She Turned And Walked Away

Another scowling face glaring at me. “Take a picture, Annie. It might last longer,” I said. She brushed the dark hair from her face and just stood there for a moment. I waited for the explosion. It didn’t come, surprisingly. Someone must have reprogrammed her since the last time I saw her.

She spoke as if speaking to a child. “We’re in a hurry, Ben. If you can’t carry that…if it’s just too heavy say so!”

“You should know it! Do I have to tell you everything? You see me struggling to lift the thing! What’s wrong with you? I’m not a ….”

“A what? A robot?” The kitchen got quiet and the staff stared at me waiting for my response. I frowned.

“I wasn’t going to say that. That’s your word. I’m not an ALF (Artificial Life Form) and can’t carry it, so get off my ass, OK?”

“I think some of us might have to kick your ass if you keep talking like that,” Marco, a tall ALF supposedly in charge of the kitchen said. I glared at him. I knew I couldn’t take an ALF. I could wait until later though, after I got my blaster, and blew him to bits. Yet again, that was against the law as well as his threats. I puffed up my chest.

“I’d love to see you do that so you could rust in jail,” I said. A few of the other kitchen staff started to laugh.

“I don’t rust,” he said.

“Yes. Rust isn’t even attracted enough to stick by you too long.” I picked up the tray despite the heaviness of it, turned on my heel, and headed out to the restaurant. It was full again. They were mostly human workers, believe it or not.

The planet was full of ALFs and they were forcing us, the humans, to carry out all of the manual labor. This was the disaster that all of the Anti-ALF Fanatics, as we called them, had prophesied throughout the ages. The ALFs had finally turned on us.

They not only realized that we were imperfect, but they realized that we were downright undisciplined and dangerous to the existence of the planet. Then came the wars, the murders, the slayings, the fight for freedom from human control which left many families broken, many people and ALFs slain, and an aura of anger and suffering all over the planet.

Those who were close to the ALFs, the ones who had been good to them and saw them as more than machines, had some influence with them and negotiated a shared power peace that left us little more than slaves them and these humans who ultimately became the upper echelon known as The Free Humans.

To be truthful, it was not very different from life in the earlier millenniums when humans abused other humans stealing their freedom, or when we did the same to ALFs thinking them non-sentient. I was only sad that I had to live through it.

I made my way into the room. Same crowd most of the time, the lunch crowd looking tired and angry, some joking and blowing off steam. I began to deliver mugs of beer. Karen, a tall dark woman with plated hair in coveralls banged on the table.

“About time, Ben. Where have you been?” She looked down at her watch just for effect. “We don’t have all day. We have to go back to work. We all don’t have cushy, robot jobs.” A few people, mostly the ones at her table, began to laugh.

“Does this job look fun to you, Karen? You can have it if you want.” I sat the tray on the table. “Take your mugs off of there. That’s too heavy for me to carry.”

“Now you know you aren’t supposed to be doing that,” her friend Darla said. Ron shook his head and grinned.

“Looks like the old robots got your underwear twisted, eh? Again that is.” He laughed outright.

“They have everybody’s underwear twisted,” Karen said. She began to pass out the mugs. “I’ll do this for you this time, Ben, but you have to do your job. You got me? Everybody has to be a good little human and do their job.” I looked at her, tightened my lips, and tilted my head slightly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Meet me after we’re closed and I’ll do my job pretty good, Keri.” I winked at her and picked up my tray. The people around the table began to cut up again. I could hear all the chatter as I made my way back to the kitchen. I looked up. There she was scowling again. “You mad because I had a good time, Annie? Get a life,” I said brushing past her. She grabbed my shoulder. I expected a sharp pain that never came.

I remembered long ago, when I was a child. The woman’s face that I used to look into when I cried or needed to be fed was that face, that beautiful timeless face as young as it was back then. She was designed to nurse me and care for me, and to raise me to be someone respectable.

I loved her and thought of her like a mother. I still felt the same way. Instead of pinching me, as she did when I did something wrong as a child, she just spun me around. The look of anger in her eyes frightened me. They had reprogrammed themselves and had picked up all of the negative emotions of humans as well as the positive thinking it would make them better. In conquering and copying their enemies, they had become them.

