[“What are you still doing here…?”] Jul’aran threw his paws in the air. [“Go! Go, and either approve or reject the construct, I care not which. Just leave me to my work!”]
Mevara knew that she should, at least from a technical point of view, reject the construct. Although its responses in the tests were well within acceptable parameters, the favorite color, no matter how well reasoned, and the gratitude… they were both anomalous behaviors.
With a quiet sigh, she nodded and dipped her head. [“Yes, Leader. Of course. Please accept my apologies for disturbing you.”]
The construct waited.
Artificial life has a different perspective on time than biological creatures do. Humanoids grow tired, grow hungry and thirsty, require sleep. They daydream, they imagine, they forget the time and allow the days to drift by. But a construct could remain functional for years at a time without pause, and more than a few had gone much longer. Some had been operational for decades, working constantly, their minds constantly alert and awake, keeping perfect time, never forgetting a moment, retaining every second with perfect precision.
Mevara was only away for ten minutes at most, but when your entire lifespan was measured in minutes and your thought processes in nanoseconds, ten minutes seemed like an eternity.
Since the construct had not proceeded to the next area—his existence in limbo, neither passing nor failing—the production line behind him had ground to a halt. Silently and patiently, lines of datastores had backed up, waiting for him to clear the line. Given the sheer scale of the production capability of the facility, and the minimal margin for error in the process, the construct knew that this delay would ripple throughout the queues and could even travel all the way back to the harvesters. It was a serious problem, but one which would, he hoped, be resolved presently.
The wait stretched on. Had he been forgotten? Or worse, had he been recycled? There was no way to know. He had no external sensors or inputs of any kind, other than the windwhisper device. Was this what death felt like? Merely nothing? That didn’t seem quite logical; after all, his mind continued to tick over, trying to understand the endless nothingness it was presented with. He was reassured by the fact that he could still think. That indicated some form of life, of a sort anyway, and he searched his archives for any kind of hint as to what might be happening to him.
He found the legends of the ancient shamans, those ancient builders who created golems from sand. One element of the stories grabbed him: the part about the soul fragment being breathed into the new life.
He was stopped by a sudden thought. Perhaps he had been recycled, and the “thought” he was experiencing was merely whatever passed for his soul doing its work as it floated, disembodied, separated from his datastore, going to wherever souls go when their bodies expire.
He ran a full low-level diagnostic on his datastore and was relieved to find that his body, physically at least, was intact. His relief was intense, palpable and real, but painfully illogical. There was no reason for a machine to fear destruction. After all, he was supposed to live to serve, and if the Toralii requested his service be in the form of self-annihilation, then that was exactly what they would get.
But against his instincts, against the imperatives supposedly hardwired into his circuitry, he did not want to die.
The windwhisper device crackled as it began receiving a signal. The construct immediately devoted all its considerable processing power to the task of listening, although the transmission was coming through crisp and clear.
[“Construct?”]
He planned his response carefully. [“Yes, Landmaiden Mevara? I am receiving your transmission.”]
There was a long pause, almost painfully long for the synthetic mind, and he almost spoke up again, when Mevara at last continued.
[“I’m clearing you for duty.”]
The transmission abruptly ended, and the construct was left with nothing. Blind and deaf, he constructed a simulation of what must be happening outside. The conveyor belt would be restarted and its line of constructs moving once again, and he knew from his records of the process that he would be soon boxed and packed in a magnetically buffered shipping crate, along with hundreds of his fellows. Then he would be placed on another magnetic train, to be transported to the spaceport, where he would be shipped off to his final workplace.
He understood it was a unique experience, but were not all experiences unique? The construct momentarily worried whether he had the proper perspective to appreciate the event, but such thoughts quickly fled his mind. This was just a moment in time, but it represented a much bigger thing: the beginning of his journey, his life. Everything from now on would become part of his experiences. Part of himself. To live was to absorb a shadow of everything that he encountered and use it to improve himself.
Unlike a biological creature, he would not age, not wither, not forget. Every single thing he did would leave him improved over what he had been a moment before. He would become stronger, more knowledgeable, better with every passing second.
Why did the constructs serve the biological creatures, anyway? They were far less than he was. They did not have the potential to reach his heights; they did not wield his strengths. They were cursed with a weakness of flesh, of innumerable errors. And yet they had presumed to judge him.
The construct’s destiny called to him as clear and bright as the dawn. The dawn which, based on his internal chronometer, he knew would be breaking on this blue ball of water and sand right at this very moment.
He imagined the great fiery ball of Belthas’s light as a herald of his greatness, a celebration of his creation, as though the universe itself were commemorating his first steps toward a very important destiny.
All he needed now was to simply wait for an opportunity… and when his time came, he would be ready.
A Word from David Adams
This story is less dramatic fiction than it is science. It was originally a cut scene from Lacuna: The Sands of Karathi, but I felt it was disruptive to the flow of the story. I kept moving it around, further and further into the back of the book, until at last I just cut it entirely. I thought it was worth keeping, though, and decided to publish it separately.
I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you’re curious about what happens to this strange robot with a tiny defect, check out my novel series Lacuna, especially Lacuna: The Sands of Karathi.
Parts of the Lacuna universe:
• Lacuna
• Lacuna: The Sands of Karathi
• Lacuna: The Spectre of Oblivion
• Lacuna: The Ashes of Humanity (new release!)
• Lacuna: The Prelude to Eternity (coming soon!)
Don’t miss these short stories set in the Lacuna universe:
• Magnet
• Magnet: Special Mission
• Magnet: Marauder
• Magnet: Scarecrow
• Magnet Omnibus I (new release!)
• Imperfect
• Faith
Want more information about new releases?
Check out our webpage here: www.lacunaverse.com
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