Part 4

What makes us human? I’m not sure where it came from but I think the boredom from this empty and uneventful life I live here made me ignore my intention of not thinking. What makes us different to the animals? And what makes the animals different from something else, like a robot? Are we human because we think? Are we human because as a race we are the most superior intellectually with the ability to evolve? And what makes something living is the desire to reproduce and continue on their species, unlike robots. Is that how this works? Do animals have wants? Do even robots have wants, even though they don’t have a “soul”? But the thing about trying to describe or explain what makes us like this, is that it makes me wonder if I am still classified as a human here. Sure in body I might fit into that biological species, but in spirit am I really still a human?

            It might just be the nature of this world that I’m in. A lot of factors seem to be missing. The concept of reproduction has no purpose here from what I can tell. The people here don’t even think much, especially me. In fact, I don’t even have any wants or goals for when I’m here. Maybe that’s even the point of this place, that you can’t truly be human in here. But either way this “war” or whatever it is that I’m in seems to be completely isolated and separate to whatever normal life I would have as a human. I guess in the end it’s always the same answer: I don’t know.

            I felt half asleep when I noticed it, just because of how nonchalantly it happened. But as I was turning around a corner I saw a guy further down looking around a corner at me. When he notices me he just casually waves and says “Hey, over here.”

            If I hadn’t forced myself to always treat these situations the same way I most likely would have lowered my guard. But instead, I back around the corner I came from, peeking out around it with my gun in hand aimed at him.

            “Hey, don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you. I just want information. Look my hands are in the air, I don’t have a weapon. In fact, I want you to look at a notebook I have and see if you can tell me anything related to what’s in there.

            I don’t say a word and just stand there ready for a potential attack or move.

            “How about this then. This wall we are both hiding behind is a solid square, in other words, if we both follow it around in a rotating parallel fashion then I can leave the notebook on the ground and you can pick it up without either of us having to approach each other.”

            He put the notebook on the ground and with his hands way above his head he started slowly walking towards me. When he got around half way between us, I backed away from my corner and went straight to the next corner on this square, so that I could see both sides. I eventually see him slowly walk around the corner and we do the same thing again until I end up with the notebook.

            He looks at me from behind his corner and I start to flip through the pages. For a very short instant I feel something very briefly from one of the early faces but it vanishes before I could process what it was. Each page was pretty much just a face drawn really roughly. I guess he was wondering if I had met any of these people. But then I get to one face in particular and I couldn’t help but stare at it because of how familiar it felt. I felt like I had met this person before, unlike the other faces, but couldn’t remember anything about where or how or what happened. I stare at the face for a few minutes just waiting for something to come to me but it never does.

            “What I do is draw faces of everyone that I meet in here, dead or alive. I find it an interesting way of keeping track of things, despite over very long distances of time. But this world really makes no sense, and I can’t figure out any kind of purpose or way out of this lifestyle. But really, if we’re all here anyway without any memories or reason to fight we might as well just get along to be honest. But not one person I’ve talked to yet has trusted me or my intentions enough to go along with it or even group up with me. It’s such a pity that there’s so much distrust between everyone here.”

            “…”

            “Well, aren’t you interesting.” He said sarcastically. “Well it was nice talking with you, if you can call it that, but I better go so can I have my notebook back?” He said losing interest in me, but never getting any less casual.

            Now that I think about it I’m a very boring person. In this kind of life though being interesting doesn’t help you survive, and if anything can cause problems. But apart from that I wasn’t really sure what happened. I guess my involuntary instincts told me to leave and so I just left without my brain computing much. I start to walk along a long straight path and turn around to see if he was following me. I saw him at the beginning of the path, just staring at me. He had a page open in his book that he was looking at, which was the only face that seemed to mean anything to me.

            “Oh and one last thing.” He yelled to me as I kept walking further away. “This person that you were looking at, why don’t I tell you his name? Well, I don’t know if anyone here remembers our real names but this person in particular was given a nickname that I’ve come to know him as.”

            A name still had no meaning in this world. That was what I thought, but what surprised me was the name that he said. A nickname isn’t your birth name and is given to someone based on what they are like in the now, which is something you can’t know much of from when you are born. And the name that he said definitely said a lot about this person’s character, and really seemed to have an impact on me.

            The name was very simple.

            Robot.