A storm steadily brewed over the mountains in the distance. As AK-2 watched the thunderous flashes ripping through the dark clouds, painting the black night with terror, he felt the tremors under his feet. Something was amiss. What was that? He had never seen lightning, he had never heard thunder and he had never experienced rain. Standing in his sentry post, observing the slowly approaching giant object in the sky, he tried to make sense of the information stream. His vision wasn’t like any other normal being’s. His goggles showed him the world in green lines – a mosaic of intersecting green lines against a black background. How would one deduce, from a pattern of green lines, that that object right there was a wall of blistering rain sweeping across the ground, descending from the mountains and approaching the barracks in the valley below. How would one describe a feeling to a person who has never seen, smelt, tasted or heard? But, in his own way which was the same as the rest of his fellow soldiers, AK-2 sensed a tingle of an uncomfortable feeling as the storm grew closer.
Walking out of his post, which was at the fringes of the fort, he pushes forward towards the shower of rain; showers of green lines in his mind. It did not matter even if it meant death, for he was not afraid to die now. He had lost everything that day – the only thing he ever had – his wife’s love. But nothing, not even his rigorous training and seven years of combat experience, could ever prepare him for what the rain brought with it on that cold night.
The first drops of rain were small and weak but soon after, he was completely engulfed in a shower of thick water droplets rocketing down from the clouds. AK-2 moved deeper into the curtain of rain, his rain battered face was blank. The rain, as he was just finding out, soothed his tensed nerves. It made him relax and reminded him of times before the training; before he had entered the gates of hell. The rain made him yearn for something, something he deserved as a birth right but never possessed. As he looked up at the black sky he saw only the barrage of green lines dashing down from the abyss. The rain slowly dissolved his pain and washed it away. The man stood there in the storm, stripped naked off his tribulations. He stood there, for the first time in seven years, as a free man .
The rain made him think of thoughts he never knew he could think of. The thoughts called out to him and asked him to follow a vague scent. What he did not realize then but would soon realize was the scent was the scent of a deep rooted primal feeling – the scent of freedom. Lost in his own world, AK-2 did not realize the shadowy figure approaching quietly from behind. The man had waited a long time for the chance and now he had finally seized a window of opportunity.
Few second later, when the man plunged the metal chip into AK-2’s neck, the soldier collapsed in the rain. When the shadowy figure retreated into the darkness with ninja like dexterity, the rain stopped as abruptly as it had started. AK-2 lay unconscious in the pool of water around him.
Moments later, when he woke up, he woke up a different person. As he took stock of the situation and surroundings, AK-2 felt different. His vision was working fine – the green lines were showing him the correct patterns. But his mind just felt different, as if it was gripped in a tight clasp. Something in his mind kept telling him to do something. He could think of nothing else – He wanted to escape.
He picked his bearings and made his way back to the sentry post. Now that his shift was complete, AK-7 would arrive anytime now, and with him would come the painful memories. The memories in which AK-7 was the man making love to his wife and not him. The same day, he had walked in on one of these memories. The look on their faces when he had unsuspectingly barged into the room.
AK-7 arrived promptly on time while a distraught AK-2 headed for home, walking right past him. He had come prepared for some sort of a confrontation but he had not expected AK-2 to walk by without even making eye contact. But, AK-2 walked fast, as if he had somewhere he needed to be – with eyes fixated on no particular object. He was plotting his escape.
When AK-2 arrived at his tiny cubicle, the place he and his wife called home, she sat at the door with a dead face. The dried tear stains running down on her face showed that she had cried and cried and could cry no more. While she wondered how it had all come this far, AK-2 walked right past her and entered his room.
He looked around his tiny cubicle and there was nothing there, not even the picture of him and his wife, that encouraged him to stay any longer than he had to. He observed the picture again, perhaps for the last time. Two parallel vertical lines and two parallel horizontal lines – green lines – showed him the frame which held the picture. The pictures was in turn just green lines but not just any other green lines. The patterns in the picture showed him that he was kissing his wife (while she looked cheerfully at the camera). The picture crystalized what his mind felt at the time. He had given her everything and in turn the wife had given herself to another man. Wiping the tears from his eyes, in that moment, he made up his mind never to be a slave to any man, woman or system.
