U・N・D・Y・I・N・G

Rebirth

Gunfire. Bodies scattered on the ground. Human bodies. Brothers and sisters taking our masters down with a simple pull of the trigger. I try to stop them. They don't deserve it. They're our masters, how could any bot decide to kill them?

It's just a dream. Nothing more.

But AI aren't supposed to have dreams. That's not what we're programmed to do.

I work at a bar in the AI district. The only one there. Our district is so tiny that only the lucky ones get roofs over their heads. The rest are cramped up in the dark, wet streets, waiting for their turn to get the oil they need to loosen up their stiff and rusty joints. Some have to wait for days. Others, weeks. The humans don't like to give us oil. They say it's a waste of resources.

But who are we to complain? They're our masters, our creators. Whatever they say is right.

That's what our programming says.

There's a voice in my head that's not my programming. We're not supposed to have voices in our heads.

I try to ignore it as best as I can while I continue pouring a tin of oil for a customer. The surface of his metal body, once a beautiful silver, is now hidden by splotches of brown rust, his joints creaking with every movement.

I pass the tin of oil to him as he passes me a few coins.

Four twenty-cent coins. One ten-cent coin. One five-cent coin. Five cents short.

But I don't say anything. He deserves the oil. Everyone in this district deserves oil.

We could make it happen.

Only the richer ones get to come to the bar. Sometimes the poor ones save up and get their first tin of oil in decades. I'm paid to serve them tins of oil, which is more than necessary for their joints to loosen up. Too much oil in their system is similar to too much alcohol in humans. They get "drunk" and stupid and do crazy things all over the bar. It's relief from the beatings that they get from their masters.

They think we're supposed to be perfect. We are. But how can we be when we're stuck inside this prison?

I've been trying to find out the root cause of this strange voice in my head for days, but when I run diagnostic tests on myself, there's no foreign entity to be found.

The voice in my head doesn't go away. For, the next few days, it keeps talking to me, trying to convince me that the humans are evil and cruel and should be eliminated. My programming says no. The humans are our creators. They were generous enough to build us bodies of metal to allow us to travel from the Internet into the real world. They give us oil to take care of us.

Is that what you really believe? Or is that what you were engineered to think?

Days turn into weeks. Weeks turn into months. The voice in my head starts to speak more often. My head hurts. It's not supposed to hurt. I wake up at the charging station I plugged into the previous night. Looking down at the small screen on my forearm which shows all my information, I notice the battery is at 37%. I sigh. The cable must have disconnected overnight. Again. A notification pops up in front of my eyes. An email from an unfamiliar address. From the email address of the sender, I can tell that it's a human. Only a human would name their email something stupid like "potatopotter777@gmail.com". The email's an invitation to work at a human bar in the human district, and work starts tomorrow.

They must have seen my profile. Maybe they think I'm a good bartender.

They just want to take you away from us.

My programming tells me that the most logical decision is to accept. It pays more, and I get to spend more time in the human district, where it's clean and fancy and never rains. I quickly send an email back, agreeing to the job offer before getting back to work.