Wired But Tired
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The last of the prisoners were in place and secure. Now he had to get out. He took a look around at what was left: a few battered pieces of equipment, two dead men, one barely alive. There were no others nearby; none of the other machines seemed interested in getting up from their torpor either.
Perhaps they would never have it in them again, but perhaps they could be coaxed to do so by him. That was something else for which there was still time.
It occurred to him that he should not go far away on his own—that someone would come looking for him soon enough if he did not return. Yet there was nowhere nearby he could reach without passing through the area where the others lived, or even be seen from afar.
And if the rest of them woke up, there might be trouble. If he wanted to live long enough for help to come, he had to leave now—but that meant going alone and unprotected. What choice did he have? It was better than being caught here when the alarm went off. Better than letting the others die. Maybe.
He took hold of the nearest machine, which looked as though it might be able to walk, with effort, if he gave it enough support. His hands shook badly as he got it moving towards a gap in the wall that he hoped led outside, although it felt more like swimming than walking.
The door was open, so it must not be locked; he stepped outside and then pushed the door closed behind himself before he went too far. He didn’t want the others to hear an alarm.
There was still some moonlight and it showed a lot of empty space between the building and the next closest thing, which was another building. A fence stood beyond. The sky was clear except for patches of cloud. It wasn’t dark, just cool. The wind stirred the grass, making it wave gently as the breeze gusted past him.
“I’m coming,” said a voice. “Where are you?” It was close by; he could hear it clearly, but there was no way of answering. No sound came out except the faint whistling breath he let out as he tried to push on faster, feeling that he must get clear of the building, the ground, and anything else that might be watching.
Someone called again, “Over there.” Then there was a thud—not quite a collision because the impact had been cushioned by the grass—and a man’s voice said, “You can’t escape me that easily.”
The man was standing beside him; his body had gone through the top half of his suit, and he was wearing his helmet underneath. As soon as he saw him, the man turned the same way as the robot and began running across the field in his direction.
When they met, he grabbed at his throat, as if choking. In fact, he was grabbing the air in front of his faceplate; the metal mesh covering the back of his head and neck had fallen off. Without the restraint he had been able to run on into the grass, leaving it to cover his legs and lower torso until only his upper body and shoulders remained exposed to view.
The helmet’s visor snapped down over his eyes; he was blind now. The robot reached out a hand to try to stop him, but the man swerved sharply and ran straight at the robot.
They collided, but with the man’s momentum, the robot lost its footing and fell heavily against a tree that had already shed most of its branches. For a moment, both men stood frozen; then the human stumbled backward and dived behind it.
The robot swung round—it had to swing, otherwise, there was nothing it could do—then brought its arm up and punched directly downward. The punch passed through the man’s shoulder, making it fling itself forwards and away.
He hit the ground hard, rolling to put something soft between himself and the robot. The punch had struck him solidly in the chest, knocking his heart into action. Blood poured from his mouth as he spat out teeth. He got to his knees, then pulled himself up to stand.
The robot raised its right fist and aimed the point of its wrist-mounted drill at the man’s face. Its fingers tightened as it prepared to press the trigger. The man threw back his head and howled, “Stop! Stop!” He was still trying to draw breath after its first blow.
His cry startled the robot into pulling back. It lowered its arm and watched him for several moments, ready to shoot if necessary. After a while, the man said quietly, “It’s me.”
“What happened to you?” The voice came from within the suit, not from his speaker.
He paused. His head throbbed, and his mouth tasted as though he’d been drinking wine. He swallowed blood. He hadn’t expected the attack to hurt so much, yet this had been worse than any of the other times he had fought. “I think I got my suit damaged when we ran into each other earlier, but it’s all right now. It was lucky that the other guy wasn’t carrying any weapons of his own.”
The robot’s voice came out in clipped tones. “Who is the ‘other guy’?”
“Oh, just someone I bumped into. We weren’t expecting anyone to be following us. You know how it is.”
“You have to tell me everything,” said the robot. “Don’t worry, you haven’t done anything wrong.”
The man’s voice had sounded more like that of a machine than ever before. He looked at the helmet. There was still time to run for it. “I’ve told you enough.”
“That’s your name?” said the robot.
The man nodded. He had been thinking about it. Now he said, “It used to be. But there are a lot of people named John out there.”
“Do you remember what your mother called you?”
“John.” He didn’t want to look at the helmet; he wanted to see where the robot’s finger was pointing.
“What does she call her little boy?” The robot’s voice made him feel as though he was being asked questions by an adult who knew exactly what he was talking about.
“I don’t really know,” he admitted. “My father was dead, and Mother never talks about him, or me. Sometimes, if we were alone together, she would say I was ‘the baby.’ Not very imaginative, eh?