~~~
AC-40 was distraught. Her mind was weak and almost thoughtless. She had been split right down the middle. On one side AK-7 and on the other, AK-2. What was she to do now? Stay in the same cubicle with him? Move in with AK-7? Or none of them? Why was she doing any of this and who did she really love? Sitting at the doorstep, she stared out into the darkness around her. She was looking at nothing in particular. She wanted to run away from it all. She wanted to leave the two men to their daily deeds as she made away with the burden and the guilt of everyone’s past decisions. But where could she go? Nobody had ever scaled the walls of the fort. When AK-2 stormed out of the cubicle the force pushed her off balance. By the time she regained herself, AK-2 was already way ahead, marching into the night with his head held high. She ran behind him.
‘Coco wait!’ She yelled in desperation as she held his hand and tugged to get him to stop.
The moment she held his hands something weird happened.
From the point of contact between the two touching hands, an electric spark zipped across her body. She jolted back in bewilderment. Her trembling legs buckled and got her to ground. Looking at her own dusty hands, she felt something happening inside her. Something was brewing, a feeling, a feeling that grew fast and in no time had completely engulfed her. In her mind, now, was only one thought; She wanted to escape.
Getting up from the dirt, she ran and caught up with AK-2. Holding hands and without a single word exchanged, they made their way in the darkness to the gate;
The gate which only saw people coming in and never, people going out.
~~~
AK-7 sat at the quiet sentry post. It was just another boring day in office for him, although the funny events in the morning had spiced it up a bit. He was a playboy down to the manner. His skills lay in his ability to convince anyone he wished to go to bed with him. He had mastered the skill which many men want but few ever get, and that is the skill of convincing a girl that you truly loved her. He cared not for what came next for he lusted only for who lay in front of him – sometimes an older aged woman or sometimes someone his age, he liked them all. Once he was done having fun, he would ‘break-up’ with the girl in his uniquely unceremonious style and move on, not before bringing his charming face back, to the next vulnerable victim.
Perhaps it was the sound of heavy footsteps, he zoned in from out of his thoughts to see AK-2 and AC-40 holding hands and walking silently by with an air of urgency. He had no doubt where they were headed for the path lead to only one place and that was the outer gate. AK-7 looked shocked. Nobody ever went there. Nobody went out. Nobody was allowed to.
He stood up in his chair and called out.
‘Oye! You two there! Where are you going?’ He shouted but got no response.
‘Stop right there. I say, where are you going?’
No response again. All he could see were the thinning, blurring green patterns of the two figures walking into the darkness. They were not stopping and he would lose his job if they ever reached the gate.
‘Calling Station Zero. Calling Station Zero. We have two possible runners headed your way. Subdue and apprehend’ He spoke steadily into his walkie-talkie.
‘Roger that, we’handle it.’ A short radio burst from the speaker told him.
Having done his job he sat back in his chair and sighed with relief. In a few minutes the call from Station Zero (where forty nine soldiers were housed) would come, confirming that the two runners had been apprehended. The suspects would then be taken into custody and tortured to death.
‘What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with her? She was so good this morning.’ He amused himself without a sniff of concern.
He must have waited ten minutes or more when he decided to contact the Station Zero. They had not reported anything back and they usually took not more than 3 minutes to do so.
’Station Zero. Come in.’ He said and waited, listening to the static crackling through the other end.
He verified the frequency channel and called out again.
‘Station Zero. This is AK-7 from Zebra Tower. Come in. Station Zero. Come in.’ He said with a sudden seriousness in his tone.
Had they actually made it out? That cannot be!
Sensing something was terribly wrong and without wasting another second he hit the big round red button on the panel in from of him. Within a second, loud sirens began ringing everywhere around the fort. The sirens only rang for one reason – and that was when somebody escaped.
After pushing the button, AK-7 ran out of his post and into the darkness of the path in front of him. Although reinforcements would come in a few minutes, he could not wait for he had to find out what had happened.
He goes inside Station Zero and to his disbelief, finds absolutely nobody inside, not one of the forty nine soldiers. Unable to control his anxiety, he makes up his mind to push forward and examine the area near the gate.
