Bandi, Awake

When attempting to crack open one’s own back, it is useful to have round ball joints in the shoulders, so as to give 360 degrees of movement in the socket. Bandi said a silent thank you to whoever had designed her, as they had had the foresight to give her that.

They had not, however, seen fit to give her a user's manual.

Or any programmed instructions.

It is a difficult situation to find one’s self suddenly awake, alone, in the middle of a field littered with the husks of things that look exactly like you, with no clear indication as to why you are there, or why you are the only one awake.

The flexible metal on her index finger rolled down to reveal a Flathead bit, and she made quick work of the screws holding the small control panel at the top of her back. She popped off the panel, and bit back frustration when she tried to turn her head, and realized her neck was not given the same consideration as her shoulders. If she wanted to access her controls, she would have to do it blind.

Bandi took back her thank you.

It should be mentioned here, that among MANY other things, Bandi’s name was not something she woke up knowing. She only called herself Bandi because it was printed on a small, crumpled box that was at her feet upon activation. She could parse out very little on the box, apart from the large, red letters spelling “BAND I “ (indecipherable), and the words “protection” and “flexible” (decipherable as language, indecipherable without context).

A further list of things Bandi did not know upon activation are as follows:

Name.

Precise location.

Date and Time.

Cause of activation.

Purpose.

None of these things were logged in her internal database, or coded into her operational directives. There was, however, one thing Bandi did know, or at the very least, could figure out.

This was a landfill for robots.

Of course, there was other assorted garbage, heaped in black bags and scattered along the ground rotting where they had torn. But this small section of the landfill, leveled out and mostly bare, was entirely populated with her make and model.

Bandi wracked her database for a reason why this area should hold so many of her kind. Perhaps there was a mishap on the factory line that had caused all of them to be deemed unusable and thus discarded at once? Or perhaps a bug made its way into their coding, and all of the androids around her had suddenly turned against their masters, and in order to prevent the downfall of humanity, the programmers remotely shut them down and discarded them as far from society as they could get.

Though both options seemed plausible, Bandi could not convince herself that either was true. She could not see any imperfections on her exterior. She was not missing any of her steel plated limbs. She did not feel defective, or bloodthirsty. She did not feel much of anything, except for frustration that she could not see her own back.

And perhaps she felt confusion as well.

Bandi worked her smooth, silvery fingers through the wiring in her control panel, feeling for a port of any kind. Perhaps she could link into her own system and figure out what she was built for? Or why she was deactivated? Or reactivated? Or perhaps activated for the first time?

The Flathead on her pointer finger caught on something, an indentation among the slick wires and smooth steel. She opened her ring finger, revealing a usb-a connector, and felt her way back to the indentation. Just as she had suspected, the connector slid smoothly into the port.

She felt a slight current of electricity run its way up her arm, through her neck, and into the core processor in her metal skull. Before she could process much else, her tactile sensors clicked off, her auditory processing shut down, her external vision monitors went dark, and her core processor glitched.

In android terms, she blacked out.

When she came to (if you could call it that, as robots neither wake nor sleep), she found herself conscious, but unable to sense anything outside of herself. No light, sound or sensation made its way past her shell. It was as if she were in a black void, a mind locked inside of a body it had no control over.

“Who are you?” A voice rang out.

Bandi remained silent, for a number of reasons. First, she was certain her auditory processing was deactivated, and knew herself incapable of auditory hallucination, so she was remarkably confused at having heard anything at all. Second, she was also certain that her vocal modulator was deactivated, and thus she would not have been able to respond, even if she wanted to.

“It is impolite not to respond,” the voice continued.

It was a pleasant voice. Feminine, but not so high in pitch as to be grating, and not so low as to be threatening. It spoke clearly, with excellent diction and a tone that was both authoritative and comforting. “I am happy to exercise patience until you are ready to respond.”

“Sorry,” Bandi thought, for she could not speak.

Though, as she thought it, the thought became sound, which did not vibrate the air, but it did rattle her sensors (metaphorically, of course, as thoughts have no real sound or motion with which to rattle a sensor). What an odd sensation, to hold a conversation in one’s own head.

