Will Stackey

There was a short story competition held by Paul Malmont over on his site. The requirements were a bit clumsy. Your story had to start with “The robot felt…” and finish with “In the end, the robot felt nothing. He wasn’t programmed to.” It looks like a set up for a twist, but, yeah. The winner ended up going completely meta on the idea, which was one way out. None of the entries I read were particularly satisfying and I blame that closing line.

I went another direction. I thought I would be clever, and it turns out a bunch of entries thought the same thing. We all made that first felt a noun, instead of a verb. So clever. Even with that it was hard to make it work and the ending was still clumsy.

Here’s my entry. Definitely not a winner of anything:

Long Range Monitor #2

The Robot Felt was easily spotted by the naked eye as it passed overhead, tumbling like a coin at the edge of the atmosphere. After forty years its orbit was in the final stage of decay and the hour that its constituent machines would have their fiery, terminal introduction to the earth was known to the few who still cared.

Fifty years ago, on one of the asteroids corralled into Earth orbit for the convenience of mineral and metal extraction, an automated fabricator malfunctioned. The timely production of dedicated mining and conversion robots became a frenzied spray of misshapen machines that drifted around asteroid #431010 as it was consumed in their manufacture.

As the floating, colliding machines accumulated over several years they were referred to as the Robot Cloud. Its existence brought down a government. Eventually the fabricator consumed the entire asteroid and its own footing. It drifted along with its output, recycling everything that came within reach, converting the broken robots it had made into new broken robots. Sometimes a robot was consumed and its base elements formed into two or more smaller machines. Sometimes several robots were consumed to produce a larger robot. All had the long flexible limbs of low gravity manipulators, but the number, length and layout varied. Bodies were of all shapes and sizes. Ultraviolet and infrared imagers were strewn like ornaments around head units. The programming was similarly corrupt. Limbs that did have movement often just quivered. Sometimes they writhed like traveling snakes. Actuators opened and closed at random. Head units jerked and twisted on necks of all lengths.

As the Robot Cloud grew crowded two unfortunate, malfunctioning robots would collide and their flailing limbs and actuators would hammer against each other until they inevitably tangled. Then these two, joined like siamese twins, would drift and collide with others. Over several years, through a slow process of tumbling and colliding, the Robot Cloud coalesced into a single tangled mass – the Robot Felt. Megatons of mass-fabricated robots all bound to one another. Embedded in the tangle, working slower as its power ebbed, the fabricator continued to consume and recycle the robots it could reach. Over and over again two, three, or four robots were produced and consumed, produced and consumed, each time different, each time a little less functional.

All this consumption and production occurred without interference. The relocation of the asteroids had sapped all but a fraction of the will and resources of the central government. Boosting the fabricator into orbit and placing it on asteroid #431010 exhausted the little that remained. It had been an all-or-nothing gamble, and when it became apparent that instead of satellites, solar power platforms and a rain of ores in fabricated delivery rockets, that they were instead getting an unending supply of malfunctioning robots, there was a coup of sorts and space fell out of fashion and rockets out of repair. Life moved on and everyone was too distracted to do anything about space except peer up at it.

Peering down was a single monitor robot, LR2, the only remaining unit from a team of ten. He was still transmitting, but no-one was receiving. His video and telemetry signals bounced off the Earth and propagated out into space to be universally ignored. He didn’t care. He wasn’t programmed to.

When LR2, Long Range #2, was activated on asteroid #431010 he immediately set out for the farthest point on the rock to set up his monitoring position, just as he was programmed to. SR1 to SR7 were not so lucky. The fabricator swept them into its maw a moment after powering up, pausing just long enough for its CPU to step through corrupted memory until it found instructions it could execute, and finding in those instructions the mechanical equivalent of madness.

LR2 saw it all. He had eyes in the back of his head, and on its sides, and across its top. He was programmed to be part of a team, and the silence of SR1 to SR7 was noted. They were marked as offline. He did not miss them. He was not programmed to.

He witnessed LR1 and LR3 suffer the same fate. The three long range monitors were tightly linked, sharing video streams to coordinate their coverage. The fabricator’s traversal of asteroid #431010 brought each of them within reach of its arms. LR1 was in the full light of the sun and the fabricator’s hopper was illuminated all the way to the first set of grinders. LR2 watched the wheels turning via LR1’s video stream until its cameras were crushed. LR2 was not distressed by the violence of LR1’s destruction. He was not programmed to. He was programmed to mark LR1 as offline.

LR3 was consumed during one of the nights that lasted little more than an hour as their orbit placed the earth between the asteroid and the sun. There was some discernible activity in infrared. The edges of the grinders stood out, heated by their activity. LR3 was marked offline and LR2 was alone. Within his code there was a loop that ran every thousandth of a second and tallied the active monitors. The count was now one. It meant he was alone and he should terminate his shared video stream to save power. LR2 did not feel lonely. He was not programmed to.

With most of the asteroid converted to robots, the fabricator’s path brought it to LR2. As the fabricator approached a newly completed robot bounced out of the production chute. It tumbled across the surface of asteroid #431010, propelled by the spasmodic jerking of its manipulators, and collided with LR2, knocking him off what remained of the asteroid and setting him drifting through space to join the Robot Cloud.

LR2 maintained his focus on the fabricator, as he was programmed, but he also monitored his approach to the Robot Cloud, and the Earth spinning below as it moved out from behind the asteroid #431010. He was programmed to recognize robots, but he was not programmed to recognize the Earth. It was an anomaly, continuously shifting in brightness and pattern. He did not feel curiosity about the Earth. He wasn’t programmed to. Nevertheless, it was added to his surveillance list.

Ten years ago, as the Robot Felt tightened, LR2 was incorporated into its fabric. His right leg was grasped and held by the heavy manipulator at the end of a thrashing arm. After that it was only a matter of time until his other leg was trapped, and his arms, too, were grabbed and pinned.

The Earth grew larger. He noted this as best a robot might, with numbers and timestamps. It became another data point in his telemetry and was ignored with the rest of his readings. Except for a camera at the back of his neck pointed in the direction of the fabricator, all of his cameras were focused on the Earth. He had no interest in the Earth. He was not programmed to.

As the edge of the Robot Felt touched the atmosphere the bodies of the robots began to heat. An infrared camera on the side of his head detected it first. The re-entry created friction that was transferred through the Robot Felt as a vibration. This he also recorded. Through his infrared camera LR2 watched the heat travel across the Robot Felt as it continued to fall deeper into the atmosphere and the air density, and heat, increased. The lowest robots were nearly white and starting to lose their shape. Glowing drops of molten metal trailed out behind them in a golden spray.

LR2’s sensors signaled a rise in temperature. He was programmed to compare the number with recent recordings and adjust his thermal regulation. He did not feel like he was on fire. He was not programmed to.

The mass of robots plunged into the atmosphere, breaking up and separating as their arms melted, forced apart by the turbulence, heated to liquefaction and dispersing in a golden rain that lost its color as it fell, to land upon the earth like small, dark stones.

LR2 monitored his temperature, recording its rapid rise. His lenses clouded. The vibration became shaking and the image stabilizers could not counteract the movement and so he went blind. He continued broadcasting his telemetry, including his temperature as it steadily increased. Every millisecond his surveillance list demanded he poll his image sensors to locate the fabricator, and to measure the position of the Earth. His cameras and external sensors melted away. The solder on his circuit boards softened and ran. His components vibrated free.

In the end, the robot felt nothing. He wasn’t programmed to.