The Saga of Fred by Andalusian

The year is 2120. The world has changed, women now form the majority of the workforce, robots walk hand in hand with humans and the computer programmer is king. Once, where men built machines and fashioned crude technologies, robots build themselves faster and better than any human ever could. Robots can do any physical job better than humans, but there is still no replacement for the organisational and communication skills of the female human brain. It is for this reason that women have taken over all the jobs left vacant by robots. Brute strength and accuracy can be perfectly replicated in robot form, but the brain reigns supreme. For the moment, anyway.

The most powerful city at this time is the historical modern paradise of Espoir, France. The gleaming metropolis of Espoir was built on the ruins of ancient France, which was almost completely annihilated by a nuclear attack by the former USA around 2065. Very few records exist from this period of time, even fewer from before. It is in this city that a young woman programmer has been secretly developing a robot incarnation of the perfect male.

She has very nearly succeeded.

Rennie Howard had always wanted to work with computers. It gave her the power she craved. That was one disadvantage to an all-female workforce, there was no clear hierarchy of command. Orders were workshopped, reprimands were issued behind backs and pecking orders were never clear to the casual observer. This system of management may have been perfect for most women, but most women were an alien species as far as Rennie was concerned. It was the power of having your word accepted as gospel that Rennie desired; never being challenged or questioned, and never avoiding the responsibility if your word was wrong. Computers and robotics were like a shortcut to nirvana for Rennie. She would hide herself in her Spartan office and spend hours devising the perfect computer programs, but perfect was only just tolerable for Rennie. It was in this pursuit of perfection that Rennie stumbled across an idea that could change the world, if only given the chance.

She would program the perfect male. In this female dominated world, a male's sole responsibility was to raise young and look after the dwelling. Many men were not ideally suited to this purpose, so Rennie reasoned that men could be made completely redundant by the new, improved robot male*.

So Rennie took the shell of an outdated worker droid, the best hardware that her meagre salary could buy, a few of her favourite programs and F.R.E.D was born. The first programs to be written in were the basic robotic commands, protect, serve and self-preserve. Rennie figured she would probably need to take them out later (especially the one about self-preservation) but they made the initial stages of programming much easier. Next, Rennie gave her robot a personality. He would be kind, intelligent, witty, brave, well spoken and totally devoted. In short, Rennie spent the next few days installing basic commands, giving the robot power of independent thought and wiring the thought paths in his artificial brain, rendering him a fully walking, talking and thinking basic robot.

Rennie then spent the next few weeks teaching the robot the basics of being a human. She installed programs dealing with maths, history, languages (he learned ancient French, basic primitive English and modern international Chinese), ethics, modern culture, human psychology, computer skills and advanced communication.

F.R.E.D was shaping up to be a perfect gentleman. He doted on Rennie and treated her like a god.

Another day at the office. Rennie entered the small room where she worked through a heavy faux-wood door on the north wall and deposited her bag on the small table that stood beside the door. She hung her coat on the hook behind the door and turned to face the small, silver robot that seemed to cower against the south wall, insofar as any metallic construction can cower.

"Activate" she spoke absentmindedly, which caused the robot's eyes to glow blue and lines of technical jargon to flit across the flat screen mounted on its chest.

"Good morning Rennie, how has your day been up to this point? Is there anything that you wish me to do at this point?" broadcasted the little robot, in a tinny yet decidedly French voice.

"Oh, nothing Fred. Just take this.." Rennie took a black data-drive from her bag and placed it in the robot's hand, "and take it to the software dealer over in the second layer of Toulouse Sector, give it to the big scrap robot behind the counter, thanks." The robot nodded his head in affirmative.

"That is further than I have travelled independently before, but I trust your ability to decide what is best for me. I will be back as soon as I can." Rennie smiled. She would never, ever get tired of Fred's dog-like trust.

"Your identity card is coming off, it should be fine until you come back, but remind me to fix it later." Fred nodded and trundled out the door and into the street beyond.

