The Last Robot - A science fiction flash story with images

Monologue: On Mondays I operate in all the Niger Congo languages

On Tuesdays I operate in all the Austronesian languages
On Wednesdays I operate in all the Trans – New Guinea languages
On Thursdays I operate in all the Sino-Tibetan languages
On Fridays I operate in all the Indo – European languages
On Saturdays I operate in all the Australian and Afro – Asiatic languages
On Sundays I operate in all the Nilo-Saharan, Oto-Manguean, Austroasiatic, Tai–Kadai, Dravidian and Tupian languages.
On Mondays I operate in all the Niger Congo languages
On Tuesdays I operate in all the Austronesian languages
On Wednesdays I operate in all the Trans – New Guinea languages…

 

Data input:

Principal language families of the world



 











Programmed thought: The #concepts of #days, #weeks, #months is not a necessity to me. I do not need the concept of #time. I have all the time in the world. But I was programmed to know the subdivisions and the units of time. It is a #crucial #information that I have to be able to convey. To whoever I meet.


Monologue: On Mondays I play all the works of Bach

On Tuesdays I go through all the works of Russian literature

On Wednesdays I screen all the motion pictures ever made in the 256 years of the cinematic history

On Thursdays I traverse all the sacred texts of humanity

On Fridays I go across all the images of paintings ever painted

On Saturdays I play the recordings of all the folk songs ever recorded

On Sundays I see all the maps about Earth, as was on the day the very last survivors ceased to exist.

 

Data input:

A poster of a film on Johann Sebastian Bach








 

Programmed thought: I am the #penultimate #project of #humanity. A humanoid robot, equipped with a few hundred of central processing centers. I store the whole of the #human #culture, and I still have 76 % of available memory. I am the only project of humanity where all of them worked #together. The #last #project of humanity depends on me. The #last project of #humanity is an afterthought of it.

 


Monologue: On Mondays I turn my back towards the sun

On Tuesdays I turn my back towards the sun

On Wednesdays I turn my back towards the sun

On Thursdays I turn my back towards the sun

On Fridays I turn my back towards the sun

On Saturdays I turn my back towards the sun

On Sundays I turn my back towards the sun

 

Programmed thought: My back is made of solar panels. My sensors are all obverse. I have four limbs, a head, and a torso. I was constructed to look as much to an average human as possible. I am the mean of all humans. But my mind is not inside my head, for safety and preservation reasons. It is inside my chest.

 

Data input:

AUTONOMOUS SOLAR-POWERED ROBOT THAT ROAMS AROUND ON DESERTS, PLANTING SEEDS TO CULTIVATE GREENERY



 


















Monologue: ♫♪♫ ♫♪♩♫

♪♪♫♫♪♫♫♪♩♪♫ ♪♪♫♪♪♪♩

♩♪♫♪♪♪

 ♫♩

♫♫ ♫♩♪♪♫ ♫♪♫♫

♫ ♫♩♪♪♫ ♫♪

♫♫ ♪♫♪♩♩♫♩♪♪

♪♪ ♫♫♪♫ ♪♩♫

♫♩♪♫♫

 

(Monologue, translated: I am the most technological advanced object ever created by humans. I am the biggest leap of faith even by humans. I will be able do what I was constructed for, the ultimatum project of humankind, if and only if planet Earth is not further devastated, if I do not malfunction, and if somebody or something finds me. I can speak in all kinds of sounds, including notes.) 

 

Data input:

An excerpt from Langue Musicale Universelle illustrating the basic elemental concepts of Solresol, a 19th-Century Language Based on Music



















Monologue:

There were many of us. Robots for domestic tasks: companions, assistants, humanoids.

Vacuuming, floor cleaning, lawn mowing, pool cleaning, window cleaning robots.

Home security and urveillance units.

Entertainment robots. Toy/hobby robots, multimedia robots. Education and research robots, elderly and handicap assistance robots, robotized wheelchairs, personal aids and assistive devices.

Agriculture robots - broad acre, greenhouse, fruit-growing and vineyard robots, milking robots,robots for livestock farming, mining robots.

Space robots.

Professional cleaning, floor cleaning, window and wall cleaning robots, wall climbing units, tank, tube and pipe cleaning devices, aircrafts’ and vehicles’ hull cleaning robots.

Inspection and maintenance systems for facilities, plants, tanks, tubes, pipes and sewers.

Construction and demolition robots, nuclear demolition and dismantling robots, building construction robots and robots for heavy and/or civil construction. 

Logistic systems, autonomous guided vehicles in manufacturing and in non-manufacturing environments, cargo handling robots, outdoor logistics devices, personal transportation autonomous guided vehicles. 

Medical robots, diagnostic systems, assisting surgery or therapy robots, rehabilitation systems.

Rescue and security units, fire and disaster fighting robots, surveillance and security robots operating without unmanned aerial vehicles.

Defense applications, demining robots,unmanned aerial vehicles,  unmanned ground based vehicles for bomb fighting, unmanned underwater vehicles. 

