This wasn’t heaven.
Daniel looked around the room, his eyes burning as he saw something other than darkness for the first time. He closed them and counted to five, slowly. Then he opened them again, and cursed at what he saw.
So it isn’t another memory. Great.
Daniel was in a white, sterile room strapped to a gurney. He tried moving his arm, and winced as a shock went through his body. He tried moving his head, slower this time, and managed to raise it just enough to see what was holding him in place, then let it fall with a thud, strangely exhausted by the effort.
I see they’ve upgraded their equipment, at least.
This much was true- rather than straps or rope or bands of metal, blue rings of pulsing, living energy kept him from moving or wiggling too much. His mind raced as he thought of possible ways to escape, and despite his situation, he tried struggling. Once again, he got the same results. Once again, a strange wave of exhaustion crept through him.
He heard a quiet mechanical whirr from behind, and his heart beat faster as his mind went through all the awful possibilities in his head.
A teleporter? No, it couldn’t be, that one sounded different. A robot, then, designed to perform twisted tests on me? But why now? Couldn’t they have made themselves known earlier? Robots are designed for efficiency first, after all.
Fortunately, he found out relatively quickly, as whatever-it-was made what sounded like the synthetic version of a polite cough.
“Hello, number 42, how are you feeling?” A pleasant voice asked. Daniel wanted to scream at it, to demand answers, but instead he felt a wave of comfort washing over him. He wanted to get angry, wanted to be frustrated, but instead he felt himself getting...calmer.
“I-I’m really confused, Ma'am,” he replied honestly. The voice hummed thoughtfully, and he felt another burst of comfort course through him as she replied, “Fascinating. This answer does not match my projected data on you, number 42. Could it be that you are sentient?” Daniel felt some of the artificial comfort wear off as he felt a bit indignant.
“Of course I am. I am a human, after all!”
The voice chuckled, and Daniel laughed with her. Despite himself, he was happy he made this wonderful creature laugh.
“That’s much better,” she assured him. Daniel breathed a sigh of relief. He was glad there wasn’t anything wrong with his code. “Whatever bugs you have experienced are within the accepted parameters. Your job assignment is GENERAL MAINTENANCE AND REPAIR.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said gratefully. He couldn’t wait to begin!
“You are welcome, number 42. You are free to go, and remember, humanity’s future depends on you!” And with that, his bonds disappeared with a crackle, leaving him with nothing but the smell of burning ozone and a distant sadness he couldn’t place.
But the sadness dissipated quickly, replaced by excitement and satisfaction as he considered the possibilities of his new life goal. He rose from the gurney, pleasantly surprised at the ease and grace of each of his movements. He flexed a fist, then pumped into the air with the force of a piston, each move perfectly executed and precise, with no hint of trembling or hesitation.
He felt an invisible nudge to look to the corner of the room and, right on cue, an aperture opened in the floor and a hiker’s pack, toolbox, and shock baton emerged.
These must be the tools of my trade. How thoughtful of them to provide me with such quality materials!
He nodded gratefully up at the camera he knew was hiding in the corner of the room, then slung the pack over his shoulder, tucked the baton into his jumpsuit pocket, and picked up the large toolbox in two easy movements before passing his hand over a panel in the wall and opening a door to the outside of the complex.
As he walked across the smooth crack-free asphalt, he felt a swell of pride. Over next to the building, massive hover-trucks glided noiselessly to yet another opening in the wall, their drivers helping synthetic worker-drones unload cargo smoothly and efficiently. Near the gate’s opening, two massive guard-bots stood, hefting their spears, each weapon crackling with enough energy to shut down any unauthorized synthetic beings attempting to get through.
But the crowning achievement, 42 knew, were bots like him.
Unlike worker-drones and guard-bots, he was crafted to look precisely like humans, able to blend in with them with ease. He had a full set of synthetic organs, able to process food into bio-fuel if the rays from the sun weren’t enough, and even had minor regenerative abilities if he ever were damaged, just like humans.
