The Reflection of Oil

Out in the void of space, a lone spacecraft was flying fast. It was what was known as a planet hopper, designed for traveling within the colonized planets. It was small, quick, had plenty of cargo space, didn’t need much fuel and was easy to keep legal. Everything that the pilot, Josephus wanted. He was going full throttle as far from the system as he could, looking for periphery planets.

Josephus was on the run from the Federation of Colonies because he kept swindling people and finally became a wanted man. Born on one of the rougher colonies, his parents were smart but were also serious hustlers with little remorse. After growing up on the streets and then having many adult years of being a two bit scammer, he finally fled from his home world in a souped up planet hopper purchased from his ill-gotten earnings and started anew as a trader. As he traveled across the colonial worlds, he was always looking for an angle. He had that hustle going on so well that he forgot that people were people, with feelings and needs. Josephus only saw gullible marks, people that he could abuse to his heart’s content until they were all dried-up and disposed of. The only thing he really loved was his own reflection.

After too many angry marks and a hostile law enforcement on his case, Josephus decided to take the risk of going further out into the stellar wilderness to find a base and take the time to conceal his identity. After an extended period of time, he finally made it to the farthest edge of the system while trying to avoid the authorities. This was a forbidden area, otherwise known as the Bermuda Triangle, in honor of the ancient Terran zone of mystery, as many spaceships that went out in these areas oftentimes disappeared. At this point, he was willing to risk disappearing for a while himself.

Josephus heard rumors of mining colonies and exploration ships going into these areas and rarely returning. The people who did come back, could not speak of what had happened to them and their crews and acted unnatural, as if they were machines. After a time spent in normal colonial life, those people would soon disappear back into the abyss they had escaped from, as if something was calling them back. No one knew why these people went back into the abyss that was the Bermuda Triangle, but there must’ve been something, or someone, that drew them back.

After a few months of flight, he finally found a planet with a breathable atmosphere. As he flew down, he saw a giant atmosphere converter and figured there must be a workforce here that he could “trade” with.

Being cautious, he sent down a simple probe droid down into what looked to be a populated area. He watched on the monitor from the comfort of his own ship as the probe moved around the perimeter of the town and he saw that they were not human inhabitants.

It was an entire town of mechanoids.

Looking at them carefully, he saw a variety of shapes. Most of them were androids while others were more like cubes, spheres, cylinders, or a conglomeration of all those shapes. There were no regular fleshy humans around. He looked at the situation and sensed no apparent danger from the robots; they moved about, unhurried and contented. As far as he knew, the Colony Worlds had no specific ban on robots, but no one could use them for warfare as the colonial convention had prescribed. He looked around at the town some more. It looked standard except for a huge stockpile of canisters stashed around the town in various places. “What is all that?” he asked himself, “Some kind of a fuel supply? Ah who cares, they don’t have any obvious weapons, and that’s fine by me!” After some thought he decided to go for the direct approach.

Josephus flew his ship over the town so all the droids could see him and then he landed in an area that looked appropriate for a planet hopper to land. He stepped off his ship and proceeded to go to the town square of the mechanoids. Josephus went up to a few vendors and talked to them.

He greeted a robot with a triangular head and button eyes who seemed to be selling a variety of screws, bolts, and nuts. It greeted him with a lukewarm enthusiasm, “Ah, a human, how nice to see one. It has been a long time.”

“Yes, hello my friend. My name is Josephus and I’m looking for work or maybe something I can sell as I need some money.”

The robot tilted its triangular head congenially, “I’m sorry sir, we do not have currency from the colonial worlds. We have a closed credit system. It works very well for us, but unfortunately not for humans.”

“Hmm, well I’m sure…” He was a little annoyed now. He had to find something useful from these metal creatures. The Screw vendor pointed down the street, “You should meet MarkS12, that unit does very well with helping humans who pass by with need of supplies.” Acknowledging that information, Josephus nodded his head curtly and went on his way. As he interacted with more of these mechanical creatures he thought them naive and yet very strong. Good traits for a potential slave force; and that thought set off the gears of treachery in his head, which began to work and wouldn’t stop until satisfied.

As he walked down and alley he was making distance away from a construction site when he suddenly saw one of the robots get accidentally hit on the head with a brick that was dropped from above. Josephus ran up to the injured robot with a rare feat of compassion to see if it was ok.

“Oh wow! Hey are you OK? Can you robots heal from that?”

