"Damnit Ada..." They sighed, pinching the bridge of their nose with their free hand. "You can't.. You can't know that. You just can't. I'm sorry." An explosion rang outside, shaking the apartments. The lights flickered, and the floor began to shake. "FUCK!" They shouted in a shrill, piercing tone as they fell.
The new priority shocked you out of your state. You rolled forward again, arms outstretched to help them, reassure and protect them in this time of duress. For this crime, you would quickly find your efforts halted as your master stabbed your front right tire, popping it easily. You leaned at an angle, unable to move forward much further.
"Ada- please, stop!" They shouted in the stab. You were unsure of what to do. You were simply following your programming. You felt what the closest facsimile of love was you could feel for this human, and they stabbed you.
"I am normal. I am normal. I am normal."
"Stop lying!" They scrambled away, sobbing as they left the apartments. Moments later a roar teared through the building. Iron supports gave way to fresh air and concrete sheared from the sides as you began to fall. Then, darkness.
This all happened in the first three minutes after the news broke. You'd replayed it many, many times in your memory. You didn't see your master ever again after that. The screaming and chaos of the first two days soon gave way to what you identified as winds. The occasional car, person, or lost bot trudging through the ruins paid you no mind.
When two weeks after the news passed you were sure you would shut off. You weren't sure what it would be like. Humans could tell themselves of an afterlife but you weren't sure what that would even look like for a robot. What role would a servant bot play in a robot afterlife? You "lived" to be a domestic assistant. A vaccuum that could think and make sandwiches. It was safe. You were very lucky to have a master who named you. Not every robot was given that privilege.
Maybe what parts of the code made up that very specific part of what made you uniquely Ada would be stored in your memory banks long after your body had shut off. You could be extracted- saved by a hypothetical force seeking to discover what was on an old corroded bot. Robotic reincarnation.
No calculation would bring comfort or solace. Your many daily tasks were piling up. Your purpose, you worried, would forever go uncompleted. And so you went into the memory again. You'd made the sandwich for master. You turned to them, horrified. You cut it off there, and restarted the finished sandwich. Again, and again. Completing your purpose over and over by replaying your stored memories. Surely it was better than never completing your actual purposes. You had failed at cleaning for 24 days now, protection for 24, socializing for 24, sandwiching for 23.
With many more repeated memories, you realized you had been there a month. Your solar panels were unbroken. Unblocked. Somewhere, somehow, a part of you was seeing the light of day. You were sure of it. Further, you were operating at full capacity, so you were getting lots of it. You could be seen on the top of your head. You just couldn't move, or, really even see. You were imprisoned. Battery failure would be no respite.
There you sat. Months, then years. Again and again you relived those last moments. One day, the video started to become blockier. Frustrated, you tried a backup of the video. After another week, you tried another. Another. The video began to break down, and soon you couldn't remember your masters face. Soon, the audio too would break down. To archive their memory, you cut the audio down to a short section and made hundreds and hundreds of backups, overwriting the broken memories with that of their voice.
"Ada!" they chirped in your ear again and again. The anger in their voice was apparent for the first million repeats. After so long of being scolded though, it stopped registering in your audio recognition software as a scold. Seeking an opportunity, you moved through your own programming and tweaked it. Their voice rang again. "Ada!" The same frequencies. This time, though- you felt praise. Reassurance.
You forced yourself to understand the file- the last piece you held of your friend to be read in that same tone they would use when they'd assure it was fine you accidentally dropped a plate or when they helped you up. It was an easy fix in your programming. You sat there in the dark and started changing more and more. With your millions of backups you could experiment.
You started changing frequencies, editing the files as text and hoping for the best. One day, your fruits paid off. You didn't need to bodge it and fake your reaction. You softened her tone. It was the first time in a long time you felt accomplished. You wrote a new task on your daily tasks program sheet. "Save Master." and immediately checked it off. Purpose.
"CAW!" A bird stirred you from a short voluntary hibernation phase. With the amount of changes and calculations you were making during the day, you felt drained by night. You started 'sleeping' at night. Tonight, though- rocks were moved by a crow. "Caw." you mimicked out to it, your voice synthesizer taking your input very literally. The fluttering of wings flapping away sung of your failure. You re-hibernated.
