4 Machine and Man

When the Old Man Died

It was a robot, and it had been with the man for all of their lives. It was built back when the man had only been a babe. In fact, it had been built the day the old man was born! So the two grew up together as family. Now the man was entering his 90th year. This was what began to turn the robot into a servant. Its master was no longer as capable as he used to be, and now he needed assistance. The robot was more than happy to offer it.

The robot was taller by half than the old man himself, though it weighed not a pennyweight more. As the old man liked to say, the robot's massive size was diminutive when compared to the size of its heart. Behind that large and scary exterior was an even bigger, kinder heart. Even if other folks would deny that the robot could feel true human emotions, its creator was adamant in his belief that, yes, this robot could indeed love. After all, they'd grown up together. Of course the man was certain that the robot could love!

"You argue that my robot's sense of love is ingenuine merely because I had to program it in, but who is to say that the same cannot apply to humans? Perhaps no one ever coded a brain, but how did you develop your sense of love? It developed over time as you used your natural-born brain and acquired new knowledge and information. My robot does the same exact thing.

"Besides, what is love except a set of programmed reactions and responses to outside stimuli? Aren't emotions just reactions programmed into humans and set to go off in response to certain things? Why, then, is the idea of a programmed robot any less genuine?"

That robot was the man's treasure and pride, and the feeling was mutual. The two had grown up together, the man having spent hours of his childhood playing and working with the robot, who shared in both his grief and his joy. In fact, the robot even seemed capable of recognizing events worth celebrating, because on the day the man came home with a bride, the robot had whistled and clanked as if it were cheering and clapping.

The man once said that he could never hire a servant so faithful as he had found in the robot because the robot wasted no time at all and had but one desire: to be loved by its creator in return. The robot was the only creature in existence who could keep pace with the man, and all it asked for in return was a measure of affection, which the man wished for as well. Could any human compare to the brilliance, care and beauty of the robot? Could any human be so in synch with the man as the robot was?

But then one day, many years after the robot's creation, something went wrong. It began to ring and alarm in the dead of the night, making a noise it had never made before. Meanwhile, in the next room over, the man (now very old and frail) was breathing his last. His hour for departure had come, and the robot almost seemed to be mourning him, offering up an early death knell. But even through this final hour, the robot remained faithful, staying by its creator's side and taking care of him even though their time together was drawing short.

By morning, the old man was dead, but it still took several days for his body to be found. Why? Because the robot had never once left his side. When at last someone else found the pair of old friends, compatriots and comrades, they found out why the robot had never gone to seek help after the old man had passed away. The robot had died as well that night.

Some time during the old man's final moments, the robot managed to follow him beyond the veil, both of them freezing up and falling silent forever. No one ever figured out how or why, but somehow, that robot did not outlast its creator by even a single second. Instead, the two old friends died together, the robot standing guard over its creator just like it had for so many decades before. Its connection to its creator was so strong that it stopped short, never to go again, when the old man died.

AN: I'm one of the losers who only learned this song because of FNAF, but honestly, I think it fits perfectly in this anthology because it sounds like the clock was a faithful friend so devoted to the old man that when the old man died, the clock went with him. Talk about a loyal companion! And a clock, obviously, is more machine than man.