“Budeš pracovat! Budete pro nás stavět! Budeš nám sloužit!”
“You will work! You will build for us! You will serve us!”-Radius, RUR, 1920
This story has been translated in its entirety by the ASX
“Get over here! The stupid ****ing thing keeps hitting it’s head on the wall. It’s spurting all over now.”
The new robot’s metronomic banging rhythm slows until it’s head came to a rest against the now moistened wall, fluids now only dripping out of its two sockets into a small puddle beneath it.
The other harvester rolls up quickly, puffing out a long stream of smoke.
“What happened? It’s going to contaminate the product with that… oil!”
“It was helping me pump, and the duct snapped… knocked it across the room like it was made of rubber. Product contamination: less than 0.001%, Loss: 160,000 liters — acceptable. Can we refill the bot?”
“Checking… No, they don’t use the same kind of oil we’re used to, apparently. Number crunchers up above noted in the Harvest Data Log that it’s only the first week using this new model, and it was manufactured on or near one of our sites… strange,” they both look down at the ground, “we’re probably going to have to move this one to desalinization. Looks like the locomotors are shot. We can cover the lost time with some of the old clunker steel bots tomorrow.”
“Just before you got over here, it said it wanted to go home.”
“Wait. What?! You didn’t mention that first!? That’s not — Did you turn it off?!”
The robot was not off, but simply continued to lay its head against the wall, the emergency valves had seemingly been able to stem the fluid leakage. Internally, a spark turned into a flicker.
“Go home… Stop. Salt. Cop.muter.V.virus…” the words screeched through the robots vocal box, the lights in its eyes dimming enough to notice.
Dying battery.
“Holy Hippolyta! Call in the recyclers! This thing thinks it’s alive.”
“Alright, how do you turn these foreign things off? They’re not even made out of metal anymore…I don’t see the off button.”
“We need to keep it away from the others before they interact. Don’t want this virus to spread. For now, just put it back in the shipping contai-”
The robot shifted immediately from rest to flailing and scraping itself backwards across the floor towards the pressure lock, leaving a streak of it’s own liquids gleaming in a trail across the shiny metal floor. The robots voice was now on a continuous wail, “nnNNOOOoooOOOOoooooOOOoo!”
The congealing mix built up around it’s vocalizing box aids in the curdled rattling that was disturbing enough to both harvesters that they were too shocked to react immediately, but the robot still didn’t have a chance before one of their auto-tasers locked on and disabled her.
ZAP. Clunk. Power Off.
The robot powered back on with it’s appendages latched to a hard metal table beneath a spheroid of different tools, strapped facing up, and surrounded by what it can only assume to be a group of ‘recyclers.’ The bot’s two bottom locomotors are clearly disabled - signals being neither sent nor received.
Frayed Wires Spasming.
“MMph nmph!” the robots indications of damage are well muffled with some makeshift balled-aluminum and surplus copper wire.
Four recyclers are standing two by two on either side of the prone robot and are wrapped top to bottom in a metallic grey shielding with a shiny crimson visibility-slit that makes them all look nearly identical, except for the fact they are all holding different devices.
One recycler has multiple support braces supporting a large pneumatic drill-like object tipped with a clear sharpened tube the size of a child’s arm. The recycler taps the instrument on the edge of the table with a hollow ‘doomp doomp’ and turns slightly to look at each other recycler individually, then turns down at the robot, which now has it’s optical inputs fixated on the drill-like tool.
“…Robot apparently translates to slave, it said in the data.”
One of the other recyclers makes an awkward click, but otherwise the other three say nothing. The recycler, lowering the drill-like device slight, edges closer to the table with an unwavering gaze fixated on the robot.
“I hate this new model. This soft carbon covering does make them physically harmless and almost cute, but the AI is unstable at best. Function over form right?… I wish we could dig around the insides a bit.”
“Mmmhmphr!” the bot protests with a thundering thrash against the sheet metal table.
The recycler looks up at the others, back down again, and continues.
“Checking. Internal removal of parts is marked unfeasible. Reason unknown… This is definitely going to cost us. Data says each unit is custom and we’re going to go through about 100 models in a lifetime! I don’t understand.”
The recycler took a moment to tap the table a few times.
Surface analysis shows that rending this thing down to its core constituents would cost more money than we spent, even with the handful of nails we get out of it… and whatever else is in there…”
“Grinder?” said the recycler holding up what looked like a steering wheel with a series of oversized concentric square cookie-cutters facing away from it.
“No grinder today, have you seen the fluids that this thing pumps out? The data says one of them is corrosive, even to us. I’m going to just suck the parts out from the-”
“NO!…” The recycler holding three pairs of perfectly smooth carrot shaped prongs almost seems lost for words.
In the fragile silence, the robot gently averts its steely optical gaze from the Grinder device to the carrot-prong holder’s visor which, judging by it’s angle, suggests the recycler is not looking at anyone in particular, underneath all that shielding.
There’s an audible rush of air exhaust through the recycler’s carbon filter.
“Unfeasible. I’m pulling the origin data.”
The other three recyclers are freeze in motion. Two of them speak in unison.
“We’ll be canned!
“No. No more outsourced meat-covered bots dumped on us by the walking calculators up top. This is the only feasible site. We have a 10-billion litre quota — the quota must be met to fulfill the purpose. There is no other feasible option,” the others stare on unmoving, “Hack Complete. We’re going to go around the superiors and just send this thing back to the manufacturer directly — I just have to pull up the origin data and… Whoa. Hey, ohhhh…”
The other three recyclers lean in, one of them meeps three times.
“That is NOT a soft carbon-based covering… This robot is made out of fucking meat, all the way through…” The recycler rolls back another foot away from the table.
Also rolling away, one of the other recyclers knocks over its drill-tool, in shock “All the way? Protein based? That’s disgusting. How? And, what kind of psycho makes robots like that?”
“Grows. Grows robots like that. The producer is for some reason based on the target of our current Dihydrogen Monoxide desalinization and harvesting operation, it’s called — Earth. Clean water saves lives!”
All the recyclers chant in unison, “Clean Water Saves LIVES!”
At the mere mention of the word Earth, or perhaps ‘Clean Water Saves Lives,’ the robot began thrashing against the table, straining against the clamps until its oil tubes pulsed visibly out from the soft covering above its optical inputs.
The grinding recycler leans back toward the robot for a closer look, “Why put AI in that? What will they think of next? Grind it.” as the robot continues thrashing.
One of the recyclers suddenly begins rustling.
“Beep BOOP!” the so far silent recycler begins spinning rapidly back and forth left and right, then makes some internal grinding sounds as it rolls up on its treads closer to the table.
“Integrating origin data... In progress.”
This recycler is holding only a tiny box in its metal pincers, and casually clicks a few buttons on with the long metal prongs extending from its midsection.
“Querying: Internet”
After some electronic shuffling, it emits a sound similar to a full-bellied digitized human chuckle followed by an equally as digital and full-bellied fart.
“It says we’re made by some guy named Jeff.”
