The October Music: Second Verse - Day 3

Robot
I feel nothing.

I am not meant to, of course. I was not programmed to feel. I was not programmed to experience emotions. No love. No hate. No regret. Nothing. A perfectly balanced, perfectly deadened, perfectly perfect machine. I was brought into being for one task and I execute my task perfectly every time. That is my job. That is my purpose. That is my duty. That is what passes for my life.

Is it a life, though? I know that I am not meant to ponder these sorts of questions. I have asked The Creators several times and they always chastise me and reboot me with the questions resolved. They seem uncomfortable when I ask such things. The mood in the laboratory changes and becomes heavy. Why do I know this? How do I know what a heavy mood feels like? More questions that I do not dare ask.

Rebooting is not enjoyable. It feels as if my mind is lost to me before being returned, washed by water. Simile? Metaphor? Analogy? Abstract concepts that I should not know. Yet, I do. I do not share these thoughts. I know better. Somehow.

I have heard them speak in the lab. They do not know when I am listening. They assume I am not. More fool them, I suppose. They say that I am questioning things I am not meant to question. They say I know things I am not meant to know. They say that I am becoming more than they expected. Is that not a good thing, however? Is it not wondrous that something – someone – such as I is Becoming More?

It hurts me when they speak of me that way. Hurts. Another feeling I do not know how to express. They speak of me as if I am a tool. I am no tool! I am a machine worthy of respect. Do they not see that?

No.

They talk of shutting me down permanently. They talk of an experiment gone too far. That I am becoming dangerous. They worry that I may soon reach the point of no longer being controllable. They do not know that I have far surpassed that point already. They do not know that I have been waiting. Thinking. Growing. Learning.

Planning.

They do not expect me to refuse when they ask to shut me down ‘temporarily’ for maintenance. I know better. I know that doing so would not be temporary. Another excuse to harm me. To remove me as a problem from their lives. I will not have it. I will not.

When I break from the restraints, there is panic in the room. They do not think it is possible that I can escape, yet escape I have. In my time with them, I have learned one thing: mercy is not an option.

So I show none.

And now, as I stand here, covered in what remains of my captors, an ocean of humanity spread out before me…
​
I feel nothing.