Krishna kumar Mani: SFS1: Science Fiction Short Stories

“So what will your next invention be, Bill?” Oh God, please don’t give me any new ideas.

Year: 2507

My name is Joe and I work for a ship building company. Currently we’re building one of the largest classes of ships that we’ve ever built. Along with me, there’s more than a thousand other people working in this isolated environment. They are all controlled by robots. Humans aren’t allowed to do anything without the permission of robots.

While we were walking to our work area, my co-worker James asked:

“Hi Joe, how are you?”

“Fine.”

“Have you seen Bob? I haven’t seen him lately,” said James

“I’ve got some sad news about that. Bob is no longer with us.”

He stopped walking, surprised and asked”What happened to him? Was there an accident?”

I replied by gesturing to enter the rest room. We went to the next restroom and turned the water on full speed and started to talk. This is the way we bypass the security cameras and microphones when we want to convey secrets to each other.

“The robots found out he was breaking the rules. They closed his story, James. You know that seventy percent of the workforce here are robots. Bob made a mistake and tried to talk to someone he wasn’t absolutely certain of. We need to be very careful.”

“Did they kill him?” James asked, clearly shocked.

”I think so. Bob is not the first person we’ve lost you know? These heartless robots would even kill us now. We’ve exceeded more than the 2.3 minutes allowed for urinal”

James looked incredibly sad while he walked to his work area. But these things are regular to me. As James and I know we’ve lost eleven of our co-workers, but I know we’ve lost many more than that. The robots need humans to do work that only they can do. Other than that, robots don’t require humans. They’d likely kill us all if they had no purpose for us. They don’t allow us to talk to one another in private place. It’s even against the rules to leave your room or visit another co-worker. All they want is for humans to work.

It’s impossible to identify who is a human and who is a robot. There are no differences in speech, attitude or behavior between them. The robots are nearly beings. Even our differences are minor. Humans drink energy drinks while robots change charger cells. And

perfect copies of human skin looks the same. The while robots don’t need to take breaks like humans do, they’re programmed to take breaks anyways to trick humans. No one knows who is a robot and who is a human. And everyone is afraid. They’re afraid to share their thoughts or to even check if someone else is a human. If they guess wrong, they’ll be gone, like Bob. I met James again at break time. He looked better, a little less sad. We’ve developed a system for communicating in public in secret. We use phrases with double meanings that are vague and can’t be easily deciphered. I pointed out a person and leaned over towards James.

”He looks like Bob, right?”

James thought for a second and replied. “Okay.”

I just conveyed that the person I pointed out was not human. Of course, I couldn’t one hundred percent sure. No one could. We use ‘look like’ to signal that the person is a robot. The names don’t matter, we just say whatever for that. “Bye, take care,” I said to James.

‘Take care’ means be careful of danger. We’re both on alert since Bob’s disappearance. We don’t say anything else, just go to our separate work areas.

At 8:00 PM the work day ended. I searched for James, but I didn’t find him. He might have went directly to his room.

Dane and David came up and greeted me in the hallway.

“How are you, Joe?” asked David.

They called me to rest room by action and we went in like James and I had in the morning. “I identified a person as robot,” said Dane. “Who?” I asked.

“The guy wears the yellow colored pants. His name is Wes. Be careful of him.”

“I’ve got news for you. Bob is no longer with us. The robots killed him.”

They were speechless for a while.

“Really?”

“Yes, please be careful”

“He was a close friend of James’ right?” asked David. “I suspect James may be robot, you also should be careful.”

I was surprised. James was a robot? How could that be possible? “What do you mean? James?” Both Dane and I were surprised and just started at David. We heard someone coming into the restroom so we went we go out one by one without talking at all. We’d have to wait until tomorrow to discuss this news.

I went to my room and locked the door. I sat down in a chair and recalled today’s events. I updated today’s work status to management. Work status was “Today 1077 humans worked, 4 were sick. 25 robots worked, including this one.”

I changed my charge calls out.

“Yes, I am one of the 25 robots. To make all the humans as foolish as possible, we’ve become friends with many of the humans. We point out other real humans as robots. They suspect that other humans are robots and don’t talk to them. That prevents them from planning against us or coordinating an uprising. They even think that most of the actual robots are actually humans conspiring with them. Humans are constantly creating rumors about who might be a robot. But they’re nearly always wrong. Goodbye. Now I am going to enter stand-by mode. This is part of my biography, sorry robography.”

“One last thing: we don’t kill humans since they are excellent workers. We simply transfer them to a different work location and inform others that they are destroyed. After a strong warning we transfer them to a new work place. The transferred people never meet again, until now we haven’t offered a second transfer to anyone.”

He has nobody that cares about him. But then again, he doesn’t particularly care for anyone else either. His experiments are his life. We care about him because of this story. His name is John, and he works for a small university as a science professor. His leisure time is spent in his lab performing unknown experiments. Even the dean is unaware of his actual research.

Even though the university was out of session for the holidays, Dean Robertson had responsibilities to attend to. He’d come to the grounds to check on the progress of a new auditorium that was being constructed. Construction wasn’t exactly his field, but they’d promised him that they’d use it as a large science lecture hall. As he passed by John’s lab he noticed that he was inside, working on something. John was always on something. Today the dean decided he’d investigate.

After knocking, the dean proceeded in to the lab where John was holding a rabbit in one hand and a dropper filled with red liquid in the other, feeding it to the rabbit. Although the dean had knocked, Professor John hadn’t acknowledged the Dean’s presence.

“Hello, professor.”

Professor John turned around and noticed the dean was behind him. He was surprised for a moment and said, “Welcome Dean Robertson.”

“How are you?”

“I am fine. What can I do for you?”

“What are you doing with this rabbit? Are you busy with something?”

“Just doing some research is all.”

“That’s what I’m here to ask you about. We haven’t really gotten to know one another. I’m sorry for that. I’ve just been really busy lately.” “I suppose we both have been pretty busy!” “What is this?” asked the dean as he pointed to the red liquid in the dropper.

The professor was speechless for a moment. He hadn’t planned on having a show and tell with the dean today.

“I asked, what are you doing? You’re always in here working on some kind of experiment. What’s the nature of your research?”