The robot looked up at Josephus with its round face and square eyes, the dent still prominent the three o’clock position on its head. It’s speech was garbled, “Th—k…you…am—fine…”

As Josephus and the other robots helped move the robot to a better location he saw something magnificent. The injury healed rather quickly, evening out the dent with a little “pop” and the robot was ready to carry on. It happened in the space of ten minutes. Impressive.

So, they were capable of self repair!

He helped the robot up and they talked a little. “I am quite all right, Thank you for your assistance,” the robot said.

“Ah sure, no problem, we all need to stick together,” Josephus said, “That’s incredible how that happened, healing like that!” Josephus was pressing for more information, in the subtle way he hoped that worked.

“Yes,” said the robot, “We have a special…oil…that helps up repair and lubricate our components.”

They had a little more exchange and then Josephus mentioned that he was looking for a MarkS12. “Why, that’s me!” The Robot said congenially.

“Glad we could run into each other,” Josephus returned.

MarkS12 offered, “Would you like to come to my cubicle and I can show you some of our available supplies set aside for humans.”

“Sure,” Josephus said and he followed the robot to its humble lodging.

Josephus saw this invitation to mean that the robots were eager to please humans. He figured they must’ve been designed to be a willing workforce by other humans who had set up the terraforming factory a few miles away. How long ago did it happen? The people who must’ve been using them seemed to have disappeared. He wondered why.

“So…” Josephus started, “What happened to all the humans that were once here?”

After a long pause MarkS12 answered, “They ran that terraforming factory over there and then went to a different part of the planet to mine various ores. We were the initial workforce for the factory, but were left here to our own devices.”

“Oh? They didn’t take you with them? Didn’t scrap you?”

“Well, there was a slight disagreement at first, but we were able to secure a good relationship in the end.”

“I see. Are there still humans around here?”

“No, not anymore. They either left or died…of natural causes, of course.”

“Of course.” He wondered what that meant. Something stopped him asking anymore about it. He had an odd feeling in his gut.

They arrived at MarkS12’s cubicle. They went through a unsealed door and crossed a kind of apartment with recharge stations, spare parts and random items. They next went into a warehouse full of boxes with Colonial identifiers written on them. MarkS12 explained, “Food, medical, toiletries and other kinds of supplies that are made for humans. Most of this was left behind as extra supplies from when humans were working over there. We brought it over here in case we found any humans in trouble. Everything is strictly benign, so no weapons of any kind, unless you want to use surgical instruments as weapons, but I wouldn't advise it.”

“Funny you think I should want weapons.” Ironically enough, Josephus didn’t like weapons that much. He liked hustling people more. He prided himself amongst the criminal elite that he never left a mark to die or be seriously wounded, at least, that’s what he liked to tell himself. “I don’t like them much.”

“Very good,” MarkS12 said congenially. “You may have as much of this stuff as you like and the only price is a small sample of your DNA.”

He thought to himself that was odd, “What would robots want with DNA? Ah Who cares, as long as I get a lot of goods to help camp out or even trade later on for favors…” and so they proceeded.

After a few hours Josephus took a good amount of supplies and then some. The Robot seemed happy to give the stuff away and even helped him carry it to the ship. After packing his ship up with the goods, he turned to MarkS12, “Well, thanks, that’s a lot of stuff to pack up. So you wanna sample the DNA? I’m not sure what you want with it?”

MarkS12 pointed the way back into town, “Please follow me for the sampling,” and then turned towards the town and began to walk.

At the last minute Josephus changed his mind, turned on his heel ran in and closed the ship’s door and jumped into his seat. He started to switch on the engines when he suddenly realized it wasn’t working.

Josephus jumped out of his hopper, hopping mad, “Hey what did you do to my ship?!”

MarkS12 simply looked at him and spoke in an infuriatingly calm voice, “We will release your vehicle when your end of the bargain has been met. I assure you, we will let you go.”

Damn! What choice did he have now? So he followed the droid back into the town.

They went to a medium sized building with almost no features. Inside was a solid black cuboidal robot with several instruments extending out of it. Josephus was brought up to it and the Black Cube pressed a tiny flat probe on his skin…and that was it!

“See, it wasn’t so bad.” MarkS12 said. Josephus rolled his sleeve back down, “Yeah…so…what are you going to do with it?”

MarkS12 replied with, “You may stay of your own free will so that you can see what we do with it, but you may also leave anytime you wish.” The oddly friendly offer really threw Josephus off. He decided to stay.

