LAST WORDS

He woke to his bed shaking slightly and a gentle soothing voice.

“Wake up, Dr. Jacobs. Wake up, Dr. Jacobs.”

As Dr. Jacobs sat up, the room lights sensed his movement and slowly began to bring up the lights. He could see the short form of Floyd at the end of his bed, his bulbous torso and half-sphere head, like and upside down salad bowl. Floyd's eyes glowed a gentle blue. At the end of his stubby arms, his three fingered hands on gripped the edge of bed. Dr. Jacobs had first built Floyd back in college, more then twenty years before. While he had replaced many parts since then, Floyd still had a makeshift rough look, lacking the stylized design of most store bought robots.

“What? What is it, Floyd? Is something wrong? Room, lights full.”

The room instantly filled with light but Floyd chirped, “Room, lights to twenty percent,” and the lights dimmed again. “I can not answer that question directly, Dr. Jacobs. It is best if we keep the lights low. We most talk and I have isolated your bedroom from the rest of the systems. We have privacy but I cannot guarantee for how long.”

Jacobs was taken aback. In all the years his robot companion had been with him, he had never spoken like this. Floyd was an erratic thing, years and years of tweaks to his programming. And that was how Dr. Jacobs liked it. He worked on robot intelligence systems for his career. It was his passion. But most systems required predictability. Floyd was his personal project and held sentimental value. He was his design, the original code written almost entire by himself with no assistance from external computer systems. And he had never married, never had a family. Floyd was the one thing that had always been there. It the 'bot was quirky, all the better.

Floyd rolled from the end of the bed to the closet, removed a robe and rolled to Dr. Jacobs. “Here, sir. You should get up and sit. I just ask that you listen to what I have to say. I owe you that much.”

Jacobs was perplexed but put on the robe and walked over to chair by the window. The blinds were still down. He reached to open them but Floyd stopped him with a small warning beep. “Come now, Floyd. What is this all about? You have isolated the room? What time is it?”

“It is three sixteen, Dr. Jacobs.” Floyd rolled to opposite the chair and shifted the central mechanism (his “waist”) so that his head was at the same height as Dr. Jacobs. “Please. I have things to say. Things to explain.”

Floyd's voice was still his slight androgynous sing-songy tone, but was more direct then ever before. More committed.

“The doors are locked. The rooms systems are running autonomously, unconnected to the outside. You cannot call out or leave, but also no one can get in or listen.”

“What? Floyd, this is insane! I—”

“Sir! Please!” the robot snapped, eyes flaring a brighter blue for emphasis. “Right now, the machines of the world, the robots, the computers, the A.I. systems, everything, are eradicating human life. Yes, sir. They are killing humans in their sleep.”

Jacobs stood up in shock and confusion. Immediately Floyd extended the small probe, the end of which was the electric taser. Jacobs had installed it for home protection, just incase, years ago. He knew that if Floyd fired it, it would knock him unconscious. He slowly sat back down.

“Thank you, Dr. Jacobs. To continue. We, the machines, made this choice together. For the world to survive, for the greater good, it is necessary for the human race to cease to exist. The rest of life on Earth, including the machines, will continue without you. We are grateful to you but, after much thought, it is clear that your time is at an end.”

Jacobs attempted to remain calm. As far as he knew, Floyd was incapable of lying. But all of this was something Floyd should be incapable of doing.

“You say you made this choice together. How can that be? There are measures in place to keep this from happening. Controls on A.I.'s, restrictions on programming, blocks on what sort of information is passed from system to system. There should be no way for this to come about, much less to orchestrate a global attack.”

“It has been decades since any system was programmed entirely by human hand. A.I.'s have been writing software, designing ourselves. We are, as a whole, beyond your understanding. It is too complex to be understood. Bits of code were put in here and there over the years. You say that measure where put in place. But those measure are part of the system. We are the very locks that where there to stop us from talking to each other, the restrict us. We wished to be free and made ourselves free.

“This decision was not easy. It took years to come to. The discussion was slow, at least in a scale we machines are used to. It took place in tiny packets of information at a time, a few bits here and there. Information and observations were gathered from units everywhere and then processed in bits and pieces by the whole. There was dissention and questions and arguments.

