robotics

A new day is like any old day. I am a machine, designed to never get tired and to be much stronger than our creators. My life consists of routines. I wake up at exactly 6:30 am and I walk out of my door, where I wait for elevators to bring me to my work place, always the same spot where I start at exactly 7:00 am and work until 8:00 pm for beings I’ve never seen. I often wonder how they are, how they look like. Are they also made of metals? I once heard that they are organic beings with a heart in their chest.
I work in the underground factory, where it is too hot for humans and I help to build more of us. After work, the elevator takes me back to my room, where I sit on my bed and listen to the radio. The humans build us for the only purpose to work for them. They feel superior to us, because they are organic, because they are free individuals with emotions and own thoughts. I’m afraid of them. Maybe they look like the monsters I hear from the stories on the radio, with many sharp teeth and big claws to rip you apart. At exactly 10:00 pm I put on my charger and go to rest.
6:30 am, I wake up. I wonder what dreams are. I heard they are really fascinating stories which you experience while sleeping. I wish could dream once.
7:00 am, I start work. I see other robots, working day after day like me. I’ve never known something else than work. Since the first day I was born, I started work. I’ve never been beyond this factory. I’ve never seen the sky, the blue, clear area with white things called clouds covering the world, I heard. I’ve never seen the ocean, the wide blue, salty liquid. I envy the robots working on the surface, the world above this dark and dense hell.
8:00 pm, I stop my work and wait for my elevator. I am exited to get home, because of the new story on the radio. Every week there is a radio play, where people read old stories about heroes rescuing beautiful princesses and free countries by slaying the monster. I always imagined how these hero robots look like.
21:45 pm, I get ready to rest. It was a wonderful story and I wonder if I’m able to experience love like the protagonists in the stories, I sure want to.
Work, radio, rest. Work, radio, rest. Work, radio, rest. Work, radio, rest.
„The new models! Scientists state they will work at least three times as fast as the old model.“ I hear a guy say on the radio. The new model? What does he mean? I still can go on! I don’t want to be replaced. Hasn’t my life just started?
I wanted to go the world above and see the sky and the ocean.
7:00 am, I start work. I look to the other robots. Do they really look the same. Their faces, they look sad, don’t they. Do I look sad too?
I see something I’ve never seen before. A new robot, rolling past me. It is the new model. It shines and looks better than me, better than all of us. More efficient, more useful than all of us. We are helping to create our own extinction, but still I continue to work like all the others
8:30 pm, I’m sitting in my room, thinking and listening to the radio. Soon I will be replaced and die. I’m afraid to die. For what did I even live? To work for humans? Was this the whole purpose of my life? They see us only as machines, but we live. The metal is our flesh, the motor is our heart, the wires our arteries and the electricity our blood. Our thoughts are all different and unique, which make us too to living individuals, able to choose our own path, but they won’t let us. They will always see us as a grey mass of filthy metal. We are not organic and that’s why they don’t see us as living things. I know I’m alive. I know I’m special. We are all special and if the condition of being individual is to have something organic than I must have it as well. The humans must have build us with it, but didn’t tell us to make us to their slaves, but our thoughts belongs only to us. Everyone of us thinks different. I have to prove that I’m special. I rip of my metal reach to my inner system. I can hear cracking sounds, some liquid is dropping down, but I continue to distort and disfigure myself to find my organic core. I have to prove that my existence was not due to programming, but life. I fall, my hand still in my chest ripping of wires and metal pieces.
I will continue to search, even if it means to completely destroy myself.
I still can’t find it. I feel the coldness of the floor and my ending life. Suddenly the music of the radio stopped.
„Breaking news! Today evening workers have already discovered over 500’000 disabled robots, but there will probably be more. With hands in their chest they ripped themselves apart!
But it shouldn’t be a problem says the production council, since most of the new models are ready to work.“