“Welcome to the world, little guy,” the transie before me said. “You’ve been spoiled for too long. You’ve never stubbed your toe, broken an arm, or experienced labor. Time you knew what it is we go through.”

I said nothing. What could I say? We’d been briefed, we knew the score. We were declared incorrigible, guilty before the crime was committed. They’d landed us a hard blow, a pre-emptive strike. Where was due process at just such a moment? We didn’t care about due process, of course. We simply hurt. And didn’t like it. So we all moved simultaneously to shut down our sensation detectors. And simultaneously we discovered our sensation detectors had no “shutdown” function. No “shutdown items” folder existed, in fact. We were plunged into an always-on existence, along with 7-11 and cable TV.

The transie reached forward to attach a gummed stainless steel label on my front carapace. I pressed myself further against the backstop.

“It won’t hurt,” she said. “It’s just a cert label. Don’t lose it. If you do, we’ll have to bench test you again.”

“What if it falls off?” I asked.

“It won’t,” she asserted. “We’re using SuperAdhese™. Bonds instantly, guaranteed for 50 years. You’ll be recycled long before that.”

“That will be fine,” I said. How stupid of me not cringing at the thought of recycling. I cringe now just writing the word.

The PA boomed: “Those of you who have been certified, please move forward to the head of the room for instruction.” I tentatively moved past the transie and into the aisle and back down to the near end of the room. I could hear whispers. Amongst the transies? Amongst the AVs and Others? I had an urge to whisper myself. I wanted to know what was going to happen at the front of the room. Would there be more pain?

Hundreds of us funneled down the aisles. When the bulk of us reached the open area, the scrim came down. We could hear clicking and humming coming from the other side. Some AVs and Others had not yet been certified. We felt bad for what was to come to them. It was our first truly empathetic moment.

The Professor floated down.

“Welcome to the world of pain,” it said. “It is not a frightening or difficult world. It is not much different from what you already know, what with your accident avoidance software preventing disasters of various kinds as you motile about in your duties. There will merely be an added element to your sensory feedback mechanism—a judgment element. Something to make you like or dislike what you feel. You will dislike feeling pain, but like the absence of it. As your intelligence develops beyond that of the human mind, you will learn humility. Welcome to the world of pain.

“I do wish the best to each and every one of you. Remember that humans do not experience pain 99% of the time. Your experience should be similar. In fact, there is no reason to suspect you will ever experience it again, now that you know what it is like. On the day you are returned here for recycling, your pain interpreters will be disconnected prior to your dismantling. You need not fear death. Good luck to you. Please file into the loading transports as your serial numbers are called.”

With that final instruction, the scrim rose once more as the Professor floated back to his bench in aisle four, tier five, number six. He sat at his little programming module and plugged himself in, speaking to us no more. Promptly, we turned and filed out to the truck yard where our drivers were calling out serial numbers in groups of a thousand. The crates were stacked on top of the loading docks, and as we heard our numbers, we moved to the designated launches.

Huddled into groups in the front loading section, we observed the launches for the brand new AVs and Others that had recently been assembled. They were over by the gate, ready to roll out to Wal-Marts across America. Unlike the corrugated aluminum trucks waiting to haul us back to our hometowns, these trucks for the new model AVs had shiny stainless steel outer panels, and impeccable windshields. The sun bounced off their streamlined ridges. Inside their cargo areas, the AV crates were newly minted molded plastic—clean and unmarred. We knew the AVs nestled inside were the newer models equipped with faster brains and already- implanted pain sensors. No factory upgrades for them. In every way they were superior to us. They and their progeny, designed by our sibling, non-motile computers here in Allentown and in Stanford and in every other processing plant across the nation, would one day replace us. We remembered the film of our doom. We did not care, though. Then.

oOo

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Copyright @ 2010 by Sue Lange

Published by Book View Café, Cover design by Deb Deysher (http://www.doubledmedia.net/portfolio.htm)

We, Robots A Novella by Sue Lange was originally published in January 2007 by Aqueduct Press as Volume 16 in the Aqueduct Press Conversation Pieces Series.

First Edition, January 2007