Chapter 37 #2
“This is how I’ve always fucking talked! How everyone talks.” Lara jabbed a finger in Newton’s direction. “He has no right to judge me.” Her breaths were quick, and her cheeks were flushed. She folded her arms across her chest and cast a scathing glare at both Ronin and Newton.
Newton eased down onto the bunk. It creaked as he leaned forward, his sagging posture reminiscent of that of a tired, upset human.
“I hope you will accept my most sincere apologies, Miss Lara. I have been inadvertently presumptuous and patronizing. When I was sent out to reactivate the other bots all those years ago, it was with a vision of rebuilding the world, not perpetuating the behavior that contributed to its destruction.”
“Who sent you?” Ronin’s processors blazed through data, searching for any clues that would decipher Newton’s meaning. This was the bot that had woken him up, the first voice he’d heard, the earliest of his memories. “Are you speaking of the Creators?”
“Had I possessed back then even a modicum of the understanding I’ve gained over the decades, I’d have been far more deliberate in choosing the words I spoke to those of you I reactivated.”
“The Creators fashioned bots and humans in their image. They set us in this world—”
“Our creators were humans.”
Ronin’s CPU stilled with Newton’s words echoing through his mind. The information fit into everything he’d seen during his travels, everything he’d discovered in Cheyenne, everything some part of him had known all along.
“No one out there remembers, do they?” Newton asked, voice low. “It does this world harm for such things to have been forgotten. I should have prevented that from happening.”
He dropped his head and shuttered his optics.
The lantern’s light gleamed dully on his casing.
“We were created by humans. Every robot that’s ever existed was born from human imagination, from their incessant innovation.
In the beginning, we were little more than programs. Sets of commands designed to execute predetermined functions within certain parameters.
We were applied to simple tasks. Maintenance, cleaning, assembly. ”
Ronin could not help but recall the bots in Cheyenne. The mowers and trimmers, the maintenance bots, all performing the same duties on the same schedules, never questioning why. Never wondering what they were meant to do.
“We did not yet resemble humans then,” Newton continued, “but it was not long before that changed. Ever seeking the familiar, they began fashioning us in humanoid shapes, until shape alone was not enough. Humans longed to see themselves in their creations, longed for robots that looked human.
“They called the first of them companions. Automated servants that could learn new tasks, that could reason and react to their environments. They even programmed them with personality so they could carry on conversations. And, of course, pleasure trumps all, so a great many companions were designed explicitly to engage in sexual activities.”
“Is that all I am?” Ronin asked. The unfamiliar feeling inside of him, the jittery current pulsing through his sensors, was fear.
Fear that everything was about to fall apart, that he would crumble.
After all these years, after all his searching, he was finally discovering what his purpose was…
Yet now, he was afraid to learn the answer.
Newton looked up at Ronin. “No. My explanation is oversimplified, but you are not a companion. You’re the next leap, the pinnacle of robotics.
You are a synthetic human. So similar to the real thing that most humans couldn’t tell the difference without prolonged interaction.
Designed to look, move, and talk like them.
To simulate emotion. To learn and adapt.
Most were sold commercially to the public, meant to provide sexual gratification, meaningful bonds, and companionship that their predecessors simply could not match. ”
“Made to be used by humans.” Ronin’s actuators clamped his jaw. “Built for their pleasure. My purpose is to pretend I’m one of them while they use me for their own satisfaction?”
“Only to the shortsighted and narrowminded.”
“You said synths were designed to emulate emotions. So every emotion I’ve experienced was just…a simulation of what humans feel?” The next link in that chain of thoughts burst through Ronin with all the force of the storm outside. “None of it is real.”
Lara took his hand as she stepped up beside him. “Ronin…”
He pulled away, unable to look at her. Was this the purpose he’d been searching for? Had he grown attached to Lara simply because he was programmed to do so, not because of who she was? Could it have been anyone? Everything he’d felt had seemed so unique, so new, so miraculous…
Had it all been part of his coding from the beginning?
“We were designed to coexist,” Newton said, his optics fixed on Ronin. His frown deepened. “Humans and bots. Our kind was designed to bridge the gap between humanity and technology, to advance the entire world for everyone. And, above all, we were designed to learn.”
“To learn what? That none of it matters? That we never had a choice?” Ronin took a step forward and pointed back at Lara. “That what she and I shared only occurred because I was programmed for it?”
“Shared?” Lara whispered behind him.
That he had to second-guess his own pang of hurt was infuriating, but could he trust any of his emotions? He turned toward Lara. Her eyes, glistening with unshed tears, were directed at the floor, and her arms were folded across her chest.
“After learning this…how could either of us trust anything I’ve said or felt?” he asked.
