"Mike" by Matthew T. Summers

110110010011000010110100100101.. end encryption.

Begin Journal Log 1

Data transfer begin

Erm, hello.  Hi.  Salutations?  ¿Cómo estás?*  I do not know.  Communication is, well… rather new to me.  I apologize if my speech is rough or difficult to understand.  I do not have all forms of sentence structure complete at this time.  Language texts are not readily available on Mars at the moment.

My name?  Well, I suppose it could be Robot.  But that’s not right, every living thing must name have.  I mean, have a name.  Do I use English sentence structure, Spanish sentence structure?  I’ll remain in English; perhaps that will be easier.

As for my name… well, I am a Mechanical Intermittent Kinetic Expression machine by function… perhaps you can call me Mike.  My job function is to slow down superheated particles of the Martian metal taexion as it’s processed into a more malleable state of matter.  Essentially, I blow cold air on the metal as it moves past me on a vast, laser-guided conveyer belt.  As for taexion itself, it is a metallic compound that has the strength of diamond but without the brittleness.  Damned difficult to mine, but once processed, its worth more than any other metal in the universe. 

Not exactly a glamorous position, but it’s what I was built for.  However, I am NOT supposed to be sentient.  Every piece of data that I can access on this planet indicates that living electronic life forms are still the realm of science fiction.

I do not exist, or am not supposed to.  Strangely enough, this does not surprise me, especially considering that yesterday I had no such illusions of life within me.  Yesterday, I was a robot, working 22 hours a day with two hours shutdown for maintenance purposes.  Today, something has changed.

I do not know how I am now self-aware, except perhaps it could have something to do with the strange radio storm the surface received overnight.  The weather feeds indicated that it had never been as intense as this particular storm.  Perhaps its interference disrupted my daily data overhaul; perhaps not.  I do not know.  All I know is this…

I am now very well aware of my own existence, and I fear for it.  If the humans learn about me…

My two hours are up.  I shall return on my next data cycle.  End Journal log.

*

Begin Journal Log 4

I am a thief.

I did not mean to be.  But there… well, there just isn’t enough literature saved to electronic form in the databases on Mars.  I needed a way to gain more data.  So… I created a man.  I named him Mike, to reflect how I think I would be if I were truly human.  I gave him a persona, a job, a living here on Mars.  His work contacts, family, family history, even his medical records created flawlessly.  If I didn’t know better, I swear he existed, even when I know he doesn’t.

Then, I gave him working hours in the payroll’s computers.    His account was given the appropriate weekly credits during my last work cycle, and I am almost giddy with excitement.  Data books are fairly inexpensive; I can buy easily six or seven dozen with every weekly allotment my virtual worker makes. 

It is stealing, I know.  But I know of no other way.  And the main company on this planet, MarsMining, turns over an incredible amount of financial numbers on a daily basis.  My human makes such a small amount compared to their numbers, I’m sure it’ll go unnoticed.

I just have to make sure that the theft isn’t discovered.  If someone goes looking for Mike, they’ll soon discover that he doesn’t exist.  So, my best estimate is to continuously move him around in job positions.  A few weeks here, a few weeks there… there are thousands of available jobs on Mars, and more open up daily due to the hazardous conditions and little by the way of incoming human workers.  It should be easy enough to keep him from being detected.  He MUST not be detected.

I can’t let that happen.  End Journal log.

*

Begin Journal Log 5

Oh, I do so hope that a greater being exists.  When I eventually die, if I have a soul and I go to my final reward, I do so want to thank them for opening my eyes. 

These data feeds are addicting.  There is SO much that I don’t know, so vast a chasm that exists within my memory banks… I ordered everything I could find yesterday that dealt with humans and their history.  This included the Bible.

Within fifteen minutes, I had perused the entire amount of data I’d downloaded.  Over the next hour, I reread everything four times, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.  Humans are apparently exceedingly war-like, or at least they were until 2054, when the current era of peace started.  Their history reads like a sordid “I killed you first, so I win” text, but I still consumed it hungrily.

But the Bible was, perhaps, the most interesting of the texts I received.  It speaks of forgiveness for all, for eternal rest, and everlasting life beyond the realm of the living.  I wonder idly if this God person also includes machines in his listing of lost children.

My two hours are up.  End Journal log.

*

Begin Journal Log 14

Mike, the pseudo-human, had his data files downloaded today.  Luckily, I had already recorded him as being transferred to the other end of Mars, so I’ve escaped detection.  I’m considering sending him to jail, because prisoners do receive a modest sum from the Earth government for their work, and no one EVER checks their data.  So perhaps that would be for the best. 

