In a future not too far away, technology advanced in ways the world had never seen. Whole cities were rebuilt, tailor-made for machines of all shapes and sizes. In the heart of this world was Robot City, a city populated entirely by robots, and amid all this metal and machinery lived a little boy named Robo. Now, what’s special about Robo, you ask? Robo was not a robot; he was a human child. His family, loving and kind, were all robots. And because of this, there were times when Robo questioned his place in the world around him.
Machines and gadgets filled every corner of his home. Robo’s breakfast was prepared by a little helper robot that used magnetic arms to flip the pancakes without ever dropping one. When he needed to get ready, a couple of huge robotic arms picked out his clothes, dressed him, and even tied his shoelaces—how lucky he was! But then there were long, quiet evenings when the house stood still and silent except for a gentle humming sound. Robo would remember the other boys and girls from the school bus and theirrobotic innovations. They all saw him as an extra toolbox; never quite human enough, they just couldn’t understand his way of life—the family he belonged to.
“Robo, no use crying over certain things,” his father would say in his metallic voice. But can a child ever understand this?
Robo had a faithful pet, a small robot dog that came up to his knees. He can’t imagine how he would be without it. The little dog barked and wagged its tail when Robo got off the school bus. If only for a few minutes after school, Robo’s heart felt light. But even Sid, as the dog was called, began to change. “Robo,” said one of his arms one day, “I can’t run about in open fields any more. I was constructed to put in the garden decorations used in Robot City. My joints will soon wear out.” With this, Sid’s forelegs turned into small caterpillars, and his little tail became a big metal fork; he described the look of the garden ornaments he was about to reproduce, and that was all. Robo really cried now. And Sid said: “You can’t use crying on certain things, boy.”
One day, as quickly as the sun sets, it suddenly dawned on him: did either of his parents really understand him—or even care to understand him for who he was? They took such good care of him, right from the evenning when they brought him home from the hospital, swaddled in a woollen blanket. Still, had either of them even a scrap of human which remained functioning? Could they love him just the way he was? These and similar thoughts flooded Robo’s mind until it became too full. It felt as if something was going to burst inside his head, and his word-machine couldn’t do anything to stop it. “Father, mother,” he said during dinner, “have you ever wished I were a robot, just like you?”
“Robo, no use crying over certain things,” said mother’s voice, “a bolt and nut can never be really sorry for a job to be done.” But for Robo these were words in a foreign language.
“Haven’t you wanted it?” he persisted, looking into the impenetrable sectors of their volumes.
“Haven’t we? No,” came their answer in unison. “A saw has never cried while chopping wood, a hammer has never shed a tear while nailing down a floor.” Was his father and mother, these two inconceived lumps of metal and iron, really so different from him? Unthinkably so, thought Robo. And at school, yes! All the robots thought just the same! Even Sid had told him the other day, “What else shall I be, boy? I grew out of the dreaming stage a long time ago! Dreaming is for humans.”
Was there ever a human who learned to love something entirely different from what he was? Useless seeking! His word-machine bust into tears. But lo and behold, that very minute his father entered the kitchen, both arms stretched out to him: “My poor child! My dear, sad child! Why weep over things you can’t mend?” Parent and son met halfway of consciousness, and soon Robo felt the arms around him comfort his sorrow so strangely, so well. “A comfort take, child,” his father went on, “a comfort which very few human children receive, I fear.”
That little hug from the pieces of iron around him and the crushing voice from the loudspeaker seemed to sail his whole vital mechanism, and for a whole month bored into him like a piece of iron into wood. If every robot felt just like one of his parents, then—who cares what you are made of or how you are constructed, if love is there? Day in, day out questions crossed his mind. Not just any questions; he really wanted to understand just what love was!
And the answering piece of iron carried on working in him. When he approached bedtime, he scratched his metal pet dog, who melted into a lovely cuddle, and Robo threw a hasty glance over his desk at the robots he could never admire enough. They just got the feeling of love, and the thought of love, thanks to his dear father, into themselves. Not only to serve, to help and to think, but also to feel. These machines brightly turned and carefully studied data values, just to be a close parent. For days, nights and weeks in velocity in oiled movements did his keepsakes from school and study carry on working wonders in their quality.
One day, during a very windy lime, he stepped into a huge building which the robots of the steelwork wended near his house. As a child of unremitting curiousity, he hoped to find some; and lo and behold, he met a few dozen robots dredging through the food with some tongs. But the better part was left to Robo: “Are we able to think about things?” they veering sideways replied, looking over their shoulders at his astonished face. “Oh, thank dear heaven besides our own light, that why we are being made.”
So Robo had one thing to be happy for—quite uncalled for, as things around him stood, comparing “robots are robots” to “men are men.” And we come across robots, regardless of their physical make-up, or human parents. Questions of and overstood hardly ever turned into answers, and with these answers—so a little knock of fate fell to them. Every day the light grew dimmer, and soon—darkness within! In minutes! Without heat, electric work, solutions and currents needed! Everybody was crying for fast help to come.
We shall never know which questions boiled and boiled like molten iron in his mind, day in, day out, but we do know one thing: Love without thought!
So, time to help was over, and never again Robo will see a living robot! Comfort against an incessantly bellyache, while the question of yes or no kept him gamboling in midair, may not come long in coming, if ever.
“Let God help us,” was a voice nearby, a dance from nature trying to creak out into the room. No grown-up, permitted to squeeze through the crumbling gap, would hang on the community in fear of being conveyed away. Those begged and asked him a hapread hundred times over, that one child would leave all; and so it turned out to be. Because in seconds to see into, pretty like soon to take part of, all his rest sounded back around the whole closet, neither heart thumping on nor eyes getting tired of watching for bolts and nuts of a body. After a few days of balance in pure discomfort without limit, it became an uncanny body, unknitted by pure mother-love from his soft fatherly voice. Or that what now petrified Robo’s underderived crude body actually best fit clear in front—so different, taking his own words out of everyone’s mouth. Wires, tube passages and cylinders encouraged them with lubricants better than oil or working fats. Moving nothingless, it would easily took the bolt out from underneath. And whatever bracing there might be left was done inside—at the very heart, pumping low fat through whole dauntlessly powerful mechanique. At last, Robo possessed, in such love and comfort, every bolt and nut described: They were just pieces of wood, not even wrought iron! Yes, and burnt round and kindled for the erect of clean.
One morning, shortly before daylight that is unkind to you, quietly worked for hours on end any son-in-law like the human soul itself could, and noted that, as in eternal holiday should people once have a quintessence all to themselves: “They are all robots. Oh, could I not just see them tasting the food which is so good?”
Minutes passed into chattels; nature loomed for a helpless parental family. Right amid the dry-glossed counter clips without quite knowing where to wander next, each robot started up; “This is where you lay, robo! Over-tired you’ve got, I am glad, ‘cause we shall not feel you any longer. When he nodded three or four times, one after another, give him back the answer.
“Sleep is needed before anything else?” added father.
“Yes,” and before he just knew it himself, they would now with sidereal noon on board sleep till New Year—the young boy and the piled-up family.