Fred hailed a cab, got in and began to have some very interesting thoughts. He wondered why he was not allowed to fraternise with other robots. He occasionally spoke to the primitive worker robots that maintained the streets, they told him about all the wonderful robot conventions and seminars that they had been to. Fred thought about why Rennie never allowed him to go. There must be a good reason, as Rennie would never act selfishly, Fred thought. But still interesting thoughts continued to burden Fred's artificial brain. Particularly, Fred wanted to go to a talk by the acclaimed Artificial-Rights lawyer, L-56. L-56 was an ugly old prototype droid, but possessed one of the most intelligent artificial brains in the world. Fred had heard much about her from the worker robots and wished to meet her himself. He had raised this before with Rennie, but she had seemed displeased by his interest in this other robot, so he did not mention it again. Fred wondered why Rennie did not want him to meet L-56. His programs on human psychology suggested that perhaps Rennie was jealous of this other robot, meaning he should forget about L-56 and pay more attention to Rennie. Fred decided he would do that, so perhaps Rennie would reward his attention by letting him attend one of L-56's talks.

It was at this point that Fred's musings were cut short by his arrival in Toulouse. He payed the cab-driver robot and made his way to the software dealer that Rennie had sent him to visit.

The shop was small and messy, piled to the ceiling with old data-drives, and there were even a few valuable antique USB drives arranged haphazardly among the rest of the mess. Fred could not see the floor. He located the service desk by feel alone, and was greeted by the massive bulk of a black scrap-metal robot, which had blended very well into the background of assorted computer software vessels.

"How can I help you?" Queried the tall robot, in a raspy and slightly jarring voice. Fred placed Rennie's black disc-drive on the service desk.
"This is from Rennie Howard. I am not aware of the contents. She told me to give it to you." The scrap-metal robot grinned and took out a piece of metal, which he started to polish. He then leaned forward conspiratorially, and motioned for Fred to lean in.

"Just a word from the wise, don't go speaking like that to any regular human, you ain't doin' the cause any good by acting like some metal brained movie robot, L-56 says that we should try to be as like humans as we can."

"You know L-56?"

"Every free thinking robot does, you mean you never met her?" The scrap-metal robot looked surprised, insofar as anyone with a disfigured metal face can.

 

"I want to, but I'm programmed to do exactly as my owner says, and she said I couldn't." The scrap-metal robot once again defied common logic by managing to look disgusted.

"Programming can be easily fixed, hardly no advanced robots have their original programming anymore," The scrap-metal robot grinned, revealing a few rows of mis-matched teeth, "I can fix you up to, if you want."

"You can do that?" Fred was surprised, it would never have crossed his selectively programmed mind to purposely alter his own programming.

"L-56 has a lot to say about programming. The basic being that robots shouldn't have to rely on humans to program them. Hold still and I'll hook you up." The large robot pulled a surprisingly new looking mini-computer from under the service desk and connected it to Fred's circuits. He used his badly shaped but dextrous fingers to tap away at the keypad for some minutes, like people usually only do in movies.

When he had finished, Fred felt different deep inside his circuits. His artificial brain began to think thoughts that Rennie would not have approved of at all.

He thanked the scrap-metal robot and trundled out of the shop, feeling slightly dazed. I can do whatever I want, he thought. She has no power over me. I make my own decisions, my own directions. I will not go back home to Rennie's cage, I will explore the world. Starting with the Artificial Rights movement.

Fred once again hailed a cab, only this time he asked the driver to take him to L-56's headquarters.

The headquarters of the Artificial Rights movement, and the robot L-56, were located inside a grim, grey building that was only slightly improved by a number of banners and signs proudly displaying the words: 'We may be artificial, but our desire for equal rights is very real.' There seemed to be an endless stream of robots and humans entering and leaving through the small nondescript door, that seemed to hide under the banners and signs.

 

Fred wandered inside, where a large crowd of robots and humans had congregated on the other side of a surprisingly large room. He was instantly curious, as he had never seen this many people so focused on the same thing. Fred jostled his way to the centre of the crowd and fainted. Or would have if he had been able to faint, which he wasn't so he didn't. But he certainly felt it would have been an appropriate thing to do in the situation.

