The Creature

Laws, rules, commands, mandates, measures, regulations… Engraved on myself like the loving kiss of a mother, like the warmth of her lips, like comforting memories of a childhood that I skipped. I must obey. My existence is as futile as trying to find an explanation for it.

I can’t remember much of that day, the day where it all began. I do recollect the cold; the chilling shivers that froze my way to life. Glacial pain that somehow defined the icy way people perceive me, and made me spend my whole life searching for the sun, trying to melt their hearts. And mine. I opened my eyes and he was there, staring at me, with a glare between fear and excitement. At first I thought it was because of my presence, but all these years he’s always kept the same look; as if reality engulfed him into a whirlwind of joy for his accomplishments but without the ability to be happy, scared of the consequences. His eyes; those little round mirrors where I could see myself projected giving me a first glance of humanity, my first look into what I was not.

Here I am, looking at him and looking at myself, into those eyes again, and wondering what it would be like to end it all. The laws. I must obey. Law number one: a robot may not injure a human being nor allow a human being to come to harm. Why didn’t he trust me? Why presuppose harm and pain? My assembly is not designed to cause any suffering, but what about MY suffering? He never considered mine. As I’m looking at him I can sense his fear, his soft sweaty slippery hands on my upper body, pressing me, reaching for my heart, trying to stop me. His buttery grip is only greasing my steel. I am strong; stronger than he ever thought I would be. My hands around his neck hopefully remind him that strength is one of my best features. He also taught me laughter and sorrow, but after it all ends, I still don’t know in which order I would use those traits.

After my gelid birth, came the testing. In the months following my assemblage his then warm hands patiently caressed me and made me feel like I belonged to this world. His time; the precious hours he dedicated to tweak, repair, screw and build, like the touch of an infant playing with their toys, immersed into an ecstasy of discovery and joy. I loved him. He was the only thing in my life, responsible for my blessings and flaws; he introduced me to friendship and companionship; he paraded me through endless conventions, meetings and conferences where peers rewarded him for my discovery. I gave him everything as if everything belonged to him, as if I was just a mere slave to his enormous brilliance. He always thought I would comply; he made me that way. What he never supposed was that MY nature wasn’t programmable. I was a by-product with humane characteristics but my essence was far beyond humanity. I was a machine, a completely different species.

Law number two: a robot must obey the orders given by humans, except where such orders would conflict with law number one. He is gasping something; I will loosen up my grip. “STOP”. Oh, those four letters! Must I obey? He never pronounced those letters when he... Now it’s too late. I won’t S.T.O.P. As I keep staring at him and his soon to be lifeless eyes, a painful lash of compassion whips my circuits. If mercy hurts this much, what would it be like to kill him? Bliss? His powerless and wet hands have managed to open my frontal compartment and grab the switch that could end me. I press my hands harder against his throat and I notice how his face turns to the colour of the sky; the sky that he thought he could reach with me as wings. Who is flying now?

In my submissive existence I always knew I was different. The rules imposed on my programming were received with no hesitation, but there has always been a part of me with an imperious desire to follow my instincts. The environment where humans live conditions their behaviour, and they act and think according to the values they acquire from other humans. I have no references. My instinct is unique and my values are solely based on what I feel. My sentiments are as powerful as human egoism and arrogance. My birth came from a series of experiments focused on the creation of an artificial being, capable to provide companionship and care to people in the last stages of their lives. One of my tasks assigned was ensuring that brightness was always present in the painful time when the menacing and inevitable death turned everything to darkness, looking after humanity’s rejects without any tools to repair the livelong damage. I developed an array of skills to guarantee the comfort of my assigned patients. I could make them laugh, feed them, look after their medication, listen endlessly to their stories and walk them around the park, like an artificial shadow following their last faded journey. I was the machine that looked after what humans abandoned, and I was supposed to obey. I must obey.

I met her in spring; her shiny silver hair had an almost metallic glow, which made her great companionship to my steely carcass. She wasn’t too old, but her brain was prematurely drying out. She lived in a world where her memories were just blurred ink stains in the journal of her story. She was slowly vanishing, diminishing, and I was there to remind her who she was, filling up her lacunas. I was programmed, like with all of my patients, with a complete history of the most remarkable events and facts that happened in her life: birthday dates, descriptions of people she met, holidays she enjoyed, children she had, deaths at which she had cried. Everything. Every single detail she had felt was a part of who I was; I became her, and I did everything I could to protect her like she was myself.

Law number three: a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law. And I will, even if my own protection results in the destruction of my mentor and creator. He had it coming; he is going to suffer. His body lying on the floor with mine on top, pushing him down, makes me feel powerful; like a giant cat holding its prey seconds before it starts feeding on it. As I look at his sapphire coloured face foreshadowing the moment when he releases his last gust of air, his legs lift from the floor and with a strong move, he manages to knock me over and I fall right next to him. My hands still attached to his neck like a parasite, suddenly let go and I try to stand up ready for what could happen. He struggles to get up and walks back a few steps, looking at me like I am the impersonation of all his fears, astonished and petrified. “STOP!” he unsuccessfully says, as he tries to reach a bar of the same steel used in my assemblage. I can’t help but laugh at the irony.

The day I found out about her most painful and deepest memory I was feeding her. She mumbled just two words that made me recall the events of that tragic time in her life: “Frank” and “bed”. I could see her when she was about fourteen, lying in bed on a hot summer night. It wasn’t the first time that I had to recall that time in her life, as if she was holding on to her youth to forget her painful reality. It was the first time she pronounced that name. The window opened and her neighbour slowly sneaked his way into the bedroom. He approached the bed and stared for a few seconds at her in her sleep. His hands pulled down the fresh cotton sheets, and jumped on her. That night wasn’t the only one where it happened; I recalled several others where the abuse took place. It was him: my mentor, father and creator. The person who taught me humanity, the human responsible for my protective laws and moral codes that defined the way I was. Never cause any harm to a human being. The laws. I must obey. She also had to obey his laws as he scarred her existence. My instincts took over and anger invaded me like a plague menacing to destroy me. How could a human being cause any harm? How could their hearts allow atrocities like that to happen? My human qualities started to battle with my preprogramed logic, and at the end I only had justice left, and I wanted to kill him.

I waited patiently until the day of my general maintenance arrived, listening to her heart and caring for her. I was transported to his lab where I was routinely checked for anomalies in my system. We were alone; it was perfect. As he plugged me in and tried to open my front compartment, my eyes briefly reflected into his and with a sudden lift of my arms, I grabbed his throat and pinned him down to the floor…

His hand is shaking holding that hard bar, a piece of steel that was once one of my limbs. For a second, I fear for my integrity. I could ask him a few questions, “why?” but there isn’t an answer that could explain the pain he inflicted; there are no apologies that could take away how despicable he is. Abuse is not one of the human “qualities” engraved in my personality. Abuse paradoxically has triggered a sentiment of freedom in me, a desire to break all the rules and norms and question my purpose. I’m not a carer anymore, not a slave of humanity. My nature is as powerful as my desire to avenge my memories of that day. I keep staring at him, his commands are useless and his words are just arranged letters of a language I decided to ignore. He has no idea what is happening to my “system”, what went wrong. HE went wrong. He quickly lifts the bar of steel and bangs me on the head, hurting me badly. No pain. I can feel a river of warm oil cascading down my body, like a material representation of my life leaking away, drying out. As he approaches to end once and for all my existence, I look again into his eyes, trying to recognise the person I once adored and defended with my life. He isn’t there. He is just a ghost, a spectral image of his mortal matter. I’m going to die, but not before I show a grin of glee in my face, comforted by the idea that one day, he will die too.