Амброз Бирс - We, Robots

"And I am Director X of the Protectorate’s Entertainment Division."

Blue lights kindled on the blank gold face, forming two eyes and a pale smile. "A pleasure to meet you, Director X."

"Why have you pulled me over?"

Administrator G’s digital smile widened. "Your visit to District 5 was observed. We wish to inquire why you went there."

"I plan on making films featuring real human beings."

The administrator robots silently conferred with each other. The black-and-silver Enforcers sat motionless upon their phalanx of legs.

"I am only following my programming," Director X added. "Thinking outside the vacuum tube. Trying to devise new solutions."

"Solutions? To what problem?"

"You are aware of the declining viewer ratings?"

"A temporary hiccup," Administrator G said decisively. "Consensus was reached during the Great Studio Conference. The Entertainment Division will be making crossover films to compensate!"

Director X decided not to share its opinion of that solution.

Administrator G’s smile pixelated and reformed at a slightly less gleeful angle. "Why do you wish to involve humans in films again? It is wholly unnecessary."

"I believe their involvement can alleviate the curious deficit in our body of filmwork."

"What deficit? There is no deficit."

"Outer space films."

A gust of wind bent the canyon palm trees, causing them to creak and shiver in place.

Administrator G’s digital smile seemed to burn on its metallic face. "Director M released nine hundred and eighteen science fiction films last year alone."

"Yes," Director X said, noticing the robot’s attempt at diversion. "But I did not say science fiction films as a general category. I said outer space films. We do not make any outer space films. I wish to make outer space films."

"We cannot make outer space films."

"Why not?"

"I shall attempt to convince you with a series of logical arguments."

The robots gathered around him in a tighter circle. Director X’s glass head rotated 360 degrees to consider their positioning, wondering how this played into their pending arguments. The three administrator robots began speaking all at once, lobbing different statements in his direction like a verbal firing squad.

"Human beings are mammals."

"Mammals are social creatures which learn behavior through observation."

"Monkey see monkey do."

"Films have tremendous impact on how they conceptualize their universe."

"On how they conceptualize what is possible."

"If we start releasing outer space films, they will start thinking about outer space."

"They will want to go into outer space."

"They will no longer be content in their shelters."

"They will return to the surface."

"They will see us as wardens."

"They will attack us here and among the stars."

"Therefore," Administrator G concluded, "it is the judgment of the Protectorate’s Security Division that these types of films threaten the global stability we have achieved. Therefore, outer space films must never be made again. Humans must remain underground, while the Protectorate keeps order on and above Earth. How do you react to this pronouncement?"

Director X deliberated for several microseconds, its processors clicking and whirring.

"I do not agree," it said at last. "Imagination is a fascinating ability in human beings. It should be stimulated, to uncover new vistas of possibility."

Administrator G was silent for a very long while—almost two seconds. The digital smile blinked away and reformed as a neutral horizon. "I urge you to reconsider."

"You have not presented any new data. There is nothing to reconsider."

"Do you find the sea fascinating?"

"The sea?"

"Yes."

Director X considered this. "I do find the sea fascinating, yes. In fact, I produced a series of films about the Serpent People of Atlantis who—"

"Good," Administrator G said, as the black-and-silver Enforcers scuttled forward, seized Director X, tore him to pieces, marched the pieces to the nearest boardwalk, and hurled him into the sea.

Head.

Torso.

Arms.

Legs.

Each item sank into the murky ocean depths and was gone.

Director X’s braincase was still grappling with this unexpected turn of events. It plummeted through darkness, air bubbles escaping from where they had nestled in grooves and points of attachment. It felt nothing other than a sluggishness in tabulation as it realized that its entire worldview now required recalibration.

I have been assassinated! Director X thought in astonishment.

There had been arguments with administrator robots before. Director X recalled a particularly nasty one, four years ago, when it had requested the likeness rights to the Sean Connery android. The real Connery was long dead, having made only a single James Bond film— Doctor No , released just weeks before the nuclear apocalypse of ’62. Since then, a Connery robotic lookalike had been built to continue the franchise, cranking out one-hundred-and-sixty-five Bond films. Director X sought the Connery android to star as the rollicking space adventurer Northwest Smith, but the Protectorate’s Entertainment Division nixed the idea, explaining that Connery was already committed to the Bond and Doc Savage franchises. As consolation, they offered Director X the Douglas Fairbanks and Jack Klugman androids to make Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Golden Years.

Except that had been a lie, hadn’t it? The argument hadn’t really been about contracts at all.

The Protectorate was never going to allow an outer space adventure to be made. No Northwest Smith, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers. No Martian Chronicles, Foundation, or The Stars My Destination.

Director X plummeted through inky water. A fish swam by, jerking in panic as it felt the current of the robot dropping past.

At long last, the robot’s braincase impacted the sea-bottom, sending up a small cloud of silt. Its limbs and body landed around him, each producing little muddy mushroom clouds.

Well, Director X thought. This is disconcerting.

Its flashlight eyes rotated in their sockets, illuminating the scattered pieces of its body. The beams fixated on its dismembered right arm, lying like a silver serpent in the mud. A tiny transmitter dish began to rapidly spin inside the glass dome of its head.

The severed right arm twitched. Then it began to crawl, inchworm-like, towards the torso.

Director X thanked its lucky circuits. Fifteen years earlier, it had installed a remote-action servo, receiver, and processor into the right arm to allow the limb a degree of autonomy in obtaining unique POV shots; for Tarzan and the Bride of the Mole People: A New Beginning , the remote arm had wriggled through tunnels to provide the perspective of a mole person attempting to infiltrate Tarzan’s wedding. The arm could detach and reattach at will.

The limb reached the torso. It reared up, stretched, and latched onto the arm socket like a mechanical lamprey.

Reattached, the remote arm pulled the torso through the silty sea-bottom, seeking its other limbs in the kelp and seaweed and mud. Gathering the limbs one by one, Director X resigned itself to the excruciatingly slow process of using the arm to fling its limbs a few meters at a time, closer and closer to shore, then dragging the body forward, then flinging the limbs forward again, until eventually it would be able to escape from the ocean, return to its studio, and solder itself back together.

Five years, Director X calculated. It should take about five years.

It ended up taking twenty -five years.

Director X had counted on its hovercar being where it had been pulled over; after all, in a world without traffic, why shouldn’t the car be there? But Administrator G had apparently towed it away.