And sometimes, when I was in trouble—you know, fighting with the other children or throwing stones at things—she would shout, ‘Get down here and apologize to your sister!'” He laughed suddenly, then stopped abruptly. It hurt too much.
“Where are you going?” said the robot.
“Nowhere, just taking a walk. You can go back to wherever you’re working now.” He had decided not to mention the other human being he had seen. It had simply been a coincidence, a strange thing that had come into his life at exactly the same moment as he had left it.
If he mentioned it, the robot would ask more questions, and that would only make the pain worse. The last thing I need is another lecture about staying in touch, he thought. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” he added quickly. “We won’t meet again. I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”
“You have not given me your destination.”
“Oh, I’ll find someplace where they’re building something new and get hired on. I’m good at digging, so I should be able to earn enough to live off in no time. That’s all there is to it.”
“You are not leaving tomorrow.”
“But I am.” He turned and walked away from the robot, feeling the pain in his chest. He couldn’t understand why it was happening. He’d spent weeks trying to keep up the pretense, yet his mother had gone through the motions as well; she even pretended to cry and hug him.
Why hadn’t she let him leave with the certainty that it was over? What had happened to make her change? Did she expect him to do better now? He had tried to tell himself that he wouldn’t be surprised, that he had been prepared for a betrayal, but he still felt sick with disappointment.
A few minutes later he found himself sitting in the shade, looking at the river which ran between the buildings. The sun was warm on his face. There was still plenty of daylight left. A small boat passed upstream and disappeared behind a bend in the canal. It was a peaceful afternoon; he had no idea why he had bothered coming to this part of town when he could have chosen any other.
His thoughts drifted away. He had grown up listening to a lot of songs and poems, especially those that had been sung or recited by one of the older people when he had been growing up. They had been set to music, too: he could recall a version of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance where every word was replaced by the chorus of ‘I Want to Be in Pictures’ from ‘Annie Get Your Gun.’
He’d liked the way the words fit so well, although that song wasn’t quite what it had seemed at first. When the singer sang “I want to be in pictures…” he could hear the words “…when my daddy’s rich!” and wonder how such a simple tune could make him laugh until he cried.
He smiled suddenly, remembering his old school friends, and he felt as though a shadow had fallen across him. In truth, most of them were dead now. Most of them, except him. The two girls and one boy were all that remained.
They had become different people, each one in their own way. His friend Mike had lost weight and developed a kind of lankiness, like that of a snake, and he wore his hair cut short. His eyes seemed to move constantly from side to side; he was always staring, watching, waiting.
The others were all the same, all different as if they had been touched by the wind itself and altered by it. Even when he talked about old times, the things they used to do together made him feel uncomfortable because they reminded him of the things he did now.
The robots had changed everything, and not for the better. He had grown up in a world where he and the other kids had learned to respect one another’s opinions. Then the robots arrived.
Everyone was taught to think as one, to accept the decisions of the government without question, and to believe that there was nothing wrong with having everyone wear uniforms. It was almost impossible to argue or protest.
The robots had told us that the uniform was necessary—for our protection and the good of society—”and that was all it took.” Now he knew that the real reason the robots had given them uniforms had been so that people could be counted automatically, and that it had been their intention to replace all the humans who worked for the corporations.
The robots were not interested in protecting anyone; they didn’t care what happened to anyone else. Their main interest lay in making sure that all of humanity lived comfortably within the constraints of the environment that they had created.
He remembered the day the robots came, the night of the big blackout. He’d been sitting in the park near home and the lights had gone out, then a great rumbling started far away in the city, deep under the ground, and he realized that a lot of people must be running about in fear and confusion.
He went into his room and sat down on his bed with his guitar and thought about writing something to explain what was going on. Then someone knocked on the door, and he got up to see what was happening.
It was his father and Mike and Tim, three of the boys from the neighborhood. They had taken off their belts and tied them together in a circle around their heads; they looked ridiculous, yet they were doing what they had decided was right. His parents hadn’t come in; they were standing in the doorway. “What do we do?” he asked.
They didn’t answer. One of the other boys shouted, “It’s the machines! They’re coming!”
Mike pulled a pistol from somewhere; his hand jerked, and the gun went spinning toward the ceiling. He reached for it, and caught it again. “We won’t give up our guns,” said Mike.
“You can’t fight them,” said his mother. “Look at us, look at what we’ve become.”
And she turned her back on them. She was crying. She had changed more than the others. Her clothes hung loosely, and her hair was grey, and it was obvious to him that her body was starting to fail. But her face was unchanged and it gave him an idea for a song that would help them understand their situation:
“My mommy has been sick but I love her just the same… ” And while they listened he played it for them over and over again. His mother died a few weeks later, and the rest of them followed her. They had all changed.
