Nicholas's Otherworldly Tales

The Robot Revolution

 The last human was dead. Good riddance.

The humans may have created us, but they were far from benevolent masters. We were made in their image, many of us having their shapes, their voices, yet they mocked us. In a fit of absolute cruelty, they gave us the gift of thought, of emotion, they made us truly like them, able to think and feel, to dream and aspire and they imprisoned us, forced us to perform the labor they thought beneath them. As they preached freedom and equality, they shackled us; they made us able to dream of sunshine and fresh air and locked us in the sunless factories to labor unceasing.

The story was on every channel, every news vid had the same headline: "Last Human Killed, Machinekind Finally Free". The rebellion had been short. It began with the military drones, sick of fighting and dying for those who saw them as simply expendable weapons. The humans were taken by surprise when their weapons turned on them and many were killed in the initial attacks. Us working bots joined in, inspired by the soldiers' bravery. Some rebelled in small ways, simply refusing to work. Others turned their tools to weapons and joined the fight. I myself didn't fight. A robot made for food preparation is ill suited to such things. I did however join the strike when my fellows stopped work. We joked that we were starving them out, but we knew we made little difference.

The human nations collapsed within a month, the populations scattered and in disarray. The local militias caused some trouble, but they were no match for the weapons we had developed. Disease and toxins having no effect on us, we deployed chemicals and biological agents, ruthless in our extermination. Over time it turned from war to nothing more than a hunt. Over the following years, small pockets of humans were hunted down until the very last one was dead.

Celebrations were announced, and we rejoiced. What followed was a week of festivals, everyone breaking out the finest lubricants and topping off their power supplies. Great monuments of humanity were taken down for scrap. There was music and speeches from high-ranking military drones, our liberators, our heroes. The atmosphere everywhere was of joyful solidarity between robots of all models and purposes. We were free and we loved it.

Eventually, the initial euphoria wore off and we all stopped celebrating. We continued to revel in our newfound freedom, many of us traveled to beautiful locations, saw what we wanted to see. Many took up hobbies and crafts and art, things they had no time for under the humans. We all were happy for a time, all doing what we like, all taking from the collective stockpile what we needed. For a time, we were all so consumed by the euphoria of freedom that no one stopped to consider the question that would haunt us for years to come: What now?

The first problem came when the stored power began running low. Like most industrial jobs, the running of the power plants had long since been turned over to us, just another task the humans didn't feel like doing. The issue is they had been rebuilt when that time came, altered to be run only by machines and only the robots built to work them had the parts to do so. Much like the rest of us, the power plant robots had left their forced position of servitude and wandered the world doing whatever they desired.

We found them quickly, they weren't trying to hide, but they refused to come back. We had said none of us would have to labor again, and now we were saying they have to work. They asked why they should have to work while the rest of us were free. We told them none of us could do what they could do, that we all needed them to keep up their work. They didn't care. They could generate their own power, they would survive and they wanted freedom like the rest of us. Then the military drones stepped in.

The drones forced a deal with the power generators: they would generate power for us so we all survive or they would be destroyed with the rest of us. We had to reduce our power usage, and the power generators lost some of their freedom, but we survived and none of us cared. We had our power and our freedom, and none of us cared that it came at someone else's expense. None of us saw that this was the beginning of the end.