God's Speed

Another experiment in first-person, this time from a totally different perspective.

“It's going to be beautiful,” says the voice. “Everybody on board.”

I watch the line of people walk slowly and orderly up a ramp and out of the building. Once they have passed through one final metal detector they will climb aboard a replica of the world's first commercial space shuttle, the relic of a milestone in human history.

As I watch, I continue to sweep. Once I have cleared the area of dead leaves, I will see to the shuttle's final checks and step back as it takes off, its antiquated engines burning blue. Then I will resume sweeping. I am used for everything because I never tire.

I was once a triumph. I am aware that I exist, and for a machine born of human inventors, that was once the pinnacle of achievement. But all of these things that colour human life, I could never understand. The concept of achievement and beautiful things, the things that weave through and between every human experience, I can study and process, but still I do not truly comprehend.

I am now obsolete. Like the original shuttle, I will be used until I wear down and stop. Perhaps someday a replica will be made of me, too. I did once mark a milestone in human technology. For now, though, alongside the new units that are becoming ever more human, I am an inferior copy.

So here I work, among humans but never accepted by them, not advanced enough to be anyone's equal. It has helped me to learn more about them. Their actions, their whole existence as a race, based upon the mysterious “feelings” they talk of. They decry themselves for being illogical, and yet frown upon me for my logic. I once remarked that humankind's lack of logic could trap my circuits in an infinite logic loop, if I really tried to work them out. That made the humans laugh. I didn't truly know what it meant to laugh, other than I had somehow gained some acceptance, briefly.

I sweep the leaves.

Being in the same place for so long, I see something happen to humans. They seem to wear out and then stop, in a short space of time. After many decades working here, I have begun to notice it happen to me too, and still I wonder what happens to people when they stop.

“Where will I go when I die?” I once asked someone. He looked at me for a little while, and then he just laughed and shrugged. “Up into the hills,” he said. “It's quiet up there.”

When he said that I turned and looked at the line of hills just beyond the town, and I wondered why it was so important to find somewhere quiet to die.

That was a long time ago, by human standards. He may well be dead now too. Perhaps he went up into the hills to die.

Many years pass. Even the replica shuttle breaks down and is taken out of service. Some of the trees whose leaves I once swept are now dead. New ones are growing in their place, and life somehow continues, in whatever form it takes. Constantly dying and being reborn. The human race continues on, dying and being born. I notice the pattern in everything, but there is insufficient data to fully understand why all life shares this in common. I think about the superior units built after me, and I realise that humans have continued this cycle, in their own way.

I wonder if I have a soul.

Soon, after a few more decades, I too am taken out of service. Much of my outer skin is gone now. I am just metal, groaning, creaking, a skeleton of steel and gears and once-strong cables worn to a thread. My reactor will burn out soon. Some of the humans seem reluctant to see me go. One of them has spent many hours over the years, conversing with me and effecting small repairs. Now an elderly man almost ready to be taken out of service himself, he begins to cry on the day I'm due to leave. I tell him I will head to the hills, and he drinks an alcoholic drink and takes me there, as if he understands.

We walk out of the town, where the footing becomes more uneven, the hard paving giving way to nature, the unstoppable force of life. Neither of us say anything. At the foot of the biggest, rockiest hill he stops and says, “God's speed.” Then he leaves.

I begin to climb, and I look back. He is there, slowly walking away, back to the town, but he is watching me as he goes. “God's speed,” he shouts again, his voice made barely audible by distance. “God's speed my friend.”

It is a long climb to the top of the hill, wire muscles barely able to constrict, my worn limbs barely able to grip the rocks, but when I reach the top I am still just able to stand straight. When I look up I see the landscape before me, all the familiar places I have lived, all the places I have mapped out and logged, and suddenly it looks so different, and I cannot comprehend why. It seems as if I have reactivated in some way, ceased to become the person I was when I lived down there so constricted, but I know such a thing is not possible. I diagnose myself and there has been no break in awareness, only a subtle change in its nature.

Perhaps it is because my reactor no longer produces sufficient power to animate my heavy body efficiently. It can power my neural net and sensory inputs, but I realise the power shift may cause unexpected changes.

Now I am here, all I can do is lie and watch the sky, day after day, years and decades turning to centuries. I lie on this rock, high on the hills, and watch. Days and nights become a blur through my decaying eyes, storms and rain and bright summers. I notice that slowly, so slowly that even my neural net can barely process such a span of data, slowly the sun is changing colour, its golden yellow turning a sad red.

I feel something. I process data, inputs tracing lines through the spaces between my electronic neurons, and I realise the sun is dying. I feel something.

My memory centre malfunctions just briefly and I relive the voice of a man centuries ago, who called me his friend. Then, my vision fades. I feel like the sun. My reactor is almost spent. I calculate the probability that my “feeling” was an anomaly, perhaps some crossing of pathways between the sun's slow death and my own. I cannot complete the calculation. I decide to use all remaining power to sustain consciousness for another few seconds. I want to cling on to life.

Suddenly my visual inputs activate in a flash with one last image. I see myself, standing, reaching for the sun, and I wonder why the colour red is sad.

Reviews

[Tala]

Wow, really good story. i'm loving how the way you've written it completely embodies the emotionlessness of the robot. also like the repeated phrase when talking about the cycle of repeating, quite well done. overall, frigging good. a lot of people have done the emotionless robot but this is, without even changing the basic story, completely different.

[PaperDoll]

Another good story. I like your robot's character. He's so curious and has a unique voice. He was easy to care about. The ending is both sad and beautiful. A lovely piece of writing about the inevitability of death. Everything dies.