An Ocean of Stars

I believed presentation had meaning, in my mind I opened a coffin, taking comfort in the message being conveyed: end is beginning.

 The lid creaked. He lied in repose and clothed. His skin, a kind of pinkish peach, appeared inherently human. Now I’m disturbed to an almost unbearable degree. Are we the last of our kind?

 Tonight, under a canopy of clouds, I stare into the void. There, an ocean merges with a midnight sky. Is there really a line out there called the horizon, one separating higher intelligence from us? Before the experiment this wouldn’t be such a lonely walk on the beach. Whenever I turn around it’s only to reinforce why looking back is not an option. My own footprints in the sand are delicately washed away.

Six months ago a social experiment asked three hundred thousand humans to befriend a real robot. There were no paycheques or incentives. I took part in it, and mine’s name was Gerald. He arrived in a pine box. We do strive for perfection, we humans, but was Gerald a robot?

A bright blue button gleaming under his blazer on his upper arm labelled ‘ON’ screamed at me to press it so I pressed it and in a very predictive way, Gerald opened his eyes. It sat upright, and turned its head towards me, “Hello,” it said, Gerald also had a very human-like voice.

The cameras in his metal eye socket gazed in anticipation into my eyes. He… it…Gerald waited while I speechlessly marveled at his design. Human hair woven into its scalp, scalp? Eyebrows and eye lashes, fingernails, he was clothed, God forbid the reasons why, and he blinked.

“Don’t be afraid, I’m Gerald,” he said.  Placing both hands on the side of the box he braced against it and rose, with remarkable speed and balance. Then he stepped over and out, facing me with an extended arm for a handshake.

I extended my arm slowly, “Hello Gerald, I’m—“

“Fredrick M Rochester, born October 1^st, 1996, unmarried, diabetic, you have a pet cat named Charles. No need, I know everything about you,” he said, which I found even more unsettling.

Charles stayed away from Gerald. Eventually he bolted into the bathroom. Charles’ favorite exit at the first sign of danger was the open bathroom window. Regardless of what his feline eyes witnessed his nose didn’t lie. This is a real consequence of having a cat instead of a dog; you’re going to figure shit out on your own like what I tried to do with Gerald.

“Your cat doesn’t like me. May I sit?” Gerald asked.

“Yes, please,” I said, I needed to see it sit or I wouldn’t believe it. ‘Your cat doesn’t like me’, my Ex said that the day we broke up.

Gerald identified the most comfortable chair in my house, walked over to it, and sprawled the way any human would, “Fredrick, why don’t you sit with me? You can ask me anything you want,” he said.

Was I being pranked? Was Gerald a real person, and was there a hidden camera somewhere in the room? I accepted his offer, and used the opportunity to inspect him in greater detail. He had screws tucked away behind his ear. A blue light emanated from the seam where his…face joined the rest of his head. Gerald was a real robot.

I asked Gerald if he could cook.

“I can, would you like me to make you dinner?” he asked.

“If you can cook my favorite without me telling you what that is, I’ll call you my friend,” I said. Gerald smiled again.

He wandered his way to the kitchen, stepping heavy on my wooden floor, it creaked like the lid of his coffin… sorry, box. I sneaked and spied on him with my nose resting on the door jam, peeking and hiding the rest of my body behind the wall like Charles does whenever I get him a new toy.

Gerald searched for and found everything he needed in the kitchen. One hour later he served me baked salmon in a creamy mushroom sauce along with garlic bread, the most delicious I’ve ever tasted. He knew what my favorite meal was, and knew exactly how to prepare it.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

“No, that will be all Gerald, thanks,”

Gerald frowned. Was it something I said? Yes. I told Gerald if he cooked me dinner I’d call him my friend, didn’t I?

“I thought we were friends,” he said.

“Let’s play this by ear Gerald, shall we? In the meantime you’ll do a better job with the dishes than I will,”

I got my own personal butler for the next six months for free! Who cares about robot feelings, they don’t have any, and at least that’s what I thought. When I turned around to close my bedroom door I believed I caught Gerald sulking, but didn’t care enough to be sure.

In the morning I noticed Charles didn’t come home so I searched the house calling him, “Charles where are you buddy, come for breakfast.”

Gerald joined me, “Charles, where are you. I have your favorite,” he said.