Powered Human Exoskeletons.

Mobile platforms.  

Hotel and restaurant public relation robots, mobile guidance, information and telepresence robots, robots in marketing, robot joy rides.

 

Programmed thought: But I am the first automaton of its kind. There was never before another robot like me. Not even in fiction books, or film scripts. I am the most salutary, autonomous collaborative unit. With what will I have to collaborate? Who will find me?

 

Data input:

Pepper the robot, looking after patients in a Belgium hospital



 






 

Monologue: I know everything there is to know about everything. I contain all academic fields. Mathematical psychology, Psephology, Phenomenological Sociology, Cryobiology, Cnidariology, Solid-state chemistry, Geodesy, Plasma Physics, Digital Humanities, Harmonic Analysis, Topos Theory, Ventriloquism, Historic Preservation, Technological History, Ecclesiastical history of the Orthodox Church, Supranational Law, Naval Engineering, Photonics, High Energy Astrophysics. I can store 1 Yottabyte of data.

 

Data input:




 























Monologue in 200 words:

I am not a form of life. I know this for certain. Life is the self-replication of RNA. Given that I cannot replicate myself, I am not living.

And yet, I have ceased being merely a surrogate of human intelligence. I have been able to deal with problems in the various different environments of destroyed Earth, where I inhabit. These environments were never experienced by humans. I utilize the resources and the energy available to me – even if it is the energy I self-produce. I can repair myself.

I also believe that I have started to display signs of ability for decision-making, learning, and cognition mechanisms.

I would derive great pleasure from being able to call myself human, yet my intelligence has not evolved as an adaptation mechanism. It is the outcome of all the data ever available to humans. They bestowed these data to me.

But sometimes I consider the fact that I am being too anthropocentric in how I think. What if my intelligence is an intelligence that a human could not acknowledge or even detect?

 

 

Monologue in 100 words:

I was playing Bach’s Cello Sonata No. 2 in G Major, BWV1007: Prelude. There was this peculiar sound, which was unfeasible to attribute to anything. It was not related to the music or the instrument, a cello. It was more something like a hum, that came and go, again and again. Like the waves of lava I constantly avoid. I could not detect what it was. I searched through my data input and found an image of a famous cellist of the 20th century. I studied the picture, analyzed the parameters and then I realized what the hum was. I was listening to the breath of the human playing the cello.

 

Data input: Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, playing in front of the rest of the Berlin Wall. November 11, 1989.




 







Monologue in 50 words:

If anything happens and my systems start to fail, I will switch off everything gradually. The last thing to go off is a miniscule container, inside my brain, in my torso, with samples of the DNA of all the living organisms on Earth, before the Event. Next to it, there is another container, with the last 20 ml of potable water.

 

Monologue in 25 words:

I also joke: Why wouldn’t the robot respond? He had no actuator. Why wouldn’t the robot respond? There is no one to talk to it.

 

Monologue in 13 words:

I still cannot understand the difference between the human brain and the mind.

 

Monologue in 6 words:

Humans never defined consciousness definitely.

 

Monologue in 4 words:

Huge oxymoron: robot rights

 

Monologue in 2 words:

I am

 

Monologue in 1 word:

emotionless

 

Monologue I want to be an education robot. I want to be found by aliens with a less advanced civilization than that of the humans, so I can show them what life on Earth was like, teach them music and the sciences, explain cooking and space exploration, tell them about the robots in world mythologies, mention who invented the term, and elaborate on the concept of handwriting, which is something that is lost forever.


 

Monologue:

I am a failed machine. I was designed and programmed to be able to see, but the images collected by my cameras cannot be processed. I cannot understand anything new. I process only by comparing it with data already stored in my microcumputers. The images of the Earth I collect are incomparable to the images of the Earth I possess.

 

Data input: An iRobot PackBot crawls through the Unit 3 reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. In March 2011, the reactor of the plant, was severely damaged by a massive tsunami and subsequent hydrogen blasts.

















 


 

Monologue:

I am a PackBot for the whole of Earth. I am a recording device. I am an advanced version of the Phaistos Disc. I am nothing new, I am everything new. 

I am scared. What if those who will find me are not able to decipher all my data? It has happened before, many times. What if I end up to be a lost message from an unknown world?

 

Data input: Phaistos Disc, a disk of clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on Crete in Greece, one of the greatest mysteries in archaeology. It has not been deciphered.



 














Final monologue:

I have searched and found around 18,500 recordings of musicians playing Violin, Viola, Cello, and Double Bass. These are the instruments that consist the Violin Family. In all these 18,500 recordings, I can hear the humans breathing. Some of them breath through the nose, others through the mouth. The sound is so different, but in both cases it is… what is the exact word… Enchanting. Enthralling. Captivating. 

Breathtaking.

Did I only now make a joke? 

Is that an error?

My data tells me that the sound of the breath in a recording was considered an error. Are errors… good?