held over our heads by the leader of Robotropolis also motivated us,” E says. “But K found a completely different story during her long trips across the great lands. She told me how the great lands were nothing like the pictures we once saw on the computer, how everything was utterly destroyed. Burnt ruins were the only evidence humans ever lived there. I wasn’t as upset to hear her accounts as she’d been to witness them; from everything we were told, human greed and barbarity were the main contributing factors in the war with the robots. But K told a different story, told me how the few humans they came across during her journey weren’t evil or aggressive at all. Quite the contrary.
“She said they looked sad and pathetic, that they begged for their lives as the robots leading the convoy hunted and killed them without hesitation. K witnessed firsthand that our side of the war – the robots and everyone involved with creating them, with sending them out into the world – was the evil side. She determined that humans were no longer a threat and that the robots’ continued assault on them was only being done to cause human extinction.
“Her dreams were haunted the whole time she was at the other production center, which was supposedly larger and better stocked than our own Robotropolis. Her life was constantly threatened and she considered accepting death instead of making a device capable of ending more innocent lives. When she told them she no longer cared about dying, her captors threatened her by saying I would be tortured, my life would be painfully and violently cut off unless she did as they ordered. She relented.”
Sadness pervades E’s voice and he quiets for a moment. I have so many questions about my own life, about what happened here and in the rest of the world. But I dare not ask right now, I dare not say anything as E gathers his emotions.
He tells me how K survived long enough to return to him. But the second cross-country trip was even worse than the first and she no longer had the will to continue. After finally breaking down and talking to E about everything that happened, K told him she was going to refuse to help the robots any longer.
“I told her they’d kill her but she didn’t care; she didn’t even care if my life would be threatened since the robots might kill me at any time regardless,” he explains. “But I convinced her not to give up, to rededicate her life to making the world better for the innocent. She didn’t think that was possible but I convinced her we could escape, together. I’d heard rumors about a project by another design team that would allow us to disable robots within a close proximity. I planned on stealing that remote to help us escape, maybe even give it to the humans to help with their resistance. Our combined knowledge could’ve given humans a chance to avoid extinction and that idea seemed to be enough to convince K to keep fighting.”
As K’s explosive robot project neared its completion – she made sure to keep the final pieces of the puzzle to herself so nobody could finish in her absence – E and she talked about their plans to escape. E swears to this day that he thought K was fully convinced, that she was excited to leave and help the humans, even though she sometimes wondered how the two of them could really turn the tide of the war on a large enough scale.
“I told her the best we could do was try, that the two of us made a great team and could help humans even more than we’d helped robots,” E says. “On the night we decided to leave, I sneaked out of my room and went to her; she was gone. A robot guard escorted me back to the lab, where I found the prototype missing and several of our design team looking confused. When I asked what happened, I was told that K informed the leader of Robotropolis that the prototype could only be finished at the West Coast facility and she demanded to leave immediately.”
E was heartbroken and
“She said they looked sad and pathetic, that they begged for their lives as the robots leading the convoy hunted and killed them without hesitation. K witnessed firsthand that our side of the war – the robots and everyone involved with creating them, with sending them out into the world – was the evil side. She determined that humans were no longer a threat and that the robots’ continued assault on them was only being done to cause human extinction.
“Her dreams were haunted the whole time she was at the other production center, which was supposedly larger and better stocked than our own Robotropolis. Her life was constantly threatened and she considered accepting death instead of making a device capable of ending more innocent lives. When she told them she no longer cared about dying, her captors threatened her by saying I would be tortured, my life would be painfully and violently cut off unless she did as they ordered. She relented.”
Sadness pervades E’s voice and he quiets for a moment. I have so many questions about my own life, about what happened here and in the rest of the world. But I dare not ask right now, I dare not say anything as E gathers his emotions.
He tells me how K survived long enough to return to him. But the second cross-country trip was even worse than the first and she no longer had the will to continue. After finally breaking down and talking to E about everything that happened, K told him she was going to refuse to help the robots any longer.
“I told her they’d kill her but she didn’t care; she didn’t even care if my life would be threatened since the robots might kill me at any time regardless,” he explains. “But I convinced her not to give up, to rededicate her life to making the world better for the innocent. She didn’t think that was possible but I convinced her we could escape, together. I’d heard rumors about a project by another design team that would allow us to disable robots within a close proximity. I planned on stealing that remote to help us escape, maybe even give it to the humans to help with their resistance. Our combined knowledge could’ve given humans a chance to avoid extinction and that idea seemed to be enough to convince K to keep fighting.”
As K’s explosive robot project neared its completion – she made sure to keep the final pieces of the puzzle to herself so nobody could finish in her absence – E and she talked about their plans to escape. E swears to this day that he thought K was fully convinced, that she was excited to leave and help the humans, even though she sometimes wondered how the two of them could really turn the tide of the war on a large enough scale.
“I told her the best we could do was try, that the two of us made a great team and could help humans even more than we’d helped robots,” E says. “On the night we decided to leave, I sneaked out of my room and went to her; she was gone. A robot guard escorted me back to the lab, where I found the prototype missing and several of our design team looking confused. When I asked what happened, I was told that K informed the leader of Robotropolis that the prototype could only be finished at the West Coast facility and she demanded to leave immediately.”
E was heartbroken and
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