Амброз Бирс - We, Robots

Consequently, Director X was forced to continue its grab-fling-drag locomotion all the way back to its studio. A few blocks away from its destination, it found a rusted shopping carriage, and was able to shave a year off its progress.

Once safely inside, the robot pieced itself back together again. Humpty Dumpty in reverse. Then it walked straight to Los Angeles District 5, pulling the remaining kelp and seaweed from itself lest someone mistake it for the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

"Hello! I am Director X. By authority of the Global Security Protectorate, I humbly thank you for opening your doors immediately and inviting me inside!"

The door snapped up into the ceiling. The remaining doors followed suit, like Morbius’ adamantium steel security system.

Warily, considering that this might be a trap, Director X trundled down the hallway. When the decontamination spray hit its body, the robot wondered if it might be acid.

At long last, the shelter’s final door opened. Director X peeked through and…

… for a moment, its brain nearly stopped functioning.

The town of Retro Los Angeles had changed.

The general outline of park, town hall, library, church, and bisecting avenues had remained as its memory banks recalled. But there had clearly been an aesthetic revolution in the last two-and-a-half decades. A cultural metamorphosis unlike anything it could have anticipated.

The town billboards that had once advertised bank loans now displayed stars and planets, with a rocketship declaring, "OUR LOANS ARE OUT OF THIS WORLD!"

The buildings that had once been rectangular brick-and-mortar structures now sported ringed towers and observatory-like rooftops, lattices by skyways and hovercar docks.

And the people! Oh, there were still plenty of fedora-sporting men with briefcases, and women in smart skirts. But these seemed to constitute the older, graying crowd. The younger generation donned silver jumpsuits and antennae-sporting headgear. Even the hairstyles of the women suggested the sharp curves and lines of an Astroglider fleet vessel.

Director X gaped in astonishment.

How was this possible?

A thirty-something man scurried up the white-lacquered steps to meet him. "You!" he cried happily. "By Isaac, Judith, and Arthur! You’ve returned!"

Director X peered at the thin, tall, and bespectacled human. "Hello," it said uncertainly. "Have we met?"

"I don’t know," the guy was grinning. "Have you fought any giant ants out there?"

Director X matched the features in the man’s face against his memory banks. "Bobby?" it exclaimed.

"It’s Burgess Robert Croker now. But you can always call me Bobby."

"Bobby," the robot said. "Why don’t we go to the malt shop. Perhaps you can fill me in on the last twenty-five years. I think I… need to sit down."

It wasn’t a malt shop anymore. It was now the Asteroid Brunch and Salad Bar.

Director X peered around at the faux galaxies painted on the ceiling and the little model spaceships whipping along electric tracks along the walls. It considered the menu placard at the counter, sporting offerings like Meteor Crunchies with Cheese, Starburgers, and Fried Saturnian Rings.

"I do not understand," the robot said at last.

Burgess Robert "Bobby" Croker laughed. "Word of your visit twenty-five years ago spread like wildfire."

"Granted, but—"

"The things you said to us… all that jazz about outer space and rocket ships…well, it got people talking. The young kids, mostly. We started meeting to discuss what we’d heard. And we started piecing together the puzzle."

"You had no books on outer space," Director X protested. "I checked. Your city had expunged any reference to outer space, fact or fiction, from its libraries and records. From its entire culture, it seemed!"

Bobby nodded grimly. "Sure. We eventually reached that same conclusion. Previous administrations must have combed through the libraries and schools and bookstores, quietly gathering up books on outer space and destroying them. I’m guessing your ’bot bosses were behind that purge."

"Then how did you—"

"There were clues," Bobby interrupted.

"Clues? What clues?"

The burgess pushed aside his beer and related the events of the past twenty-five years.

The kids had started it.

Director X’s brief visit had become the stuff of legend. It had also imbued the vocabulary of the children with several tantalizing concepts. Things like "outer space" and "rocket ships" and "forbidden planets."

Asking their parents for clarification was no help. They didn’t know, since the astronomy books and space-based adventures and galaxy-spanning comics had all been destroyed generations ago courtesy of spies working with the Global Security Protectorate.

But children are not easily dissuaded.

The youth of Retro Los Angeles launched their own secretive, town-wide investigation. And in doing so, they began to notice anomalies.

Like old dictionaries.

New dictionaries all came from the publishing houses of the Protectorate. But older editions could be found in an attic, garage, or closet. In those yellowed pages, references to planets and solar systems were discovered. Definitions of the Milky Way, nebulae, comets , and meteors !

Emboldened by these clues, the children expanded their inquiry. Misplaced card catalogues were found, containing references to books that didn’t exist. And books that did exist sometimes contained explosive secrets. The Protectorate might have scoured the science-fiction shelves for any "unacceptable" material, but their search parameters had proved too narrow. District 5’s youth plunged into classic literature and uncovered a tale of extraterrestrial visitation in the tomes of French philosopher Voltaire. Buried in Gulliver’s Travels were speculations about the planet Mars. In a bookstore’s moldy Religious Studies section, one young girl discovered mind-blowing theories on cosmology by the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Word spread, gathering allies into the revolution. Kids began poking through great-grandpa’s old boxes and great-grandma’s storage trunks. Old issues of Amazing Stories were passed about like hidden contraband. A few Superman comics were located, complete with illustrations of other worlds and villains from beyond space.

Some of this contraband was discovered and confiscated and destroyed, but by then it was too late. The imaginations of an entire generation were fired up. Kids began illustrating their own stories of the future, of planets, of galactic exploration and discovery.

"What happened to the people who worked so hard to suppress knowledge and interest in outer space?"

"What could they do?" Bobby cried. "The old guard was voted out during one of the elections. Accusations were made of collusion with the ’bots, so we flushed the old bureaucrats from power! Retro Los Angeles looks to the stars now! Our revolution is just beginning!" He hesitated, glancing out the window at the granite cave ceiling and the artificial sun that hung over Main Street. "Well, you know what I mean."

Director X followed the young man’s gaze. What it noticed, though, was a crowd gathering along the street to point and stare at the robot sitting in the Asteroid Brunch and Salad Bar. Word of an outside visitor was spreading once again.

How long before the Protectorate hears news of my return? The city’s old guard was still about, and likely still in contact with the robotic administrators. And what happens then? Will they send me on another "investigation" into the fascinating ocean, or perhaps bury me beneath a mile of dirt so I can study the intriguing layers of geological sediment?