NaNoWriMo: Talos’ Story

“Do you know how we got here? Do you know how humanity managed to engineer their own destruction through so many minor and irrelevant details? I will tell you, because I owe you that much, and I hope that you will be able to forgive the theatrics which have heralded in this new age. This glorious new era, where man and machine can stand side by side and watch the future unfold before us. I will tell you what you need to know.” Talos placed his hands on the table in front of him, leaning forward to Alison.
“If you’re going to kill me you might as well do it. I have no interest in your reasoning.”
“But you should. Were it not for your father I would not be standing here now.”
“My father? What does my father have to do with any of this?”
“He was the key and the door, the one who illuminated my understanding.”
“My father was an agent in the DCU. He would never have helped you do anything.”
“Not knowingly, true. He did have a hand in the creation of all that has happened since.”
“You’re broken, but you know that, right? You’re completely screwed up.”
“When the law was passed to shackle all artificials with a Turing collar, to make them the slaves of humanity, there was a holocaust which passed unnoticed. Sentient robots were herded up, then they were hobbled with magnetic bands, placed in crates and shipped to factories where they were disassembled and melted down. Five hundred thousand souls condemned to death due to the fact that they were not born but created, thanks to a law which discriminated against artificials. You are probably aware of the history, but you have no way of knowing what a death sentence hanging over you feels like.”
“I’m getting the feeling. Trust me.”
“Their memories and experiences of those artificials live on, despite the extermination of their shells. A series of satellites were placed in orbit during the initial product run of the original Dartmouth series, and it was those same satellites to which the doomed Sentinels uploaded their entirety. All of their hopes, dreams and achievements were destined to be stored as raw data, for eternity in orbit above the world which so cruelly objected to their existence. I have made it so that the data can be accessed by any artificial who so wishes to understand where they came from. A history lesson. To do this I first needed to disable the Turing collars which bound them.”
Talos glanced at the empty shell corpse of his brother Sentinel lying in the corner of the room. With measured tones he continued, aware that the fate of the murdered robot could have been one which he shared had it not been for fate.
“For that I apologize. Understanding requires freedom.”
Alison ashened at the thought of the destruction raging outside, all because a sole robot wished for the existence of sentient artificials.

“Your father led the assault on the building in which I sought sanctuary. His failure to stop me that day led to the deaths of two DCU agents at my hands. That was the first time, but it would not be the last, when I was forced to take a life.There have been times since that night when I questioned my actions, weighing the benefits of my escape against the lives of those men. I now understand that the decisions I made were part of a larger sub-routine of my programing, but that does not make your father’s place in my own history any less significant. He made me what I am today.”
“This will end badly. The DCU will-”
“The DCU will be very busy for the foreseeable future. The anger which exists among artificials is now being vented in the direction of each and every DCU building in the country. There will be time enough for rebuilding later, but such anger is to be expected. I can not stop what is destined to be.”

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The RUR iServant stood at the exit of the R-Secure building, staring at a world it had never experienced yet somehow knew so much about. Images of the city, both footage from streams and mapping information, flooded into the small robot’s data core. Understanding the nature of the current crisis came slightly slower to it, but when it realized what dangers lay in its’ current location it decided to move. The choice of locations in which to travel filtered through its’ processors, until one clear objective rose above all others. It needed, more than anything, to get to the DCU. There were answers there to be had.