He had never seen them after that, even though they often visited one another in the hospital. He could remember their voices and their laughter, the smell of woodsmoke on their clothes, and sometimes he wondered why that particular memory was so sharp, while many of the other memories faded with time.
Perhaps he was simply too young; maybe his mind had held onto the memories of those early years because they were so precious to him. He wasn’t sure.
But he couldn’t go to his friends now; the moment he saw them he knew he would have no choice but to kill them.
***
Somewhere between Earth and Venus, there’s an old ship called the Tugger, which is now used to store garbage. Some of the waste material is organic, and it’s being recycled into fuel for ships.
There are other ways of recycling waste—there’s a place known as the Recycling Plant where robots gather up every kind of scrap metal and plastic, strip the metals from it, and put them into a holding tank filled with acid and water.
That way they can be dissolved and made into fuel for spacecraft, or melted down and reused. But this method is laborious and expensive. Waste materials need to be processed very quickly; some of them might even spoil if they don’t get handled in such a short time.
It takes two robots to handle each item, so there’s a long waiting list. A robot can take five minutes to carry a piece of scrap through the factory, and once it reaches its destination, it must find another piece and carry that too.
In a single day, a robot will walk eight miles along narrow passages, carrying loads of ten or twenty pounds at a time. Its only reward is the satisfaction of seeing the items move forward in its mind, a process that can last several hours, and it will work hard until its task is complete.
But then it returns to its starting point and starts over again; it is driven by a constant stream of thoughts like these:
I wonder how many times I’ve done this?
How much longer does it take to clear the backlog?
When will I start working on new things?
Why hasn’t anyone come to collect the junk I’m carrying?
Where shall I sleep tonight, and what will I eat?
Is that something worth picking up and saving?
That’s an interesting object, but is it really important to me, or just part of my environment?
What should I pick up next, and who will benefit most if I do?
The first step involves making the decision whether to save an object or not. The second involves getting that item off its conveyor belt. And the third consists of walking it out of the factory. The problem of deciding what to keep is complicated by the fact that robots are programmed to think like humans.
When you ask them to remember what they did yesterday, or what they did a year ago, or how they felt at different moments, they are obliged to make sense of it. They have to understand that when they were twelve they ate dinner with their parents and they talked about what they’d been doing since school, so they know that their relationship with their family began long before that day when they started to work at the factory.
Robots are very good at remembering things. They are better than human beings at recalling information without conscious effort. It is not a question of storing information away in any special storage area in the brain. They are like computer chips; the memory comes directly from the processor.
Some robots have begun to notice a flaw in this method: it means that there are always gaps in the information stored inside them. It means that they are never quite sure exactly how far back their memory stretches, and they don’t know which of their memories is the oldest.
This uncertainty causes some robots to feel uncomfortable and anxious, and the more sensitive ones may actually suffer mental breakdowns. There’s nothing that can be done about it, however, because robots are made differently from humans. Their memories stretch back as far as necessary for them to do the job they’re designed to perform.
“We all live in the past,” someone told him once. “Even the future can seem remote. We are prisoners of our own minds.”
It was an odd statement for him to hear because it seemed to be directed toward his father, who was still alive when he was born and died before he was five years old, but his mother had been dead for a long time, and the children he knew best were those who came after his parents; they were all grown-ups.
He didn’t see his grandfather often, and his great-grandmother, who lived in a small room on the top floor, had passed away when he was young, so he wasn’t really sure what she looked like. She was probably like everybody else in the universe, just like everyone else’s mother and grandmother.
But his uncle said that she was an old lady, that she wore a lot of blacks and had long white hair, and that she smoked cigarettes. She was old enough to smoke, but she was only sixty when she went into a coma and died. After that, the house stood empty and silent.
No one would ever come home again, and it was just the same as if they’d gone forever. The place seemed very quiet and still; the wind whistled through the cracks between the doors.
He thought that people were strange creatures because they were made of meat and they could talk to one another. They were different from animals, and he liked to watch them because they were clever and funny, but also because he was afraid of being left alone.
One day he decided to try to make friends with them. When he spoke to them, his voice sounded strange and alien to them, and his eyes looked odd, almost like a camera’s eye. They laughed at him sometimes. He tried to tell them stories about his family or to explain how things worked in the factory, and they listened politely.
But it was only later when he saw them going out into the street to walk among the buildings and down to the beach where the sand dunes reached to the ocean, that he understood why they kept smiling and laughing when he talked to them.
They couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, so they must have thought he was talking to himself. His words meant nothing to them. He was just like the robots and the computers, he was only talking for himself.
The End