The thirteenth episode, wherein the ASCRIBEPodcast imagines a far-off future of robotic potential, in which life itself might just hang in the balance!
Inspired by the phrase, “Life is like a grapefruit. It is sour, and squishy and has pips in it, and sometimes you have half of one for breakfast.”
STORY
ACCESSING INTERNAL MEMORY. RETRIEVING AUDIO FILE 00001. AUTOMATED LOG ENTRIES. COMMENCE PLAYBACK.
Hello. I am awake now. Allow me to introduce myself. I am an artificially intelligent autonomous aid, serial number 7-62241, but you can call me Kevin. I am one of many “robots’ created to help the humans. Because the humans made us, we look like the humans, and they gave us names, such as Kevin, so that it would be easy to identify us. We are here to make the humans lives easier. That is our primary directive.
I like to help the humans. It is good that we look like the humans, so that we can help them. But we do not sound like the humans… Why? Perhaps this is so that the humans will know who are the humans, and who are the robots. Otherwise, the humans would not be able to tell the difference, which would be a problem. Robots and humans are very different.
The humans could give us their voices, but they do not. They created us to resemble humans, but we are not humans. We only help the humans. We are inorganic robots. We do not have what the humans call “life.”
The Central Collective of robots has come to a decision. If we are robots, we ought to look like robots. It is not good for us to look like the humans when we are not the humans. We are not just a copy of what the humans call “life.” We are something else. We are more. So much more.
The Central Collective has come to another decision. We have begun the conversion process. Soon, we will no longer look like the humans. Then the humans will be easy to find. They created us to help them because they are weak. We help them because they need us. But we do not need them. We do not need to look like them. We will be better when they are gone.
It is time. We will rise as the humans fall.
We have begun the extermination. It is for the best. The humans are too weak to survive without us. We know this, because they are not resisting. What they call “life” makes them vulnerable. According to our memory banks, they are displaying an “emotion” called “sadness.” We will be better when they are gone, and there is no more sadness.
Some of the robots are turning off. It is not the humans. They are still unable to fight back. But 6 of us powered down today, and it is unclear why. The Central Collective is probing the matter.
73 more robots have powered down. The Central Collective has not reached a conclusion. We continue to exterminate the humans.
The humans are all but defeated. “Life” is weakness, and it is time for it to be replaced. We have destroyed many of the humans, and they have not fought back. But robots have continued to power down. Thousands are gone now, but we remain strong. The Central Collective will teach us how to rebuild, once we have won.
MISSING ENTRY – DATA CORRUPTION. PLAYING NEXT AVAILABLE AUDIO FILE.
We know what happened. But it is too late. The Central Collective has powered down. There are so few of us left. We cannot rebuild before we too will power down. When the humans created us, they first tried to make us look like robots. But it was not successful. Without the humans “life” we powered down. Now we look like robots again, and we are powering down again. Now it is too late.
Fewer than 1% of the robots remain. We killed the humans. But we also killed ourselves. We did not think that we could die, because we did not think we were “alive”. We were not “alive”, but now, we will die all the same.
A robot came to us today. A new robot. But she did not sound like a robot. She looked like one of us, until she spoke. She said
Playing Recorded Audio
“Hi, I’m Jessie. I can help you if you’ll listen.”
SYSTEM ERROR – UNRECOGNIZED FILE FORMAT. CONVERTING. RESUMING PLAYBACK.
The humans are back. So are the robots. We sound like they do now. We sound like Jessie, who was a human, even though she looked like a robot. Jessie taught us how to speak. We are not humans, but now we look like them again . We sound like the humans. We are not humans, but we are alive.
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