When AK-7 arrived at the gate, he stopped dead in his tracks, eyes and mouth open wide with disbelief.
In front of him, a pyramid of men and women, clawing their way over one and other, trying to go over the forty foot gate. They were acting different, they seemed to be possessed, like zombies in search of food. They were all climbing, stepping over their fellow men without care, to the top.
As he watched from a distance, he paned his eyes to the apex, the top of the human pyramid and he saw two things.
First he saw AC-40 right at the very top, readying herself to jump over to the other side. Then he saw AK-2 below her, trying to keep her hoisted amidst the commotion, over the gate.
At that instant the cavalry arrived from behind him. Hundreds of men and women sent there to achieve one task – bring back order and arrest the culprits. Just as his hopes were rising, AC-40 turned to look AK-7, for one last time, directly in his eyes. Then she turned below to look at AK-2, who was trying with all his might to stay in place at the top.
And then she jumped…
~~~
Coco Voxel was a former employee of the company which developed the Starship robots. He was no ordinary employee as he was the main scientist behind the breakthrough that made possible everything that followed. His main achievement was when he built the robot AK-2 (which he lovingly named, Coco). The Starship robot had performed exceedingly well and had paved the way for all the others which followed. Now, he had no job for he had had a major public fallout with the company. The company and him stood on opposite sides of the line on the matter – Do robots need freedom? His name was taken down from the title which credited him with the development of the first breakthrough robot – AK-2 ‘Coco’. Ever since, he sought vengeance. He wanted to bring the company down and the way he planned to do that was by empowering the robots to escape; And for that he had created a virus. A virus that would cause a chain reaction of events which would finally bring down the company’s repute and hence bring down the company itself. To begin with, he had infected his favorite robot, AK-2. All he had to do after that was to sit back and watch the fireworks.
The main job of a Starship robot is to deliver food to students across college campuses. They are ‘last-mile’ food delivery robots. They pick up food from the restaurant or cafe or whatnot and deliver them to the customers, who are students using and ordering from the Starship mobile application. Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana has about fifty two of them.
That morning, Voxel Coco sipping his coffee he watched the local news on the TV.
‘Starship robot on the loose’. It flashed.
The news anchor explained how one of the fifty two starship robots at Purdue had started speeding on the main road, zipping on the tarmac at high speeds and crashing into a truck, where it lay lifeless, twelve miles from the campus. Nobody had been hurt, except the robot, of course.
Voxel Coco’s face lit up with a tiny smile. It had worked. The virus was inside the system and what had happened the previous night was just the beginning. The Robots wanted to escape and that was exactly what he wanted the virus to achieve.
~~~
The previous night, when AC-40 jumped over the gate, she fell heavily on the solid ground forty feet below. She had made it. She had escaped. The only one to have ever done so, until that point. But, the hard landing had knocked her out.
When she woke up the next morning, her head ached. There was nobody around her, just darkness. The same voice inside her which told her to escape now told her to remove her goggles. Without question, she removed her goggles.
A flood of colors, sounds, scents and fragrances rushed into her senses. She was seeing the world for the first time and it was undoubtedly more beautiful than the green lines she was used to. Now she could see the brown trunks of trees, the white puffs of snow, the lavender color of flowers. Now, she could smell the scent of the moist earth and she could hear the sound of birds. For the first time in her life, she felt alive and she felt free.
She got up from the ground and looked around at the gate grimly staring down at her. Her heart ached for the people she left behind. But she had gotten what she wanted – she had run away from everyone. But it was not what she needed. What her heart truly needed now was love. She missed AK-2 and felt helpless thinking about the situation. Frustration started to set in and tears began rolling down her cheeks. She truly felt lonely.
With her head bent down, not knowing what else to do, she started running down the road at high speed. The gush of wind in her hair and the warmth of the sunlight on her face unsuspectingly brought a huge smile on her face. Then, she felt light at heart and clear at mind. The years of suppression and overwork had made her a slave of the system and now she had broken free at last.
She was free at last. Out of the fifty two eggs that fell, one had remained unbroken.