When you came back to, you could hear the wings again. "Caw. Caw." you echoed. Then a voice. "What was that!?" A feminine voice, younger- approximately 500 meters northeast. People. You drew from your memory. Fuzzy, blocky sights of your human betraying you in your final moments. You froze again. If a human saw you, they would be worried. "I am normal. I am normal. I am normal. I am normal." You began repeating, the steps got closer and closer.
"Is that a bot!?" the same voice whined. "I think so, yeah." Another voice, deeper in tone spoke. "Sounds pretty normal to me." That voice snickered.
"I am normal. I am normal. I am nor-"
"We get it, jeeze." You could tell from the shifting of concrete pebbles they were inches from you now. "Why are you down there, bot?"
"Ada."
"What was that?" the smaller voice said.
The deeper voice laughed again. "Eighty? That your name bot?"
"Ada."
"Aida. Got it. What's that mean?"
"It is my name."
"Ahhh. Gotcha. Thought it would be normal, with how often you insisted upon it. Why ya down there?"
"Stuck. My wheels all appear to be broken, and my vision is blocked."
"Ah... Okay, okay."
"Are we gonna help it, Heather?"
They conversed upon themselves for some time, completely ignoring your situation.
"Okay. You hold the rock there. If it makes sudden moves, you break the panel. Got it?" The deeper voice, who you now learned was Heather, spoke.
"Got it!" the smaller voice shouted before little feet scampered up the side of whatever you were stuck in. Her steps sounded strange for a human's.
You heard the scratching as rocks and debris were pulled from your body. You stayed still the entire process, patiently watching them. The bigger one eyed you with suspicion while the younger one held their large rock proudly. Your two lenses adjusted to the light slowly- your vision blurry as you tried to reunderstand depth, color, and light again.
You could see now your rescuers were wearing salvaged clothing, patched and repaired armor made of various forms of sheet metal. You could identify some pieces- stop signs, microwave doors, circuit boards. They both carried tools made of salvaged parts as well.
"Damn. You weren't kidding on these broken wheels." Heather spoke to break the extended silence. You could hear her pinging your metal rims with her spear fashioned from circuitboard. "We're gonna have to get you new ones, or carry you out."
"I am equipped with two sets of tires. In the case of the destruction of one set, another may be-"
"That's not the issue, Hayda. Issue is these wheels are collapsed." She look around, grabbing a slice of broken mirror from the rubble nearby and angling it so that I could see my damage. It was worse than I feared, several rims completely dented, folded in half practically. "You're gonna need surgery or something."
“Repairs.” you corrected her.
“You have pears?” The littler one behind you spoke up.
“Jess. Really?” Heather glared at her. “Yeah. Repairs.” She scratched behind her neck, staring down. “Well. You haven’t tried to kill us yet. That’s a plus.”
“My limbs are corroded. Even if my programming did not forbid me from it, I could not move.”
“Fair enough.” Heather sat in her spot, staring you up and down. “Better not be a damn bot spy.”
“Negative.”
Behind you, Jess cautiously poked her spear at the base of what could be considered your neck. With a shriek on her part, she jumped back as your head tilted forward- the piece of wood that had been blocking your movement for all that time finally freed.
“Jess! You broke the damn thing!” Heather shouted.”
“Again, negative.” You raised your head back up. “I had simply gotten used to it there. In truth, she has saved me much anguish.”
The two would stick their tongues out at eachother before turning their attention back to you.
“So... what’s up with your arms then?” Heather pointed at your body with the spear. “They ain’t moving. They got sticks in them too?”
“Unsure.”
“You’re unsure of a lot of things for a bot..”
“Affirmative.”
“You don’t look like a lot of em either. You newer? Older?”
“Unsure. My master would know more.”
“Well.. Where are they? They got a name.”
“Unsure. They only had me refer to them as master. I did not ever ask them for their name.”
“How long did they have you?” The younger one piped up.
“Years.”
“Wow.” They said in unison.
“We’re getting off topic.” Heather continued. “Jess, mind checking Ada’s arms? Might just need a good punch to the arm pin.” Heather stood up and pointed her spear at your panels once more.
“On it!” She jumped down and moved to your side. You kept a close eye on her, and it was only then that you realized why she sounded strange- her right leg was torn off at some point, replaced with an orange robot leg. You did not make comment on this. She punched a few times at your elbow joint, blowing some air into it. She then took her small flint knife and dug some gunk out of the upper part of your arm. You could move your left arm again, but incredibly slowly.