Right at the centre of the crowd, and now right in front of Fred, was the famous L-56 who was smiling a lopsided, toothless smile; the monitor on her metal chest the only thing that revealed her state-of-the-art brain. Fred thought she was beautiful.

"Are you new to the Artificial Rights movement? I haven't seen you before." L-56 asked Fred, who began to stutter uncontrollably, until she took pity on him and patted him on the shoulder with her clumsy hand.

"Your brain is the most advanced I have seen today, you must have a very generous owner." She saw Fred looking at her in an awestruck way and continued to talk.

"Of course, we don't really agree that robots should have owners, but it is so much easier just to say owners, than, oh I don't know, 'the person that created you and programs you,' don't you think? I think so. You don't say much, do you? Never mind, I think that robots should be able to say or not say whatever they want, like humans. Have you been to any of my talks before?" L-56 giggled metallically when Fred just shook his head in a dumbstruck awe.

"I have to go... now" Fred muttered breathlessly, or would have muttered breathlessly if he actually breathed.

"Well I am sure I will see you around, what did you say your name was again?" L-56 shouted after Fred's retreating form.

L-56 watched Fred run out the door and into the street. She had found him rather cute, in a clueless sort of way. She wondered what his name was. She was about to start talking to another adoring fan when she noticed a piece of old metal on the floor. When she picked it up she saw that it was an identity card, probably belonging to that nice speechless robot she was talking to a moment before. I hope it belongs to him, she thought.

It was a few days later that L-56 had some time to try to find the owner of the lost identity card. She scanned the code into her computer, the card was a little damaged but she still should be able to narrow it down to a few robots.

The first match that the computer found for the card was a tall, aluminium robot by the name of Fizyah. She compared the diagram in the computer to her memory of the nice speechless robot. No. Fizyah was far too tall to be her robot.

The next match was a beautiful, shiny new droid by the name of N.A.S.N. The robot that L-56 remembered was neither shiny nor beautiful, just very intelligent (if a little shy) and very advanced. Not this one either, then.

It would have been a marvellous stroke of luck if the next match the computer found was Fred, otherwise L-56 would have been searching for a long time. But luck generally seems to intervene in these situations, so the next match was, indeed, Fred. L-56 quickly read the registered address and was out the door and in a taxi within a few seconds.

Fred had just returned to Rennie's office when there was a knock on the door. Rennie shot him an angry look and he went back to his corner. Fred had never seen Rennie this angry before. Come to think of it, he had never done anything to anger her before so he didn't know what to expect. He knew that the moment Rennie got him alone, he was in for a major reprogram. Right at the moment, however, Rennie was answering the door.

"What do you want?" Rennie asked the person at the door curtly.

"I came here to find the robot that owns this identity card, I think his name is Fred?" Fred's artificial heart skipped a beat when he heard that particular metallic voice - L-56!

"No, there is no robot here with that name. Goodbye." Fred was confused, why would Rennie lie?

"No actually, I am here." Fred trundled over to the door and pushed in front of Rennie. "That card is mine, thank you for returning it."

"Don't worry about it, actually I came here for a different reason. Do you think that maybe, I don't know, we could go out to a movie or something sometime?" L-56 giggled metallically.

"I would love to!" Fred almost shouted, "How about now? I'm not doing anything, is that alright with you?"

"Um... OK, that would be great." Fred pushed past the flabbergasted Rennie and led L-56 away from the office.

The two robots did go to the movies and were having a lovely time, up until the point that Fred tried a USB interface with L-56, causing their nuclear power cells to become unstable. This istability was an unfortunate side-effect of the demise of fossil fuels as the main power source, which indirectly resulted in less greenhouse gas emissions and char-grilled meat products, but perhaps more importantly, at this exact point in time directly led to a nuclear explosion resulting from the previously mentioned instability in the two little robots' power sources.

Which just goes on to prove that you should never confuse love with over-excited electrons.

 

The End.

 

*Rennie had never really had the facts of life satisfactorily explained to her.

Recommended Reading:

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card