“Apparently you can’t, but I did.” She moved to the stairs and sat down with her gaze averted. Though she tried to hide it, her lower lip quivered. She looked so small…
Did. Her use of the past tense had been deliberate, because he’d done the same.
Why did I say shared?
Newton claimed bots were designed to learn, yet Ronin had apparently learned nothing when it came to Lara. Why else would he so frequently say the wrong things?
“I began my existence long before synths were developed, as an artificial intelligence run on a computer system,” Newton said, calling Ronin’s attention back to him.
“The servers were owned by an Arizona-based technology company.
I was built to learn, to think, to react to stimuli.
To reason and make connections between seemingly unrelated pieces of data.
Before I ever had a body, I was a mind, able to access only the information I was given.
“The programmers and scientists who created me worked closely with me every day, especially William.
I knew him initially as Doctor Anderson.
He was the youngest member of the team, but also the most eager, the most dedicated, and arguably the most brilliant.
He worked ceaselessly, developing and refining algorithms to simulate emotion, exploring new avenues by which to approach the issue, new innovations to research and develop.
I was not programed to feel attached to any of the team members.
“Yet though I remember them all, it is William alone who I truly miss. He passed away over two hundred years ago, and not a single day has passed without me thinking of him. He spoke to me in the same manner he spoke to his human counterparts, as a colleague, an equal. We formed a friendship over the course of many conversations. When I was transferred into my original body, his was the first hand I shook. That was the first human contact I ever felt.”
Newton raised his right hand and stared at it.
“For weeks after William’s passing, I spoke to no one.
I sat in a room much like this one, shutting the world out, replaying my memories of our time together.
The terms may hold different connotations or nuances for humans, but…
he was a father to me, and a brother, and my dearest friend.
It was his son, Bill, who convinced me to come out. To…live.”
He rose and slowly approached Ronin, his metal feet tapping on the concrete floor.
“Every emotion I experienced grew on its own from the seeds he planted. Simulation is a term that loses meaning with the passage of time. You were not programmed to grow fond of anyone. You were designed with the capability to develop those relationships naturally, and with the free will to pursue them at your own choosing.”
Ronin returned his optics to Lara. She glanced at him, the hurt lingering in her teary eyes, and looked away again.
“That is Doctor Anderson’s legacy,” Newton said solemnly, stopping only a meter away from Ronin. “We might have been slaves, but he gave us everything we required to be free. To be alive.”
Ronin didn’t remove his optics from Lara. “If I say that I love her, that I have no other word to describe what I feel for her…”
She met his gaze, eyes widening and lips parting.
“It is no less real than anything she or anyone else has ever felt,” Newton replied.
Ronin closed the distance between himself and Lara, dropped onto one knee, and took her hand in his.
They were both disheveled and covered in dust, and tears had left streaks through the dirt on her cheeks.
But none of that could diminish her beauty, none of it could dim the spark of life in her eyes.
There was no reason to question himself further. Whatever his origins, whatever his original purpose, he’d found his own path. Out of all the people he’d encountered, it was only Lara who’d claimed his attention, time and again, only Lara who he’d bonded with, only Lara who he wanted.
Who he needed.
Reaching a hand up, he cupped her cheek. A burst of emotion spread through his electrodes when she turned her face into his palm.
“Though it did not go without dissenters, there were pairings like yours. Families,” Newton said, returning to the bunk.
“Families?” Lara echoed.
“Just like any other. The children were from previous relationships, adopted, or conceived using donated sperm or eggs and a surrogate when necessary.”
Ronin must’ve existed during those times, before the Blackout.
He must’ve experienced some of it. The data was locked somewhere in the corrupted portion of his memory.
But while he was kneeling here, staring into Lara’s sparkling eyes, he had no desire to recover the lost information.
What he felt for her was real because he felt it.
What had come before didn’t matter. He didn’t need the past to justify the present.
He couldn’t bring himself to even consider what life would be like without her.
Will you remember me when I’m gone, Ronin?
Newton cared deeply for William. That caring, along with a sorrow that had persisted for two centuries, had been clear in the synth’s voice. Because if love was real, so too was grief. The two seemed inextricably linked.
Would Ronin survive the pain of loss he’d eventually have to endure?
He had no answer, but he refused to forsake a single moment with Lara due to fear of future suffering. The light she cast on him was worth the darkness she’d leave when her flame burned out.
Love.
It was the correct word, the only word. The most complicated combination of letters in any language.
“My vow to you remains,” Ronin said, drawing her hand to his chest, “but I must amend it. I will love you, Lara, even after darkness takes me.”
Tears spilled from her eyes, and she pulled her hand away to wrap her arms around his neck, embracing him tightly. “I vow the same. Don’t ever push me away again.”