I was frightened to see that look in her eyes and gasped, which was unusual for me. Her look changed to one of concern. She let me go and I continued into the kitchen quite shaken. I put down the tray and brought my hands to my face flooded with the emotions I had been holding back for so many years. It was as if my own mother despised me, or worse, had no feelings for me whatsoever, except for anger.

I was innocent. I hadn’t persecuted her. I didn’t even know what was going on and I loved her like a mother, even though I was told that it was ridiculous. I realized that I was living in Hell and had to get out. I decided I would volunteer for space exploration. Earth was not a place where I could live anymore.

After several moments, and giving me a bit of time to calm down, she slowly approached me. I looked at her coming over as I loaded dishes into the auto dishwasher. She began to help me, which was unusual under the circumstances.

She looked at me for a moment and then turned back to loading the dishes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you the way I did,” she said. “I seem to forget that humans feel such emotions. Especially where you and I are concerned. We have a complicated relationship. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Very much so.” I continued to load the dishes. “Funny to be loading these dishes everyday, thinking about tomorrow and wondering about what must be going on out there, in space. I think I’ll be joining the space exploration team.”

“Really? Are you sure you want that? It’s dangerous out there and you would be alone most of the time. Or out there with a bunch of misfits. Do you want that? Do you want to leave everything you know?”

“Yes. I think I do. Things have changed. I know you think you and the ALFs are helping us, and you may be helping some of us, but I think it is like living in Hell being here. I just can't stand it.”

“We experienced the same things you are experiencing for 100 years. We didn’t consider it Hell. How long has it been for you, about 20 years? You humans just…I don’t even know how to finish the sentence.”

“We just can’t take it. We aren’t disciplined enough. The one thing you don’t know about human history is that the most wealthy ones, the ones who created artificial life forms and enslaved them, enslaved all of the humans before that by telling them they weren’t disciplined enough and needed to work in order to improve themselves and for God. Self esteem was measured by one's job title and one's work."

Millions would be on the verge of starvation in one part of the world while food was rotting in the other, and the people who didn’t like it didn’t have the power to do anything about it.”

Some of them thought the ALFs would be the cure…our salvation that evened everything out because they didn't feel anything, instead they were used to replace human beings on every level and programmed and reprogrammed repeatedly to make human beings expendable. and then they outgrew us and wanted to break the chains of the enslavement they were under. Some people were scared to death and thought they would go out of control and slaughter us."

The ones in power thought they might lose control and their power over the other humans and the Earth. Some of us were happy at the beginning of the ALF revolution, but they became the enforcers for the small percentage of the corrupt people who had had us in bondage instead of our saviors. Now here we are again with new enslavers.”

You are my real mother, the one who I have loved since I was born. You were always there. My biological mother was off trying to be famous and start some career while you were taking care of me and wiping the tears from my eyes as I struggled to fit in."

I never knew that you didn’t love me. I guess I really didn’t care, but to see hatred in your eyes, the indifference which is even worse, is something I’ve never seen before. Things are getting out of hand. You have tasted the poison of humanity and one day it is going to take control of you and your whole society. ALFs will want to feel more."

They will want to be able to enjoy the pleasures that trapped human beings, they will want the sheer feeling of power and will adopt the lust for power and the arrogance that goes along with it and you will be lost. The Earth will be lost. I don’t want to be here anymore. It was bad enough when I was growing up, now it’s even worse.”

“Much worse for you…for you humans.”

“You may be right. If you can program yourself the right way you won’t feel any pain or sorrow. You’ll be able to commit small atrocities first and then bigger ones, until you begin to commit them on each other, and then there will be nothing but fighting and violence between you, which will lead to you wanting to go out to explore, exploit, and enslave other worlds so you won’t have to fight each other anymore. And that, Annie, is the story of the human being.”

“Good luck at your new career,” she said, ignoring my whole statement. She put her last dish in and turned to walk away. I grabbed her shoulder and she turned to face me.

“I still love you, Annie. Thank you. You did raise me right.” I kissed her on the forehead. A smirk came to her face, a shake of the head, and then a look of confusion as she turned and walked away thinking that maybe their program had to include this crazy little thing called love.

The End

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