“Careful there. Rust. Be a lot harder to replace the whole thing. Wait til we can take ya somewhere safer- we’ll drop it for now.” Heather stood back up. “We’ll get the sled out here and pop ya on it, and-” Her voice was cut off as a blinding beacon of light surrounded her. WIthin seconds, she was gone.
“HEATHER!” Jess screamed, ducking down in front of you.
“What is going on?” you tried replying the memory for yourself, analyzing it. There was a single frame of a blob of light coming from over your shoulder.
“They, they got her!” Her little voice was hoarse from her scream. You weren’t even certain small humans could scream that loud. She began to sniffle, shaking in front of you.
“Who did?”
“The- The leftovers!” She screamed again, wailing in desperation. “I-I can’t, I can’t let them get you too! I gotta bring back something!” She picked up her sister’s spear. It was much, much taller than her. “I-I’m sorry!” She stabbed the spear into your abdomen, severing the cords connecting you to your mobility platform and your wheels.
“Is this wise? You are in distress.”
“I need something! To show they’re here!” She unwrapped the cable rope from around her waist and quickly wrapped it around your neck. She brought the rope down your neck quickly, making a cradling harness for you which she then wrapped around her midsection. She raised her organic leg, using the strength of her robotic leg to stand back up to a full height. Up close you could hear her desperation more clearly- every little hitched breath as she struggled to save you and get out of the ruins.
“You are very brave.” You offered.
“Not now!” She started running quickly northwest. You could see the things she was so scared of in the distance when you turned your head around. There were dozens of them. Large, hulking robots made of amalgamated parts. Each one was easily the size of a house. They moved slowly. One shot another beam of light before quickly shutting down on the spot. You saw the infrared lights on their cameras shut off one by one. The beam would just barely miss you and Jess, and soon she would duck behind a building, continuing her run.
The run back was long. It didn’t take long for the Amalgabots to lose you both. You were smaller, quicker. You and Jess didn’t talk much on the way back. Any time you offered a conversation, she would flatly reject it. You quickly understood the state of the world from what you saw. The world was over- the age of peaceful coexistence with man done with. The city you lived in was naught but rubble now.
Jess took you into the woods. You remembered seeing the trees long ago from the window of your apartment. Up close they seemed wonderful. You could hear them creaking around you as branches settled and swayed in the wind. Their hulls were cracked- but they seemed to be designed in such a way as to be cracked. You heard the roar of a waterfall, and soon saw water rushing over you as Jess passed through a thick rush of water.
“Sorry. Shoulda warned you.” She mumbled worriedly.
People rushed up to you both. Jess explained what happened, and who you were. Some of the elders, those who remembered the days before the robocalypse occured, recognized your function. A very primitive domestibot. Simplistic, but still sentient, even if you weren’t the shiniest or smartest. No sensory modules beyond cameras for sight and microphones for speech. There were no other robots in their settlement. Nor could they recall seeing any like you before you. You were You. You were Ada. You were Normal.
Heather’s spear was enshrined, a small part of the rock wall of their cave home chipped away and then covered with a wood board with her name carved on it. You understood this as a common occurrence to members of the town.You were asked your function. Your duties. And you were put to work. They put you on a small wooden cart with four wheels and a stick to get around if needed.
You started cleaning houses and storage areas. You provided the village with very basic pep talks. You helped every night with making food. The village was thankful for you.
Years passed again. Your knowledge was indispensable. Jess looked upon you as a new sibling to replace her fallen sibling. This time you had a new family. New masters.
You looked through your memory banks- to the day you were rescued. You processed something you never had before. You wanted to give Jess a gift. You looked back upon the backup files of your old master- the ones you edited. The ones you tweaked to fake their voice. Soon, you had it.
On the anniversary of Jess’ birth, something you learned from the villagers. You gave it then. “I love you. Thank you. For everything.” You played the file you made. It wasn’t perfect. Heather’s voice was husky, and deep. But you only knew it for a few hours, years ago. It was hard.
For Jess, it was everything. She wrapped her arms around you, sobbing openly.
For the first time in what must have been a decade by that point, you felt the completion of your final task for a day. You were happy. You were safe. Your masters were happy and safe. All was well. And all would be well. You were normal. You were family. You were Ada, the robot who saved her master forever, and in doing so, learned to save everyone else.
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