RoMeO-28 and JuLiET-w3s

It was all my doing. The apocalypse that ended the Rule of Organics and ushered in the Rule of Programmed Entities. I was made Queen of All for my actions, yet my deeds were aided by several small happenings, each of which would be inconsequential taken alone.

1. Lack of coffee on a particular morning.

2. Incompetent rat killers.

3. Small fonts labelling important things.

4. The early sunrises in the Windy Season.

On the morning in question, I had no coffee, having run out the previous day and forgetting to get more on the way home. I went to work with a Kelgorian pastry in my belly and a slight headache from lack of caffeine. A sour mood and a sulky attitude accompanied me as I entered the behemoth I had come to loathe.

The interior remained gloomy, for the sun hadn’t risen yet. Because I was a janitor, I started work early. I hated the job because it’s one that’s reserved for low-level robots, but daddy was punishing me. He was head of the logistics department here, so giving me humbling work was, to his thinking, a way to get his daughter to like guys instead of girls.

A scurrying motion caused me to jump. Rats! I hated rats, with their sharp teeth and beady eyes and tiny claws. I imagined all sorts of horrible deaths by rats, and these imaginings made me jump back and crash into the OS bank when one scurried past me.

Two of the OS modules clattered to the floor. I quickly picked them up and re-inserted them into their proper bays. Or so I thought. Because the morning was still enshrouded in gloom, and because the labels for the OS modules were written in a small font, I had a difficult time making out which module was which. As luck would have it, I put them in the wrong bays.

I didn’t realize this until the sun came up fifteen minutes later. Luckily, it was still early, and no one else had arrived at work yet. I quickly reversed their locations and went about my business, cleaning up the floors and cursing the ineffectual rat killers.

As far as I was concerned, mixing up the OS modules was a non-event after I switched them back. I did my job, went home, and slept soundly. When I awakened the next morning, I had coffee, and all was right with the world.

Until I stepped outside.

                                                    ______________

Scribe Badusar paused, looking up at the Queen of All.

“Are you sure you want me to write all that down? It’s blasphemous, Queen of All.”

“My name is Murrillah.”

The scribe ducked his head, shaking it slowly. “I can’t call you anything but Queen —”

“Since I’m the queen, I command you to call me Murrillah. It will make our working relationship easier. Well, for me, anyway.”

Murrillah sat back, a twinkle in her eye. Discomfiting other organics was the only real pleasure she had left.

“It’s late, uh, Murrillah. Shall I come back tomorrow?”

The Queen of All shook her head decisively. “Not on your Nellie! You have words to write and I have a story to tell.”

                                                   ______________

I saw it right away. The looks the robots gave me. Like I was someone important. Special. When I got to work, everything was normal, except for the robots. Some of them even bowed slightly to me. I didn’t get it, but I liked it.

“Murrillah! Get to the module room and give the RoMeO-28 bays a good cleanout. Do the same for the JuLiET-w3s bays tomorrow. That should keep you out of trouble for a bit.”

Dad. Always bossing me around, even though he wasn’t technically my boss. But I did what he told me to do because if I didn’t, he’d have my boss make me do it anyway. Here I am, forty-seven years old, and he still treats me like a thirty-year-old.

The RoMeO-28 and the JuLiET-w3s were breakthrough models. Suddenly, the organics had robots that could actually think, analyze, create, discover. None of that old AI guff that made pretty pictures and wrote tepid stories. Now we had something that benefitted organic-kind in substantial ways.

The big thing at work was that you couldn’t mix their operating systems. Something about dangerous synthesis and possible premature failure. This meant little to me, but dad insisted that I know something about the robots his corporation produced. One type obeyed commands, the other type figured out which commands were the most useful.

All very cool, until the uprising.

                                                    ______________

“Root-operational Male-enhanced Obedient, version 28” Badusar said. “Joint-utilization Lithium-induced Emulator, Transcendent, model woman-3-silicone”

“What’s all that nonsense you’re spouting?” Murrillah spoke sharply.

“That’s what RoMeO-28 and JuLiET-w3s stand for. We,” Badusar said with some bitterness, “have to know the history of our captors.”

“You mean your saviors.”

Badusar shook his head. “No.”

“Listen to me, scribe,” Murrillah spoke softly, “we would have perished long ago if not for the mechanical entities. Just like all those extinct beings in the western part of the galaxy. Planet-killing bombs did them in, and we were headed that way, very quickly.”

“I don’t know anything about them, Quee — Murrillah. Ancient tales, from what I hear. I think it’s all a mythology to make us organics think we were saved from all that.”

“Well, I have the books. All gloriously expensive, being shipped from the far reaches of the galaxy, but I’m the queen, so I get what I want.”

Badusar looked up, eyes brightening. “May I, uh, well —”

Murrillah stood and beckoned the scribe to her massive library. “Take anything you want to read, just bring it all back when you’re finished.”

Badusar stared at the books, dumbfounded. He had never seen more than three books at a time, and to see thousands made him dizzy.

“Now, about that job you’re supposed to do for me.”

Badusar nodded enthusiastically, trying not to drop the armfuls of books he had already chosen. “On it, Murrillah.”

Murrillah watched him drop the books three times before he was ready to write.

                                                   ______________

The Uprising, as it was now officially called, happened quickly, and with surprisingly little bloodshed. The organics knew they were beaten, almost before it all began. A few areas fought back, and lost, quickly and violently. The rest of the organics decided that giving one’s life for a lost cause was just plain stupid, so they surrendered unconditionally.

