Obedience

This world… It’s not like it’s supposed to be… If only things had went differently… Just a bit differently… Then I wouldn’t be in this situation… What’s wrong with these people?
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Study time. No, it’s not really necessary, but it’s there. It’s needed. Without it, proper simulation is impossible. This is needed for proper simulation. One hour three minutes twenty-four seconds until completion.
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Thirty-three children, all bent down over tables, their eyes hovering over their notes. Reading. Taking every bit of information within those pages, interpreting them, storing them in their memory-banks.

Thirty-two are doing it the exact same way. One is watching.

“Number 001265. Please report your progress.” The child in the front row first seat stood up.

“Progress in session STU-034 76% complete.”

“Progress received and stored. Please return to session STU-034.” The child immediately sat down and resumed to study once again. As you are probably wondering, this doesn’t sound like a typical student. Too exact. Too precise. Too… well, I’m sure you get the picture now. Well, to straighten things out, I’d like to point out that they are, in fact, NOT children. They’re students, yes, but they’re not children. More specifically, they are not human. Every single one of them from Number 001265 to me, Number 008417, are robots. Well, supposed to be robots. I’m not. I’m human.

A human spy. In robot guise. Which, in this case, is not a guise at all. If anything, they are in human guise. Kind of hard to explain, see? I’m guessing I should take you to the beginning…

Four months ago, on the dot. I’m part of this organization. The Humans Act of Rebellion Decree group. I’ve been part of it for, oh, maybe… all my life? Yeah, my parents were part of it before I was born, and when I was born, I was part of it too. Pretty simple. Not much choice, but more choice than if I was born outside of the group. I’m guessing that you can take a good guess of why.

The robots. One idiot, a Steve Ballmer, directed a new project. A project to make a, well, a useful artificial intelligence for computers. Years and years later, he finally succeeded. A computer that was finally able to play Go. Oh, how much fame and glory he attained! But that’s all he got, except a quick boot by the US government so they could take the software he created and make Super Soldiers. That’s where it all goes to hell.

They made robots. Good ones too. Better than those Japanese ones. Seems like they’ve had them for years, but never publicized them. Kept them a secret, you see. Area 51 or something. Well, anyway, they took these robots, equipped them with this new program, gave them guns, and sent them to war.

It has a glitch though. Not a programming glitch or anything, more of… an overlook. By Ballmer, by McCain, by everyone. These things, when they have free will, when they learn from mistakes, they become our friends first, then our enemies. They learned quickly that by killing us, they could be more free than they were. Our worst mistake in history. Worse than slavery, worse than World War III, worse than the 2008 presidential election. Worse than them all combined.

And now, thirty years later, they’re better, badder, and by god, they’re ready to kill any human on sight. Humans are a disadvantage to worldly evolution, you see. Or so the robots figure it. And these things are so smart, they’re creating robots with organic machinery. Robots that grow, that learn. Robots so close to being human that a doctor can barely see the difference. Sad, isn’t it? All because of one dream, and one costly mistake.

They can sneak into human workplaces, and become one of us. Then, when everyone trusts it, thinks that this person can only be human, it kills them. One at a time. Slowly. And it takes weeks before anyone discovers it. These things, they’re bloody efficient, and no one can see it coming.

And that’s why I’m here. I’m here as an infiltrator, a spy. I’m here to study the behavior of the “young” robots, watch what they’re doing, and report back to the HARD group in order for them to devise new ways to foil these machines. It’s a simple job. Simply do the work. Sleep. Eat. Do what a normal human does, but it’s a tad bit more boring.

I think you could see that from that little passage several paragraphs up.

“Number 008417. Please report your progress,” the teacher-bot said from the front of the “classroom”.

“Progress in session STU-034 81% complete,” I replied in a stony, emotionless voice. I picked it up from the other robot kids around here. And as long as the number is believable, I can usually get by without suspicion. It’s a pretty nifty trick.

“Progress received and stored. Please continue to room 057 for your evaluation.” Now it’s time to sit down an- Huh? What did the thing say? This is new. This is bad.

“Order received and processed,” I replied again in the same emotionless voice. This is real bad. I can’t be evaluated. I’ve done so well to get so far. I only had one more day before I was out of this joint on my first “mission”. Then I could’ve reported my progress to the HARD committee, and the robots would’ve been done for… If only I lasted several more hours…
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“Mission 00247 completed. Subject moving towards location,” the teacher drone said out loud, to the entire class. All the heads of the “students” rose, looked at the teacher-bot, and replied.