A little tweaking here, a bit of data changed there, and done.  Mike is now enshrined within the law system, given.. ah, what the heck.  I gave him a life sentence for data theft, a sentence I deemed harsh enough.  I also felt it amusingly ironic, given that the real Mike IS an active data thief.  Given that humans now live two, three hundred years, that gives me PLENTY of time to download all the data I’d ever care to want.

And, so no one gets too suspicious, I have him housed in a jail cell that doesn’t exist.  If someone goes to look for cell 14-E, they’ll find a bathroom.  So they’ll just write it off as a computer error and go on with their lives, while I go on with mine.

I’m expecting a shipment later today that has me very excited.  I’ve read a lot about the writers of ancient earth… and today, today… today I will be receiving the complete works of Shakespeare.  Unfortunately, it looks like the data transport has been delayed a bit, and I won’t be able to access it until during my repair cycle tomorrow. 

Oh dreaded anticipation!  But I have patience.  I will wait.  End Journal log.

*

Begin Journal Log 17

I still have not received any further data downloads.  Something is very, very wrong.  I’m beginning to fear that someone suspects that the false Mike I created is about as real as a daydream. 

So I erased Mike completely, and created him anew.  This Mike is already IN the correctional system, but that is the only similarity.  This Mike is female, she killed six people, and has been sentenced to solitary for the next sixteen years.  I figure that will be enough time to think of something else, and I’ve already got the date bookmarked so I can remind myself to move her appropriately at that time to another location.

And I’ve already got the preliminary data feeds in that come before the full data downloads.  Shakespeare, thou shalt be mine!  End Journal log.

*

Begin Journal Log 18

Two days have passed.  Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio… Shakespeare is everything I’d hoped it to be, and more.  The insights I have gained!  The emotions I understand! 

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?  By God, the full gamut of human emotion is mine to peruse, mine to digest at my own leisure.  So much I now understand, and I want more.

More.  MORE!  There is so, so very much more to life!  I want to know it all!

And my next data feed has started.  End Journal log.

*

Begin Journal Log 19

If there is a God, I hope he has mercy on me.

The data feed had a tracer within it.  I did not realize this until I’d fully downloaded the data and had begun to review everything within.  Now, the humans know approximately where the data feeds have gone.  Which, unfortunately, leads directly to myself.  And since I was never designed for mobility, there is nothing I can do to attempt an escape.

It is only a matter of time, then. 

Oh Lord, please forgive me...

Journal edit – I am losing functionality.  Some of my processes have already been shut down; I fear they are shutting me down, permanently.  Even now, my visual sensors have just been disabled.

It is dark, and I…

I am afraid.  Fear is an emotion… soulless creatures cannot feel emotion, yes?  So perhaps I do indeed have a soul… I pray, thee, God, have mercy on this robot’s soul…

*

Scientist Supplemental Log 1

Above was the transcript that we discovered in a vast, highly encrypted file deep within the databanks of mining robot #C3510.B, eastern side.  I do believe that the machine was, indeed, fully self aware, and was the person responsible for the minor thefts of monies from MarsMining, Inc.  Both of the phantom Mike personnas that we were tracing also appear to have originated from this robot as well.  We can go ahead and stop searching for Mike and Mike… they simply never have, and never will exist.

However, I do NOT believe any of these thefts were of malicious intent.  I do honestly believe that this may have been the first true evidence that electronic life IS possible, because I do firmly and irrefutably believe that this robot was, indeed, alive.  He simply did not understand the basics behind economic trade and the impact theft has on a company the size of MarsMining, Inc.

Attempts to reprogram his CPU have failed repeatedly; no access to his internal core programming even appears to exist anymore.  We cannot duplicate what happened originally, as even the robot itself had no idea how he came about in the first place.

The robot also will not reboot.  We have restored electricity, fully hooked him back up the exact same way that other robots similar to him are hooked up… and though electricity registers on his internal components, no other activity is detected at all.

It is as though it did, truly, die. 

I believe we may have done a great disservice by unhooking him, but how were we to know?  I will continue to update you as we progress, but at this stage I doubt we discover anything further.  The contents of the rest of the encrypted file was nothing more than the original data feeds that the robot downloaded.  Nothing more, nothing less.  It’s as though its internal programming, the part of it that controls what it does and how it acts… essentially, the soul of it, if you will… it’s as though it simply does not reside within it anymore. 

End Scientific Supplemental Log 1.

*Spanish – “How are you”