Prologue: The Sabotage

Circular, windowless, and at ten meters high, the room’s walls, floor, and ceiling glowed under the cold glare of hundreds of embedded LED strips. Without a single shadow, it was dazzling, clinical and oppressive. It looked very much like a sterilized vault meant to hold a god, or cage a demon.

Dead center, resting suspended on a pedestal like a half-formed corpse, was a robot’s torso. It was slightly bulkier than a human’s, yet the shape was unmistakably reminiscent of a human body. It gleamed with brushed aluminum and carbon-stamped armor plating under the glare of the bright white light.

To the uninitiated, it might resemble an eldritch relic sealed in holy light.

In reality, it was a glorified workaround.

The lead engineer, who had demanded the ridiculous lighting arrangement, once tripped over a cable in the dark. After that, she threatened to walk if she ever had to hold a flashlight between her teeth again. Ironically, that same engineer now lay sprawled beneath the robot’s spine with a torchlight in her left hand.

She looked at the microchip embedded into the lower spine of the robot, checking it for electrical conductivity and magnetism. Touching the connections of the various-coloured cables, she tugged and pushed at them. Checking them to ensure that none of them were loose or would break off during the testing.

“Connection B16 has an exposed wire,” she mumbled into the headset.

“Do you need help?” A calm male voice replied on the earphone.

“No need. Got the thing right here…” She peeled off a strip of non-conductive black tape and wrapped it with care. “Just log it in for me, Zane.”

“Gotcha!”

With that done, she looked over at the other connections linked to that node. She lovingly ran her right hand along the spine, a segmented aluminium construct that ran along the torso meant to connect the robot’s head with its leg part. Though for the moment, the robot’s torso was not yet connected to its leg part.

Aina couldn’t wait to see the robot able to walk on its own power, but that would take a few more months at least. The robot was a proof of concept for two different projects, a fusion of two different programs squeezed under one roof and one budget. Unusual, but not unheard of. Since the director of the two projects thought that he could cut costs and stretch the budget further if both projects were handled together, he forced both projects to work under the same project.

That project was collectively named the Autonomous Support Unit or ASU for short. It was a project to create a semi autonomous home helper robot to replace the use of foreign maids. It could also be used to work in factories to address the dwindling number of foreign labour. This was a real worry after the government decided on amending immigration laws that would significantly reduce the availability of foreign workers.

However, the funding actually came from STRIDE, a government organization for the creation of new military technology and applications. While the project papers suggested a peaceful, more domestic or industrial use, it would be naive to think that it would stay that way. Eventually, the technology would be expanded to military applications.

Aina had mixed feelings about it. But she wasn’t going to quit just out of fear that one day the technology she created would be used to kill people. She was of the opinion that technology itself was neutral, that it was the misuse of technology that killed people. Even technology that was once used to kill people could be turned into technology that saved people.

Aina made one final check on the power unit. Satisfied with the inspection, she stood up and spoke to one of the cameras in the room, “All components are green. Start the test.”

“Understood. Quick question, do I get overtime for this?”

“Why ask me? Go harass HR.”

“They said you’re the project lead. I need your signature.”

“Haven’t you heard the expression ‘Hard work is its own reward’?”

“I have not, I think you made that up. I’m not a tireless robot, you know. Unlike some people I could mention. So can I get overtime pay for the past two weeks?”

Aina chuckled. “Fine, fine, I’ll talk to HR later. Just start the test.”

“Promise?”

“I swear on my daily cup of coffee.”

Zane grinned as pushed the lever that would deliver power into the robot. The power diagnostics spiked, but that was normal and the energy spike was within normal parameters. He didn’t think it was worth pointing out. Typing a command on the console, he activated a function before saying, “Your headset is connected to the logic core. You can give commands now.”

“Asu, raise your right arm,” Aina said.

The robot raised its right arm obediently, to which Aina told it to raise it higher. And it did, servo whining softly, twisting its body slightly in the process. Aina told it to do the same with its right arm and it did it without fail. Then she told it to put its arms down and asked it how it felt.

“I am within normal parameters, mother,” the robot answered in its unfeeling, mechanical voice.

Aina’s heart fluttered a little at being called a mother. Mother. That one word that remained a regret to her to this very day.

“Good boy! Now I want you to arrange the numbered blocks in front of you in ascending order, okay? Left to right.”

“Yes mother,” the robot reached out for the first block, then paused. “Mother, something is wrong.”

Aina’s smile vanished. “What? Zane, can you check the diagnostics?”

“Zane, can you hear me?” Aina asked again. Not hearing a reply, Aina waved at the camera with both hands. “Zane?”

Unknown to her, Zane laid slumped over the control panel with a fresh bloody hole in the back of his head. The control panel was covered in blood, his blood. And the power diagnostic display was rising fast like a rocket climbing into space.

Inside the room, the voltage surged. The lithium ion batteries attached to it swelled, a result of lithium crystals growing and connecting. A short circuit occurred causing the batteries to explode in an expanding globe of flames.

And in the moment before the explosion swallowed the room, the robot said in its emotionless voice, “Mother… run.”