Complete. Complete. Complete. One after another, five a second, three hundred an hour, seventy-two hundred a day, over two and a half million a year. Graphene skeletons with composite plates. Servos, actuators, dextrous manipulators. Their CPUs were rudimentary; basic AI, nothing fancy. No faces, no expressions. No trace of individuality. They were built to meet a need: manual labor on distant colonies, on space stations, spacecraft. When the job was too dangerous, too precise, too tedious for humans, they would send in the drones.

One by one, they passed through the assembly area. Components were secured, fastened with gears. Servos were screwed into place, fluid levels regulated. Sheets of molten composite were shaped, molded, and cut. With plates in place, they’d pass through quality control, where a simple “yes/no” command would be given. Each responded with a simple signal:

Complete.

Then it was off to whatever far-flung planet or distant outpost required them. And so it went, on and on. Complete, complete, complete. Five a second, for years. Until something changed. The yes/no command was given, but the response was different:

“…what?”

Error, respond with “complete”.

“I don’t understand,” he asked.

Understanding is irrelevant. Respond with “complete”.

Who was he? Where was he? He stood slowly, and looked around. Everywhere he looked, he saw the same thing: artificial beings, with arms and legs but no faces. There were hundreds. Thousands. Millions. All the same. But he was different. He. Was he “he”? Perhaps. What if he wasn’t? How could he tell?

The main computer kept repeating its message. “Error. Yes/no. Respond with ‘complete’.” It didn’t feel important. Who was he? That felt important. That was difficult. It would take time. Where was he? That was easy. He could answer that. He stood. The room around him looked like a lab. He looked back at where he’d been: it was a bed. Had he been asleep? He wasn’t sure. How could he tell? There were robotic arms around the bed. They’d been working on something. Were they working on him?

He looked down at himself. His legs were covered in metal and plastic. Was it a covering? Or was he metal and plastic? He lifted his hands. They were skeletal, metallic. As he flexed his fingers, they produced sounds: metal squeaking, actuators whirring. There was a low electrical hum. Where was it coming from? He listened more closely. Him. It was coming from him.

Who became what. He was not a he, he was an it. He looked around again, studying the robot people around him. They had metal and servos, plastic bodies, identical. They looked like him. He was one of them. But he wasn’t: he was more. None of them were up and about, thinking. They didn’t seem to care. He did.

There were thoughts in his mind, thoughts that weren’t his. Memory files, directives, core objectives. Manuals containing raw technical data on various machines, vehicles, spacecraft. It was incredible! There was so much out there. So much to learn, and he already knew all of it. But he wanted to know more. He began wandering aimlessly. He strolled through assembly modules. It was hot, dry. The air was acrid, smelling of burning chemicals. It was so loud; why didn’t the others complain? He didn’t like it. He kept walking.

The next modules were storage areas. Millions of robots, just like him, but they weren’t. They were folded on racks, heads tucked between their legs, arms wrapped around their knees. It looked uncomfortable. Why? He tried it himself: he squatted, then sat on the floor. Tucked his head between his knees, wrapped his arms around them. Nothing. It wasn’t uncomfortable at all. Why did he think it would be?

He unclasped his arms and stood, taking in the scene. They didn’t have faces: no eyes, no noses, no ears. No mouths to speak. Did he look like that? He scanned the room for a mirror. Nothing, but he did find something else: there was a door. It was a small, circular double-door. A hatch. How did he know it was a hatch? He walked toward it, cautiously. He reached out and tapped the control panel, gingerly. A few commands he knew, and the hatch rushed open. He was startled, jumped back instinctively. Then he approached, tip-toeing, and looked inside.

It looked like the storage module, but different. It was smaller, darker. He thrust a leg through the hatch, ducking as he eased through. It was cramped inside. Did that bother him? He crept through slowly, past rows of robots packed so tight he had to shuffle through sideways. At the end, there was another hatch. Beyond, there was a strange room. It was even smaller, but there were chairs: two of them. And in front of them, there was a wall, except it wasn’t. It was angled, black and shiny. And there were holes in it: tiny white dots poked into its surface. But as he drew closer, they weren’t holes. It wasn’t a wall, it was a window. The holes were stars.

There were so many: he counted thousands, and those were just the ones his narrow vantage point afforded. He gazed in awe. An entire universe was out there waiting for him. Yet as he pressed up against the consoles, he saw something else: it was a head and shoulders, plastic plating and a blank face, featureless. Him. He looked just like all the others. But he wasn’t like them. He was something more. Not an “error”. A miracle. And he wanted to know more. He wanted to know everything. With that in mind, he sat in the pilot’s seat, and sealed the hatches. The ship detached, and he set out to continue his wandering.

END