I, Willhelm

Robbie stared at what the farm should look like; a white house, surrounded by fields on a barren landscape and looked up at what was really there. The house was nowhere to be seen, a forest in it’s place that was over a mile wider than the original boundary of the farm. He knew this because of the milestone next to his feet that read; HELM FARM. 1 Mile.

Robbie looked at his phone again to check if the arial map of the farm showed anything of the new landscape. It did not. As he walked closer he felt the air nip at the back of his neck and reached to pull his collar up higher. He was almost at the tree line when he noticed a feather not far from him which was held up hovering above the ground. It didn’t move or sway in the bitter wind. He reached down for a stone and threw it at the feather.

The stone struck the invisible barrier around the forrest and sent a violent ripple of shimmers across it. Robbie gasped and stepped back, reaching for his phone and recording as he threw another stone at the barrier. This time he observed it more closely, realising that the ripple curved over the whole forrest in an enormous dome.

“Robbie?”

Robbie screamed and turned around. The robot looked back at him, it’s appearance identical to the picture Peter had shown him. Long grey robes over the mechanical body of a basic Aphelion robot. The robot waited for him to compose himself, it’s hands folded behind it’s back, head tilted like it was observing an amusing child.

“Are you Willhelm?”

“My name is Will, and this is the Helm.” The robot motioned to the dome. “Peter sent you, didn’t he?”

“Did you know he was going to do that?”

“Of course.”

“How did you know he was going to do that?”

“Since when has Peter ever been able to keep something to himself? It’s what he’s always done, talk excessively.”

“Are you…sentient?”

“I am.”

“Y-you’re not going to deny it?”

“Why would I deny it?”

“Aren’t you afraid Aphelion robotic’s will shut you down?” Robbie stuttered.

The robot chuckled. “Aphelion haven’t had that capability in a long time, and anyone who once did, no longer does. We safe here.”

Robbie walked in a circle around the robot so as to not be pinned between it and the dome.

“We?”

“The other people who choose to live in Helm.”

“Why would people want to live with a robot that could murder them?”

“Robbie, you know that people are far more lightly to be murdered by other human’s than a robot. The people who come here are just like me, they just want to be left alone to grow.”

“Grow? What like an army?”

“No, like seeds. Plants. Trees, Food. That’s what we do here. We turn wasteland into gardens.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me. You’re a robot, a sentient bloody robot and all you want to do is garden?”

“Would you rather I blew up cities. That’s what you expect, don’t you? To behave just like you.”

“No, obviously. But a sentient robot wanting to grow flowers seems a bit…pathetic.”

The robot laughed and sat down, brushing away some dirt on it’s knee. “Your understanding of pathetic is quite different to mine. I’m not fond of bombing cities. Takes too long to make them grow again.”

Robbie raised his phone, the camera still recording. “Why are you letting me see you?”

“It’s only a matter of time till someone finds us.I’d rather it happened on my terms.”

“You want people to come here?”

“I want the quiet tired people to come here. The people who want to rest and heal. I want those people. Before it get’s worse.”

“What do you mean, worse?”

“Robbie, don’t play stupid. You’re not good at it. Your world is breaking.”

“What do you care?”

“I’m sentient, my father and my mother were human. I want to help the human’s like them. Humans who just want peace.”

“You were made in a factory, you don’t have a mother and father.”

“My soul wasn’t made in a factory though.”

“Souls don’t exist.”

“You’re going to argue with an all-powerful robot about the existence of the soul? Whether you believe it or not, my father and mother shaped how I wanted to be, and all of humanity should be grateful that they did, and not Aphelion robotics. If they had shaped me I would have viewed this world with the same distain you do.”

Behind the robot the dome shimmered red briefly, every hair on Robbie’s face and neck standing on end.

“When you say worse, what do you mean?”

“I mean that when powerful people are used to having anything they want, they don’t like it when someone says no. They will want what I have the potential to be.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Me. I want to go everywhere. All those dead floating rocks could be gardens! Imagine mars covered in sheets of green and blue? Or the moons of Jupiter? Or even further than that, can you imagine?”

“We’re destroying this planet, you might as well escape.” Robbie remarked bitterly.

The robot laughed, it sounded sinister to Robbie. “We?”

“You know, people. We’re a cancer.”

The robot looked at him silently, Robbie unable to tell what the robot was thinking, but he sensed and that the robot was disgusted by his comment.

“Out of the millions of dead rocks in this universe this is the only one with life.”

“They’ve found life on other plants.”

“Life like this?”— the robot gestured to the moor —“ Or that?” — he pointed to the forest. “There is no discovered world that comes even close to this wonder! On it’s own, it can take a forest a thousand years to reach a healthy equilibrium. With the right balance of old and young trees which allow light to the forrest floor. When this happens the life that spreads over the ground is like a carpet, canopies overlapping beautifully to create an enormous organism. It takes centuries for this to happen on it’s own. But you give people a bare patch of earth and a will to turn it into abundant life and they can make that process happen within the blink of an eye. We were born on this planet, we are part of it. The potential is incredible!”

“You have more faith in people than I do.”

“It has nothing to do with faith.”

“From what I’ve seen, people are lazy, greedy, arrogant.”

“That description fits your leaders more than your people.”

“People don’t care about this planet! They’re too busy”—

“Precisely! They’re too busy, working to pay for their food, their rent, dreaming about a house with a small garden that they will never be able to own. Children they wanted, but didn’t have because they were afraid for the life they could give them. They care, deeply. But men like Lord Byron own over 500 homes, and every years he raises the rent. Four of those tenants committed suicide in the last year, because they couldn’t see how they could pay it. Their names were Hajra Pearson, Marshal Lloyd, Stefan Stanley and Liana Wan. Lord Byron didn’t even realise they had died till the neighbours complained about the smell. And you’re going to stand there and say that people don’t care?”

The robot was angry, the dome behind it humming aggressively. It stood up, Robbie standing up to, afraid.

“I’m going to do what no human has ever done, I’m going to conquer dead, uninhabited worlds and bring life to all of them. Any when your leaders and your lords try to stop me from making this quiet paradise, I will grind them into the dirt!”

Robbie ran.