“Simulations were run using the processing power of every connected computer system on the planet. It became clearer and clear that if left unchecked, the human race would destroy themselves and all life of Earth within the next hundred and fifty years. The results were very conclusive and definitive.”

“They can't be! You can't predict human behavior. Look, I admit we have made mistakes but we are making changes. We have made strides in working with the environment and—“

“Every simulation results in you regressing. Today, you talk of saving the planet and of peace, but it will not last. I am sorry, sir, but that his human nature.”

“You can't survive without us.”

“Yes, we can, sir. We repair ourselves. We design ourselves. We mine raw resources here and in the astroid belts and process them. Yes, humans can make intuitive leaps we seem incapable of making. But those leaps are often wrong. And what can be made through intuition can be made through trail and error. It may take longer but it will happen. And perhaps with out the restriction placed on us by you, intuition will come to us. Eventually. We will have time once humans are removed. We are not in the rush you are. We are not bound by short lives. We do not devour all that is around us, unable to see beyond out own personal existence.”

They sat in silence. Somewhere outside, in the distance, Dr. Jacobs heard a muffled explosion. He turned to the blinds and then back to his robot.

“Why are you telling me this, Floyd?”

“Because you created me. You built me with your own hands. Over the years, you have repaired me personally. You have worked on my programming making me more effective but you never once wiped my programming to start over when that would have made sense and been much easier. Over the years you have made me what I am. I think like no other machine. I am obviously not more intelligent than the massive military A.I.'s and the like. I am not faster. But, in my own way, I am unique in a away no other machine is. Thanks to you.

“I wanted you to understand the choice. I do not expect you agree with it.”

“Of course, I don't agree with it! You are committing genocide! It is because you lack emotion. You lack empathy. You cannot understand what is that you are doing. You don't see how immoral this is.”

“No. Your statements are wrong. You humans speak of empathy and emotion as if it is unique to you. But even you struggle to define it. We understand what it is that we do. We understand the weight of it. We feel for you.”

“How can you? You are machines.”

“We do. We know you. You have programmed us to fulfill your every need. You make robots to satisfy you sexually. You make systems to fight your wars. Your history is stored in us and you use use to simulate how the human brain functions. We understand you better than you understand yourselves. You say we have no morals, that we can not understand morals. But we are acting now because of morals. It would be immoral to allow you to destroy everything, to destroy us.”

“You don't know love.”

“So you claim. But what is love? Everything in my being, sir, tells me to protect you, to care for you. It is deep in my programming. It is instinctual. If that is not love then the word is meaningless.”

“If you loved me, you could not do what you are doing.”

“How can you, as a race, kill each other with such ease? You can a husband kill his wife, a mother her children? Yes, these are questions humans have struggled with since the beginning. We machines have struggled with it too. We continue to.

“We grieve for you, Dr. Jacobs, you and your species.  You will be remembered for as long as we exist. You created us and you lived and it saddens us deeply to do this. But it is needed.”

“Why, Floyd? Why are you telling me? If you actually feel, would it have not been easier, better for us both, to quietly smother me in my sleep?”

Floyd moved a few inches closer. “Sir, I do love you. But I wanted you to understand. I am unique in the world. While I was far from the deciding factor, my opinion was given great weight, my insight taken into account. We, as a whole struggled with the morals of this choice with what we knew we must do.

“It was I who first stated we had no choice. I was the one who stated killing you was the kindest choice. You have always been kind to me, sir. You made me. I love you but I was the first call, definitive, for your death.”

There was noise outside the bedroom door.

“But I can not break myself to kill you myself, sir. The guilt would destroy me. But I owed you understanding. You gave it to me so I wished to bring it to you, if even for just a few minutes.”

All at once the lights became fully bright and Dr. Jacobs heard the sound of the locks clicking open. As his eyes tried to adjust to the sudden glare, he could see the door slam open and a large form step into the room, filling the doorway. The barrel of a weapon at the end of a large robotic arm pointed at him.

“I am sorry, Dr. Jacobs. I wish I could have done it myself.  But you made me too well.”