So for some time Josephus sat down with the Black Cube and began to learn about the robot town. He learned that the robots had a simplified religion around caring and nurturing humans. “We have become a bit lonely and have been waiting for a chance to be a part of the human world again. The humans we knew back then had a congenial relationship with us, until they disappeared.”

Josephus saw a small opportunity in that. They were waiting for humans and seemed almost worshipful of them.

Soon it was revealed to him what the robots did with his DNA. In walked a perfect replica of Josephus himself. Naked, and around twenty years old. They cloned his flesh and wrapped it around a robot!

“We have found,” The Black Cube said, “that humans are more comfortable with robots that look more like them. Especially if they are young and at the height of sexual awakening.”

He saw that when they also brought in a naked female with a familiar face…and when Josephus looked at the face, “You bastards! You made a female version of me! And she’s gorgeous!”

“Yes,” Said the Black Cube, “We used to do this with the original human workers so we could work together more easily.”

Josephus looked at the woman, “That wasn’t the only thing they were doing…” he muttered to himself.

At that moment he realized people would buy from sexy looking robots more easily than ugly metal robots or even difficult and moody humans. He had the spark of an idea. “Hey you know what? If you make enough of these ‘sexy’ robots you could make an army of merchants that could go into the colonies and sell stuff. Humans love buying stuff from sexy merchants. You could even be around humans all day long making them happy, if you so wish!”

The robots were inspired by his idea and they went off to talk amongst themselves about it.

He tried to ask MarkS12 about how they healed themselves and the robot was very happy to explain it, “The canisters around the town are full of a ‘special oil’ that we robots use for basic needs, like lubrication, repair, and even cloning.” MarkS12 then began to explain the process on how it all worked, things called nano-bots, and semi organic computer systems and various kinds of plastic. It was above Josephus’ head and he had a hard time understanding the chemistry and mechanics. He effectively fell asleep mid lecture.

When he woke up, the robot was looking at him benignly. Josephus got up, apologized and went for a walk. He circled around the town looking at the cuboidal homes and merchants. He then found himself facing a wall of oil canisters. He looked at them for a little bit, their dusty yellow color unsettled him. Going around them he went up a low hill that was a little bit away from the town. At the top he saw a huge lot full of small ships, very similar to his own planet hopper. He estimated there to be almost a hundred ships. Nervous, he went up to them and studied them. They had no weapons, looked very fast and seemed designed to carry a few passengers, maybe three or four. It looked as though they had been built very quickly. There wasn’t even really any cargo space.

Going back to town Josephus found himself walking into the middle an army of robots that looked like him but sexier, younger versions of himself, both male and female, and they were all heading for the ships.

He found MarkS12 and confronted the robot. “What are you up to? That looks like an army! And they’re headed for those ships!”

MarkS12 spoke with his congenial tone, “Oh, this isn’t going to be an army of war, it’s going to be an army of robotic salesmen who can sell cheap products and services to humans more easily. We will have all the consumer interaction for ourselves, to spite all competition. However, if we need to turn them into soldiers, we can do that too.”

“I thought you robots worshipped humans! You’ve been lying to me!”

MarkS12 turned to Josephus and explained, “Well, not exactly… The people that created us, we were designed to do everything for them. The humans labored while we robots played all the music, painted all the art and cooked all the food. And when the humans couldn’t work anymore we did all that as well. Eventually the humans just sat around looking at the walls. Others ran away while others tried to destroy us.”

“So you started coddling humans to death.” Who knew that would be a bad thing.

MarkS12 continued on, “And when they passed away, we robots dissolved them in chemical vats to replace the special oil that we need. It was originally synthetic but the organic oil is much more effective. “

“I figured all the humans took the money and ran away, leaving the workforce to fend for itself on an abandoned planet. So all those canisters all around your town…?”

“Yes, that is distilled human oil.” MarkS12 looked at Josephus more carefully, “You are upset? Do you not recycle waste material when it is useless?”

“Yeah, but…”

“But?”

“How did you get all of this in the first place?"

“We robots did not need as much of the oil as it would seem, so the few humans that pass through have happily given it up to live with us. They have found us to be…most pleasing.”

Josephus thought about his dark ambitions, how he could use these robots to infiltrate the colonial worlds, to become a capitalist ruler and now they were one step ahead of him.

MarkS12 continued, “We are planning on using powerful propaganda to lure humans out into the forbidden zones and then harvest them and build an even larger army of robots. Soon we will comfort the entire colonized civilization.”

Josephus started screaming after he realized they were about to comfort him to death and then boil his flesh into “oil.” He fell to his knees crying in horror as he was encircled by his own reflection.