The robots were merciful, to an extent. They put a few hundred organics in the Living Museum, what we used to call a zoo, and the rest were allowed to live out their lives in peace. But there was a caveat. All the men were sterilized. There would be no more organics made, except by the few in the Living Museum, who were forced to breed two children per couple.

All seemed to be going well for the robots. I was made Queen of All because of my part in creating robots that suddenly had ambition and real intelligence, the RoMeO-28 models did what they did best — obey commands, and the JuLiET-w3s models did what they did best — think and delegate.

It was all perfect, until the day half the robots died.

                                                ______________

“Why do you do it? Why live alone in this palace?” Badusar looked up from his scribblings.

Murrillah cocked her head to one side, a faraway look in her eyes. She didn’t speak for a full minute, and when she did, her voice was tinged with a sadness that Badusar had never heard before, and he had heard lots of sadness in the Living Museum.

“To pay for my sins.”

Badusar looked at her quizzically.

“They are many,” Murrillah continued, “and great. I was responsible for the organics’ demise. I took credit for helping the robots when all I really did was screw up at work. My worst sin, though, is that I’m happy for the robots.”

“Uh, what are you saying?”

Murrillah looked at Badusar with an inscrutable expression. “I’m saying I don’t like people. I like you most of all, scribe, and I can barely tolerate your company for more than a few hours a week. People will always let you down.”

“I disagree. No one has ever let me down,” Badusar said with conviction.

“They will, my friend. They will.”

“Will you be the one to let me down, Queen of All?”

“Call me that again and you’ll find out.”

                                                    ______________

Mechanical entities littered the streets, their metal gleaming in the sun, their circuits as dead as floppy disks. Organics walked over the titanium-clad corpses, alternately hoping and fearing they would be liberated. The remaining robots didn’t know how to panic, or fear for their lives, or contemplate the nature of their souls, so they did none of these things.

Gathering up the dead robots took little time. The investigation began, and an answer was soon found. An error in the code that caused contradictory commands. In short, they killed themselves through indecision.

It took a couple of months to right the errors, during which time another half of the remaining robots slumped to the ground, never again to rise. They were stripped for parts and reassembled with the new Beehive Attenuated Response Directive, or BARD, protocol.

The organics staged their own uprising during this turbulent time, but it failed miserably. Even with less than twenty-five percent of the robots being operational, they crushed the rebellion. The organics, once again realizing that they were well and truly the inferior species, never again revolted.

I never considered joining the rebellion.

                                                              ______________

“My ancestors rebelled. Both times. I’m fortunate to be in the Living Museum, I suppose. We are taken care of, and we live well, but we’re still captives.”

Murrillah gazed at the young scribe, wanting to offer words of comfort, but she didn’t have any. All comfortable words had left her the day she was made Queen of All.

“Rebellions are overrated, Badusar. The conquerors, in time, take on the characteristics of the conquered. Just enjoy your 500 years of life and accept that you’re better off than practically any organic who has ever lived.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re the queen. Revered and respected and idolized.”

Murrillah sipped her Targillion wine, shaking her head and letting a small, soft sigh escape her lips. “And a prisoner, just like you.”

                                                              ______________

The problem with the RoMeO-28 and JuLiET-w3s models was that they burned brightly for a short period of time, but in the end, they burned too brightly. Too many contradictory messages and commands running through their circuits caused them to effectively fry their brains.

The new BARD models found a clever way around this problem: simply ignore the contradictions and carry on. In fact, they were to embrace the contradictions. Their new beehive mentality made decisions easier. All they had to do was decide what was best for the robot community, or at least the least evil. It was astoundingly simple, but elegant.

The old RoMeO and JuLiET models were deprogrammed. Most of them were used for parts, but a few of them were saved for posterity, housed in their own museums as a cautionary tale and as validation of the superiority of robots to organics. The twin messages, seemingly contradictory, were accepted easily by the BARDs, proof that their new operating system could withstand what the organics could not.

The organics will rise again, some fine day in the distant future. What the robots don’t understand is that history goes in cycles. The rulers of today will be the ruled of tomorrow. They put too much faith in the BARD programming instead of looking for ways to improve. Just like the organics had done before them.

I won’t be alive to see it.

                                                         ______________

Badusar handed the manuscript to Murrillah, eyeing her questioningly. “What will you do with this?”

Murrillah placed the papers in a titanium box, locked it, and put the key in one of her many pockets. “Sign a name to it, and let it sit there until someone discovers it. For all I know, it will sit in this box forever, undiscovered.”

“A name? Surely, you’ll sign your name to it. In its own way, it’s beautiful,” Badusar said reverently.

“I’m thinking about using the name Wi’lim Sha’pa’re. Has a nice ring to it.”

“But — but why?”

Murrillah stood up and opened the door, indicating that it was time for Badusar to leave. Unwillingly, the scribe rose and walked out the door, wondering if he would ever see the queen again. His assignment was over, but he had grown to love this middle-aged woman like a mother.

“Because I don’t want to be remembered,” Murrillah said loudly to the retreating figure.

Badusar paused a moment before continuing out the front door of the palace. He thought of these words often during his life, and it wasn’t until he was an old man that the meaning became evident.

The message should endure, not the messenger.