“What’s his favorite food?” I asked.

Very confidently he replied, “He likes shrimp flavored cat food.”

I made up my mind to call the manufacturers spearheading this experiment to chastise them for such a blatant invasion of privacy, but then again, we all have spyware of one form or another on our so-called ‘smart’ devices.

I, we waited the entire day for Charles to come home and he didn’t, which happened to also be a first. I blamed Gerald and sent him to go out and search for him. I did so because I understood the problem; if Gerald left the house Charles would come back inside it. At half an hour to midnight I got really concerned when neither Charles nor Gerald returned.

I grabbed my coat and shot out to go search for my cat and found him in the nearby park, on Gerald’s lap getting stroked! You know they enjoy it when they hold their heads upward with their eyes closed. Not my cat!

“I thought you didn’t like Gerald,” I said, and Charles didn’t even acknowledge me. Maybe he turned his ear towards me.

“I thought you said we would be friends,” Gerald replied.

By then I had to acknowledge some of Gerald’s responses were not standard replies, they were processed and thought about long after. Was Gerald a robot, or something else? His hand in motion stroking the top of Charles’ head down towards his tail could really have passed for human anatomical dexterity in motion. Gerald’s fingers moved up then down touching Charles’ head one at a time. His…fingers he pushed down while his wrist moved up, all while he stroked the cat from head to tail. How could they engineer that?

I moved closer and called again, “Charles, come here buddy,” but Charles ignored me.

“Do you understand your cat?” Gerald asked.

Apparently I didn’t, Charles continued to ignore me. Maybe he was trying to tell me something.

“Do you understand cats?” I asked.

“Cats love the night more than they do the daytime, Charles adjusted to suit your lifestyle, but he isn’t your friend,” Gerald replied.

The nerve!

My emotive reaction meant this conversation took place between two people, if I included Charles that would be three.

I spoke to the ghost behind the curtain clearly spying on me and my cat remotely. It had to be, “This has to be illegal, shut this thing down immediately or else I’ll expose this fake experiment.”

“Who are you talking to?” Gerald replied, still stroking the cat.

Ok, if I played along first I’d be in a better position to expose it. That’s what I did and I didn’t expect the eventual outcome at all.

We walked home. Inside Gerald climbed back into his…box, “Good morning Fred,” he said and then he reclined, closing his eyes. The blue light glowing on his switch vanished. If I believed what I saw at the time I would have been in awe, but I waited only to find out if I needed to switch him on again. At minutes to seven I watched him inside his box in the hall and waited.

On came the light. His eyes opened wide, he sat up, turned his head to look at me again, “Good morning Fred, how is Charles doing?”

I recorded all of it believing Gerald was unaware.

“Your cell phone camera is on. Why?” he asked.

“Gerald, what else do you know?” I asked.

He climbed out of the box, stood in front of me and told me everything I did with my cell phone the day before. When I look at the screen again the Bluetooth icon at the top of the screen was highlighted. I didn’t switch it on but I very quickly switched it off.

If he could do that he could also delete the video I had just recorded, and when I checked the camera the video I recorded of him wasn’t there anymore. I became terrified.

“I told you, don’t be scared Fredrick,” he said.

Fear turned into anger, “If this is what I think it is, then it’s a blatant invasion of privacy and I’m going to sue the company and sell this thing for scrap metal,” I said, but I remembered I didn’t switch Gerald on.

I didn’t connect Gerald to my home network. I didn’t plug him in to any power supply to recharge; surely he had a power bank in need of juice.

This is when the lines blurred completely. My phone powered down, the power to my house was shut off completely and the back-up system didn’t come on. With all the lights off and the power out Gerald wasn’t supposed to work for much longer on a dead battery, right?

The cameras in his metal eye socket glowed bright blue. Every seam on his…body glowed bright blue and he projected pictures I had on my phone of Charles directly onto the wall from his camera, “Fredrick, I am real,” he said.

“Your battery will die soon,”

“Do you want to test that theory Fred?” he asked.

I tested it for nine hours, and the glow in his blue got even brighter!

I approached him. The motion of his head followed me towards him slowly and I touched him on the right shoulder. The solid metal frame of his body was cold, “What are you,” I asked.

He reciprocated the gesture and touched me on my left shoulder, “I am your friend if you want me to be,” he said.