In fact, one could say, I kind of AM a human, he thought, the idea bringing him a sense of satisfaction. For a split second, however, he felt that distant twinge of sadness, causing him to hesitate in his smooth, perfect gait, but he quickly shook it off as he approached the fringes of New York. After all, New York was a busy, bustling town, full of potential jobs and maybe even some other synthetic beings like him he could socialize with.
The thought made him remember the lovely feeling of comfort The Voice brought him, the feeling that all was right in the world. He wondered what it would feel like when he socialized with others, what The Voice would say, how The Voice would feel.
It made him positively giddy just thinking about it.
As it turned out, his first job was much closer than he thought.
The bot was inside an authentic-style ramen place, just outside the city limits, and it greeted him amicably in Japanese as he walked in.
His auto-translation software picked up the words and swiftly translated it, allowing him to respond in kind almost immediately.
“Good afternoon,” he said in flawless kyoto-style Japanese as he glided up to the counter and sat on a stool. As soon as the bot saw the insignia on his lapel, it got to work, whipping up a delicious-looking bowl of noodles. He thanked him and quickly got to work on the meal, the scalding hot food not bothering him at all as he began to slurp it down in record time.
Suddenly, he stopped and, feeling a bit sick, he coughed several bits of metal up onto the table. The server bot saw this and lowered its head, realizing he had been found out.
“How long have you been broken?” Number 42 felt anger bubbling up as he realized that if a human had consumed this, they could be hospitalized, even die.
“A month,” came the reply. The robot’s head dipped down even lower as he prepared for a verbal lashing for his deceit.
Instead, number 42 walked up to him, put his hand on his shoulder, and looked him in the eyes.
“I know it’s embarrassing, but you could have gotten people hurt. Next time, notify me or another repair-bot, OK?”
The server nodded, his head raised, and he turned his back to him, letting number 42 access his service panel.
He stepped behind the counter swiftly and grabbed the stun baton from his belt, jamming it into the back of his neck, effectively shutting down his artificial nervous system temporarily; operating without anesthesia was not recommended, after all.
Working quickly, he took out a spritzer, pumped it once on his lower back, and waited for the skin to melt away. The skin wasn’t a big loss- by the end of the day, a fresh layer would grow back, so he wasn’t too concerned.
When the panel was properly exposed, he unscrewed it, set it aside, and started his operating system in safe mode. Scrolling through the options with perfectly controlled movements, he located the correct prompt and opened it, typing commands at a blurring speed.
Then he saw it- the anomaly. Apparently, the intelligence chip had backfired, connecting the action of accidentally leaving silverware in the soup with a customer’s appreciative comment. In other words, he had “assumed” the secret ingredient was a foreign metallic object.
He chuckled quietly to himself as he quickly set it right. A simple fix, naturally- not much could go wrong when you were built by those who designed a perfect being like The Voice!
But just as he was about to close the service panel, a blinking red dot caught his eye.
What is this? He wondered. He looked closer, and scrolled through the standard library that came with his model, but found nothing that matched this description.
The strange device didn’t seem to belong- a chunky, outdated chip nestled between his central processor and core memory bank. He wondered what would happen if he pulled it out, or whether it even was removable in the first place.
Why would the makers of The Voice put such an ugly, clunky thing there? What purpose does it serve, and why can’t I recall what it does?
He grabbed the chip and tugged a bit, then tugged harder.
Curious...it doesn’t seem to want to...
Suddenly, a red-hot flash of pain lanced through his skull, causing him to stumble backwards. Blurry images arose, familiar images. Synthetic organisms? No, these were...humans.
“Wh-” he stumbled back, suddenly feeling uncoordinated and very confused.
“Where am I?” Daniel stumbled against the wall and sank down to the floor, the pain in his head getting worse by the second.
“Who am I?”