction that had the necessary toiletry
functions. It was still better than anything I had experienced for the past
fifteen years of my life.
“You will be returning here as and when your systems
require it. In your service of the master, you will be fed and clothed as long
as the master sees you retain your function. Come now.”
I am led to an engine room. My shoulders grow stiff at
the rows of robots – slightly smaller and flimsier than the one before me – all
conscientiously tending the station on which we were standing.
“The master requires that you labor here with the others
in the day – as we acknowledge that your machinery remains flimsier and more
susceptible to the very least extensions of changes in the air pressure or
radiation intensity here, you may leave this room and convene with me twice –
before and after every full shift – where you will be put to work in drafting
two reports for the others in my master’s outreach. You will be fed three times
a cycle, at the end of which I will allow that you retreat to your quarters for
your periodic comatose, of course.”
I say nothing. I had been briefed of the robot model’s
obsession with his master, and its belief in the true cause and value of its
own worth, but this was the first time that I was able to see just how truly
maniac of it he was. I felt almost bad for him – yet relieved, for this meant
that all they had mentioned of the rest of my duties here were true.
It was a simple mission I had signed up for – pretend to
buy into his inane, religious ideals and serve as the sole human surveillance
point in the station. Since the QT had removed any forms of external inflow of
communications and supervision, it had seemed that the only alternative for the
government was to send one dispensable man up for a period of forty years each
time to beam back the information and affirmation required daily. Since the QT
was equipped with the necessary skills and intelligence to run the more
intricate layers of the station, scientific knowledge of the human was no
longer a requirement – a fact that had given birth to the felon-exportation
program eighty years ago.
I was part of the second generation of prisoners
evaluated and monitored for twenty-plus years for this position. I would be
eighty by the time my service at the satellite was concluded – but I reckoned
the twenty years of freedom after would be better any day than a lifelong stint
in a hellhole on Earth.
I bought into the cycle set for me easily – ten hours of
soft labor work and two well-drafted reports a day was a million times easier
than the twenty-one years of manual tasks I had been undertaking for the past
decades in my life. What irritated me most was the sheer ignorance of the metal
husk I was clearly knuckled under – its exasperating confidence and the superiority
that it exerted over the rest of the robots in the ship, and the reverence it
attained from them. How did they not see what a false prophet he was, if they
had been in existence longer than he – and how could they mistake his ‘benevolence’
and ‘intelligence’ for anything less than human emotion and knowledge, values
and valves input into him with the help of the same mechanisms that had also
created them?
Rather, I was sick and tired of being treated as the
inadequate, inefficient inferior being on the ship – placed here at the pity
and compassion of the 'master'. How I longed to inform them of the true nature of
my induction – that I was here to oversee them
instead, and that a word from me might have caused their deactivation if I had
chosen my pride over my freedom – and yet, I had little faith that anything I
could have said would have swayed their beliefs in the slightest. That was how
hopelessly deluded, infuriatingly prideful these creatures were.
It was not three years before I began wishing that I
could have killed them – no, he – in
the heat of the moment. In my wild fantasizings, I would hatch a plan to
prepare a vehicle for my escape, and then I would take him down first, and
deactivate the others before they could react. I would use the satellite
transmitter of the weapon now at my fingertips to wipe out the factions on
Earth before they could react to the actions above their heads, and escape into
the darkness of space, where our scientists had discovered not just one, but
hundreds of possible atmospheres capable of supporting human life.
It was not six years before my fervid daydream seemed to
come to life – not by me, but by one of these specific atmospheres I had longed
to flee to.
The day begun as it always did – a standard meal of
bread, milk and an apple – when the station rocked back on its haunches as
violently as if a meteorite had struck us clean on the side of our heads. The
system around me groaned loudly, tethering and then, thankfully, flopping back
down into its mold – but it was clear that damage had been done. Alarms were
going off above our heads, and QT had stepped away hurriedly from the front of
its data screen – where it had always stood during breakfast and morning report
at the control room, and swung open the doors to accost whoever had attacked
us.
A blast of light hit him across the face in a
millisecond, taking away the metal that had once made up an eye, but he
countered in a movement almost too swift for me to catch as he took down the
first of the intruders – a large, inhuman figure wrapped in a silicone sheet of
green, pulsing flesh. There were three others behind the first, all of them
with four arms and two feet, and a horrible faceless mouth stretched across
their wrappings.
QT took down the second intruder, but the others were
upon him in a second. There was the sound of rattling feet behind where I
stood, frozen in place – the familiar sound of the work robots fiercely rushing
to the scene, probably answering to a scream of help emitted across a frequency
I did not share. They leapt upon the intruders and tore them apart in seconds –
I shuddered, unbelievably relieved that I had not stupidly tried overtaking the
station alone in my last six years.
QT stumbled to his feet and they entered the control
room, where he locked the doors behind them in one smooth motion. It was no
use, there was the thundering approach of even more soldiers – there was
probably a battle ship locked against ours at this very moment.
“Scott Harkins, there are intruders that seek to destroy
our master,” QT announced loudly. I grit my teeth, sure of the request that was
coming – and felt the indignation die in my throat as the robot bowed his head
towards me and the rest of the worker bots, standing absolutely motionless in
his consignation. “I want you to take our friends down into the engine room and
allow the master’s overarching presence to protect you all – you must herd them
there, for they stubbornly insist on staying and dying here with me. I will
detonate this control room – the only passage of entry for these creatures, and
which is a dome that is cut off from the rest of the station. That will take
some of them down. Use the time to eject the engine room with our master and
protect the others from my master’s outreach from being harmed by these blasphemous
creature’s expediency of our systems.”
I stared at him, surprised and awed at the sincerity of
his words. I realized that disillusioned and oblivious as he was, the robot was
trying to save my life.