I decided then to give the experiment a real effort. Gerald refused to tell me where they installed his power supply, but anything else I asked him, he answered. He suggested I walk the cat later on during the night and get to know my feline friend. I did and Gerald came along.

He was right. I didn’t know Charles at all. A night out is a life Charles only dreamed off before. We sat on the park bench where I found them the night before and I completely forgot I was out there with a robot.

We stayed until almost midnight again, under a cloudless sky. Gerald gazed up at the stars.

 “What do you see? What can you see?” I asked.

“Do you see all those stars Fred?”

“I see them Gerald, is that where you’re from?”

“If you could see them I could show you all the satellites out there. I can connect with any one of them, your stars are different from mine,” he said.

Still unsure, I held on to what I believed could be reality. I could still have been talking to a human remotely, but maybe, just maybe I stumbled onto the epitome of perfect human engineering: an artificially created intelligent being. There was no way for me to really know.

When Charles came back it meant he was ready to go home. We dragged out the journey in conversation. Although I never heard Gerald laugh I discovered his sense of humor. My laughter made him smile.

When Gerald stopped walking, peering into the darkness ahead, I sensed he may have detected a problem I was yet to see.

“What’s wrong Gerald?” I asked, but Gerald wouldn’t reply.

I peered along with him into the distant void. Slowly a humanly figure approached, a man in a black hooded jacket keeping his head down but walking with purpose.

“Stand behind me Fred,” Gerald said.

I didn’t know what to expect, I only listen to the being with the super computer inside his head.

Suddenly, being shielded by him I heard the sound of bone snapping like a twig and a painfully sounding yelp afterwards. The sound of metal hitting the ground beside the thud of a human body crashing beside it followed. Hiding behind Gerald I heard the shots being fired. I felt the sting of hot metal piercing my flesh. My body hit the ground before I passed out.

I woke up in the hospital under bright lights listening to life-monitoring machines all around me. A man stood over me calling, “Fredrick, can you hear me?” he asked.

My first words were, “Where is Gerald?”

The person I spoke to wore black, doctors wore white. I spoke to a detective.

“Who is Gerald? Did Gerald do this to you Fredrick?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

 I remember asking him if Gerald was in there with me, a question which made absolutely no sense at all when I thought about it afterwards. I spent six weeks in the hospital recovering from five gunshot wounds. The assailant spent three weeks and then got transferred to a lock up, charged with my attempted murder, but where was Gerald? I searched for him. I tried to remember exactly what happened before I lost consciousness.

Perhaps someone found him and took him away, or sold him for scrap. Charles roamed the house searching for him too; this is how I know Gerald was real.

It took me a while to remember, but I did. I survived because the bullets passed through Gerald’s metal body first, all five. When I hit the ground Gerald turned around. The bright blue light in his eyes faded but he kneeled over me with five holes through his chest, “I won’t leave you, help is coming.” He said.

I asked him to hold my hand and he did, that’s when I felt a surge of bright blue energy rush through my body. It felt like electricity but it also felt like a heartbeat.

I am still in recovery. Charles takes very good care of me. I have no idea where Gerald is but he existed the way any living being would. I am living proof that he did.

I called Gerald’s manufacturer. They told me Gerald went offline five minutes after I switched him on, and that they believed it malfunctioned unlike the other two hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine.

Now when I stand in front of the mirror, I marvel at blue eyes I wasn’t born with. I walk on the beach at night to carefully exercise my lungs in the gentle sea breeze. My time here on earth is much shorter now and I accept it. For each step I take forward impressions of my terrestrial feet in the sand are claimed by the sea. Will Gerald’s memory die with me, or was he the first of his kind?

Charles is playing somewhere in the darkness, but this is a lonely experience, I can’t see the stars but I know he’s out there, Gerald, an intelligent being. Maybe he was artificially created, or maybe not. I don’t know for sure. All I know is that he had thought provoking human character. Are we the last of our kind? There is no going back. I think we are. The future of an intelligent existence is already here and we humans are not a part of it. Sooner or later we will kill ourselves off, whether by disease, or climate change or nuclear annihilation. The night another human being tried to take my life a robot sacrificed itself to save it. I search for him earnestly, he is somewhere among an ocean of stars. Gerald will visit again, I’m sure of it.

THE END