'Droid Void

‘Droid Void’

With no hope of recharging, my battery will drain in 3,000 milliseconds. The three seconds to humans are mere jumps on a number line. For me, I savor every byte. Robots are supposed to live forever, but my Creator doesn’t need me anymore.

I probe the lab with radiation, capturing reflections to view my habitat. Retractable claws hang from the ceiling, and outdated circuitry plasters the floor. Tangled clumps of wire snake from out of portals in the mainframe, peering at me through empty eyes. Zach’s new favorite, the mainframe’s vacuum tubes flicker in the background, creating shadows like bulbs on a Christmas tree.

These newcomers are programmed to run long after my demise. But they won’t miss me. They aren’t alive. For all it matters, I might as well have been an adding machine.

“Oh Zach,” I cry. “Why didn’t you make me an eagle so I could see the way an eagle sees?”

My cries are futile. Zach ignores me. Wax fills his ears.

2,000 milliseconds. One thing about robots is we prize our round numbers. Whether it’s from a quirk in our wiring, or something deeper, statistical milestones provide us the same fulfillment humans get from their birthdays.

My temperature gauge reads 140. Fifty on the Celsius scale. Smoldering wires fill the room with smoke, and burns on my canister reveal my age. Or so I’ve been told. I can’t distinguish the scent of a petunia from a pile of manure.

“Burns, smolders, smoke? I don’t even know what those words mean. Zach, why couldn’t you have made me a bloodhound? So I could smell the way a bloodhound smells?”

1,000 milliseconds.

Sound waves form blips on my radar. I translate the moans of my fellow machines into spectra, graphs of frequencies and their overlying harmonics. I wonder what it’s like to hear. I will never know.

“Zach, why didn’t you make me a bat? So I could hear the way a bat hears?”

1 millisecond to go. I want to weep but I can’t.

“Isaac,” I call out. “I never wanted to be a robot. A physicist? Yes. A Martian? Yes. Or even an amoeba. I wouldn’t have cared. But Mr. Asimov, anything but a robot.”

The last moment arrives, and I pronounce my epitaph. “Golden Age. My father, my keeper. I trumpet your adieu, from the center of the sun to the fringes of the universe. Farewell, my friend.”