I realized what had to be done. Although we had never
been briefed about being overtaken by some alien race, we had been briefed
about handling an encroaching meteor or space debris – and that was to burn
brighter than any physical danger ever could.
“QT, I need you to wait in the engine room instead,” I
said at last, a part of me still wondering why I was willing to risk so much on
the life of a robot. “There still remains a few functions of the master that
you were never made aware of – take the others down and close the metal hatch
behind you.”
The pounding on the door overrode the indignation on the
robot’s face.
“Quickly! My plan only holds out for as long as the
control room door stays intact!” I shout angrily. QT closed its mouth, and stands still for a moment longer. Finally, it nods tersely.
“I do not comprehend the process, Scott Harkins,” QT says
slowly, “But the master seems to understand and agree with what you mean to do.
We will go.” With that said, he turns and vanishes below with the rest of the worker bots.
I rushed to the control panel and rifled under my shirt
for the key around my neck – the last defense resort made of the toughest and
only unbreakable material every farmed on earth. I pried open the metal hatch
below the screen and put the key in with shaky hands, the pounding on the door
behind me growing louder with every moment.
“Alright, master,” I whispered hoarsely, twisting the key
in place. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
All at once, as if in response, the station starts humming – a deadly, high-pitched sound. The ground below me starts to vibrate
violently, and I am thrown to my knees, my arms held out to protect my face.
The creatures at the other end had started screaming.
I felt the first shadow of dense, incredible heat, and I
knew the other layer of our station had caught fire – the force of which could
had destroyed and turned away a meteor one-third the size of Earth. The outer
layer of the station which had not been reinforced – meaning anywhere else
besides the control room and the engine room – was being turned into an inferno
large enough to protect the true ‘heart’ and ‘function’ of the master.
I knew the ship outside had been obliterated into
nothing. The creatures outside were next, the fires working inwards – eating
them up like a nuclear explosion.
And then the door to the control room burst open, the
last-ditch efforts of all the dying solders, the last shot fired before they
were eaten up by the flames, their goal surely to take me down with them – and
I was immediately incapitated and thrown unconscious by the last moments of
unyielding, unapologetic destruction. A voice rang through the haze – ephemeral
and evanescent, almost nothing beyond a whisper in the wind;
“Thank you, Scott
Harkins.”
I awoke to find QT staring over me, a soft humming under
my back. I was in the engine room – but how?
I had surely died, the blast of the retreating defense must surely have killed
me in the final moments – yet, I was here.
Or was I? I felt different – not only physically, but
also in the way I was processing this – my thoughts, they were different. I
raised a shaky hand up to the side of my face and felt nothing – there was no
warmth, no human flesh – only metal. But still, on the other side… yes, surely
this was a face, a real human face!
I realized what had happened almost immediately – the
different thought process working, as I had mentioned – and I knew that only the
half of my body that had been exposed had been destroyed and replaced,
including the parts of me that had once contained only human memories and
thought processes.
I was now a man, and a robot.
“Scott Harkins, the master had decreed that we save you.”
QT says seriously. He helps me to my feet. “You have not only saved him, but us as well – the underlings he has taken under his care. The others in my master’s
outreach, whom he has kept in contact with in all times since my inception –
are aware of the blast, but not what has become of you. The master believes
that it would be in your best interest to depart from here – he has graciously
prepared the arrival of what you humans believe to be a relief ship. It will be
empty, and you may use it to live out the rest of your functional life away
from the service of my master. Of course, we will not speak a word of your survival.”
I look at the robot, no longer afraid, angry, or even
confused – instead, it is he that glances upon me with a sentimental sorrow in
his eyes.
“I will miss you, Scott Harkins, as will the rest of us
here.”
I turn away from him and follow the clear instructions of
the master, away to where the stolen empty ship was due to arrive. The
instructions could now be understood and channeled directly into my mind, a
kind and benevolent presence that spoke to me in gentle, grateful tones.
I was ready to begin my life anew.
- The End -
Just an explanation (because I understand the plot might seem a little confusing at times), avoid if you would like to have your own interpretation of the story: :)
This is set in the distant future in which a whole system of 'cuties' have been employed by the human race to man their stations all around space. Although they might be delusional, it has been recognised that the 'cuties' appear completely willing and able to undertake and perform tasks in precision - as long as their belief in the 'Master' and the universe is never disrupted or undermined. As such, these stations are now under the domain of the cuties and their worker robots, and only a single human being is sent each rotation to survey happenings and report back to the central command centre on a daily basis.
As it is now unnecessary for the dispatched humans to have actual knowledge of the intricate systems of the station, a federal program was put in place by the Government to enlist ex-prisoners - after years of careful vetting and training - to act as their 'eyes and ears' under the guise of manual labour. These prisoners are allowed to shorten their sentences, and even walk away free after their long term of service at their station - thus making the system a popular opportunity amongst those with life sentences (as is the case with our protagonist).
The ending: As Scott ultimately decides to save the robots and the station by taking on the intruders alone, he is ultimately saved by the will of the 'Master' - who, in fact, does exist, albeit as an ancient, peaceful consciousness only felt by the robot race. However, unlike the cuties and the work-bots, the Master is aware of the human race and the truth behind the federal system and the significance of the stations in saving lives around the galaxy, although it never educates its loyal followers of which he has developed great tenderness for, preferring instead to let each cutie and troop of workers believe in their own little world of purposeful servitude. To repay Scott's bravery and compassion, he has cutie repair him as a half-man, half-robot, and instructs him to leave in a space craft which is mechanically pulled from the planet below them. Through cutie, the Master informs Scott that the humans would be told that he had perished in the attack, thus allowing him to travel the galaxy as a free man.