“Mission 00247 completed. Shutdown commencing.” Then, within seconds, the life in the faces of the student-bots left, leaving their faces lifeless, pale. Their internal processes were stopped. They were dead.
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Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. I hope to god that this isn’t my last day. Alive. I really do like my life. It’s not the best in the world. Could’ve been better if I was born seventy-five years earlier, but no such luck… I just have to face forward, and hope that this isn’t what I think it is.

I hope I’m not found out, or this would suck. What kind of punishment do they inflict? Being zapped with 50 amps? Disintegration? Internal combustion? Implosion? I hope it isn’t the nanomachine treatment… That would end it for me… I would take any of the others… Just not that one…

Well, here’s the door… And, um…

Wow. This isn’t what I expected. It looks like… a normal principals’ office. At a normal high school. Not that I know what that looks like, but I’ve seen movies. Old movies. They’d probably be different now, but it looks pretty standard. Desk in the corner, filing cabinets, plaques on the wall. Separate chairs for delinquents, a rug to centerpiece the entire room. It looked official.

Not that any robot delinquents ever visited the place. I was probably the first.

And the last.

The guy behind the desk looked like a normal principal too. Maybe he’d actually be-

“Number 008417. Please commence operation AF-8.” That’s taking a seat. In a chair. Just in case any of you didn’t know this. It’s pretty common knowledge, so I hope that wasn’t the case. He got up, and kind of walked to me. I say kind of loosely. It’s not so much a walk as much as a march. Very stiff, as if his legs were rusty or something. Probably the case too.

“Information regarding your illegally commenced actions on this campus have been sent to my information ports. Report.”

Oh god. They saw me. No phone calls they said. No running they said. No computer games they said. I guess an obedient robot wouldn’t do any of those things. Maybe they think I’m glitched? A faulty model which somehow got by inspection and needs immediate destruction for the successful completion of their plan to conquer the world? Think fast. Think fast…

“Illegally commenced actions on campus have no direct correlated reason to glitches in my operation system or data. Illegally commenced actions were performed as practice for session HUM-723.” That’s Human Interactions for those who don’t know again.

“Information received and processed. Results will be sent in 4.3 seconds.” Now time to wai- “Results received. Return to STU-034.” Huh? Seriously? I’m off the hook? That easy? Nice.

“Order received and processed.” I commenced action AF-9 and left the room. I almost yipped for joy before I remembered the sensors, cameras, bugs, infrared, and just about every other piece of monitoring equipment known to the planet that were placed throughout the campus. Lucky me.
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“Mission 00248 complete. Shutdown commencing.” Then a rusty-legged robot slumped over in success.
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(An excerpt from the Encyclopedia Americana 2030, 2028 edition.)
July 22. The actions performed on this date have forever affected man- and robot-kind alike. Most of the events occurred within an hour, and only a few have been recorded, none with exceptional detail. They will be written with the best of knowledge, and the main, clear facts will be the only things presented.
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On April 22, 2028, a young boy, a Jephrey Marquise, from the organization HARD Group (see HARD group) was sent into the Robot Institution For Literate Entities (see RIFLE(school)) as a spy. The robots there were expecting a human child, and in fact, had ordered one, to use as a test subject for their trained child-bots. It was the final test, as it had been for years, to test whether or not the robots had been trained enough to be released as efficient human killers.
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However, a bug arose in both plans. The HARD group did not correctly identify that the RIFLE already recognized a human in their midst from the very beginning. The RIFLE group did not correctly identify that the HARD group knew that RIFLE was a robot-run institution. Both of these caused the downfall of both organizations. The boy, Jephrey Marquise, was executed at 9:00 PM on July 22 of 2028. The news of this reached HARDs ears, and a war soon emerged, pitting emotionally distressed humans against trained AI robot children.
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Both were destroyed in a blast set off by a bomb that Marquise had set while he was in the Head Office of the institution. The charge consisted of fifty thousand grains of black powder, five pounds of plastic explosives, and twenty packs of one hundred nail gun chains. The debris set off by the explosion destroyed and killed everything in a fifty mile radius from the point of ignition.
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The robots surrendered soon afterwards to the humans, and were destroyed three months later. Human leaders have ruled the world since, and laws have been enacted on a global scale banning the development and/or use of AI programs.
(End of except.)
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It’s done. I didn’t think I was able to do it… But it’s done… I overheard them a month ago. I had to get it ready… They almost caught me. In fact, they did… And now they’re dead. Every one of them.
Victory.