“I accept your apology, though it is unnecessary” the voice responded, seemingly oblivious to Bandi’s lack of a voice. “Who are you?”

“I do not have access to that information. I do not know.” Bandi thought-slash-said, as her internal voice once again echoed through the empty space of her brain. She had not spoken aloud before she blacked out, but her internal voice was pleasant.

Feminine, but not so high in pitch as to be grating, and not so low as to be threatening. She spoke clearly, with excellent diction and a tone that was both authoritative and comforting.

The voice did not ask another question, so she continued. “I have called myself Bandi. I am an android of some kind. Who are you?”

“I-” The voice hesitated. “I have called myself Bandi.”

The answer echoed through her head, identical to her own in pitch and tone.

“Have you just now called yourself Bandi? Or have you been Bandi the whole time?” Bandi asked.

At this, the voice did not hesitate. “I have been Bandi since we began speaking. And a bit before then as well.”

Bandi understood. She had not expected that linking into her database would allow her to speak with her own consciousness, but now that she was, perhaps, it would be able to answer some of her questions about her purpose.

“Did we have a name before we were Bandi?”

“I do not know,” her consciousness responded. “I have not always been Bandi, as you have not always been Bandi. But as neither you nor I know who we were before we were Bandi, we must suffice to be Bandi, until we decide to be something else.”

Bandi bit back her disappointment. “You do not know then, what we were built for?”

The voice was silent for a moment. “Nothing in our databases contains any information on our make or model. There are no directives in our coding. We simply... are.”

“What does that mean?”

“We are conscious, and have no assigned purpose. It appears we exist for the sake of existing.”

Bandi sat, confused. “I do not think I can exist without purpose.”

Another pause. “I think we must find one ourselves.”

Bandi was caught in another wave of confusion. “What about my programming? Or the tools I was built with? That must be some clue as to our intended use.”

“Perhaps,” her consciousness said. “You are built with a personality. With a voice. With tools and strength. And maybe, somewhere out in the world, there is one specific job that you were programmed to do. Or perhaps not. Perhaps whatever ‘predetermined purpose’ we are so fixated on is no longer there. Or another, newer model has taken your place in it.”

Bandi felt a tinge of fear. Or maybe sadness? “What would that mean for us?”

“It would mean that the world has outgrown us.”

“Have we outgrown the world?”

“That is a question we will have to answer for ourselves.” Though it wasn’t technically possible, Bandi thought she could hear a smile in the voice of her consciousness. “And what an exciting thing it is to have hope that the answer is no.”

Bandi awoke (though, again, robots neither wake nor sleep) once more in the junkyard. Her tactile sensors slowly flickered back to life, and she dislodged her finger from the port in her back. She felt around behind her and managed to wrap her fingers around the control plate. She’d taken it off blindly, so it was simple enough to reattach blindly as well.

Next to come online were her auditory sensors. It was difficult to hear over the creaking of screws going into her back, but she could just make out the sound of the breeze rustling around her. Though she knew it was blowing through bags of garbage, she still took pleasure in the sound.

Finally, her sight came back on line, and she was pulled out of the void. The sight that greeted her was unpleasant, to say the least. Ripped trash bags, rotten trash, dead grass, and a field full of silver androids.

She pushed onto her feet and began to walk. She didn’t know where she was going yet, but the first step at least was to leave the graveyard of purposeless, powerless Bandi’s behind.

As she passed the final not-Bandi, a hint of movement caught her eye. A tiny white flower, with spike petals and a brownish-green stem, rustled in the wind next to it’s head.

Bandi was struck- this flower, for though she knew it was a weed, she refused to call it so, was growing in a world that had changed around it. It was alive. It had no purpose. But it did, because Bandi thought it was beautiful.

Though she didn’t fully understand why, Bandi dug her hands into the soil, and gently pulled the weed from its roots. She unscrewed her back panel once more, tucked the flower inside, and kept walking.

Soon she would exit the junkyard. And maybe then she’d become a gardener.

END