Ghosts Hate Robots, Section 1, 'Read the Manual First'.

A Short Story by Nate Conway.

Introduction for Ghosts Hate Robots Sections 1-8.

They say that worst type of pain is empathy for others loss, but I don’t know, I feel pretty shitty.

I was an American trucker- Iowa, corn fields, the smell of diesel engines, a wife and two boys. Why am I here overlooking the arm of Orion? Some days it is all of me, others just pieces, and on some strange occasions nothing like my human form; I am some other being, some beasts, some prey, some strong, some weak, I have no control of the forms. I still crave Coca-Cola and Marlboro Reds, the smell of her, their faces and touch, the open road of the Midwest, now I can’t smell a thing and cast no shadow.

Still I try, while being intermittently shuffled from one space in time to another, without rhyme or reason, to accept the moments, no matter how jarring they can be. I wished I’d paid more attention to my Physics instructors. Hands down the most horrible experiences I’ve had in this transparent existence is in the future- God help me I hate the robots- wherever I go my disdain for their dispassionate stoicism never dulls. Everything about them is ingratiating; how they ape the human mannerisms all the while mocking their egos and dominating the society. There are still humans in this distant future though I don’t have a valid explanation for how they have existed that long. I long to channel this angst into something that will matter but I don’t always know how or when. I have a vague recollection that I too, like my nemesis’, was stoic to the point of being banal.

More often than naught neither human no machine can see me, though I get long stares from both. At times I can briefly break through the metaphysical wall for an interaction; a dropped book, a flash of light or blazing fire. Did I mention how much I hate the robots?

Why?

They’re tireless efforts, disdain for empathy and ultimate utopian society. All scheming processors to me. How this all came to be, and how they took over I am never truly privy to, nor do I want to bear witness, as I can see plenty of evidence of the carnage in the detritus of their designs and communications. I can’t change a thing, except when I do. Fuck them.

Section 1; Read the Manual first.

The vistas of the past are lonely landscapes with also few humans and only fire as their guide. Here, I become enamored with the human spirit as it endures in tribal forms that cross land and climate in a constant struggle for a place to survive. They are marvel hunters and master craftsman. Brave beyond imagination and full of kinetic energy. There are savages and pagans, artists and shaman, beautiful and barbaric all at once.

Authority and religion usually sour the soup. Both vying to be the new rule of law they wage war, plunder, and destroy both each other and the earth. Still I marvel at our ferocity for life.

Not all numbers and words are comprehensible, like that dream inside a dream, I am constantly searching for an end to the enigma I have become. At times I am transported along the axis of time rapidly and then occasionally the world around my skewered soul will change. The plains where the wooly mammoths once marched metamorphosize into office spaces and vast parking lots as I stay in my place watching the wheels of time.

So, I get by on mischief, the implied sensation of a memory from long ago, and the hazy vision I do have. That and the gnawing hope that I might run into anyone I knew in my past life. I was alive. Joined the Navy at eighteen years old. Saw the Far East through those young eyes. Came home and those same eyes found her too. I don’t know how it ended. When I find myself transported to that clean, awful future of machines, or the dark past of savages, I long for my kitchen table and the sound of the boys tumbling down the hall.

I do remember the name of my middle school- Parkhurst, the tree out front, and the class where they told us that space was vast. They really have no idea.

There is no sound until I arrive at my next destination, no pain either, but a whirl and pull of something familiar and human. I arrive to the near future and I can already feel the robots. Humans are working in tandem tossing along boxes to a large egg-shaped structure. Bird like drones hover nearby while other pieces of cargo float along to enter the ship’s chamber. The odd harmonics of the machine banter echoes into me, they have figured out small talk, but anything of conscience is still out of their grasp. A human laborer accidentally stumbles into an oncoming sleek airborne device which ricochets the klutz straight up into the air. This poor bastard floats away fast, right toward the rectangular opening at the tip of the large hangar.

Adios, muchacho.

This must be an outpost. A fellow human tries to reign in the floating person but also becomes part of the accident and he too, is soon floating off the factory floor. Another dumb ass is trying to wrangle some sort of emergency device and has a mess of cables tripping him up.

Should have read the manual.

Machines do not debate. They let the accidental prone humans float away as their fellow worker keep scrambling for anything to help the distant men. I get the pulse of their passionate pleas for help and I want to help, to take flight, to bring them back to the station, but I have no power now, only will.

Pay attention to those safety training courses. Sorry folks, you’re on your own today. The pair of humans float away. They soon disappear, the screams and tears stop, and eventually the work resumes. The robots never stop.

I mostly watch them load the vessel, something about the payload being a dangerous contagion for the bots. I keep my eye on the interactions of a human and what must be her mechanical counterpart. They seem to genuinely enjoy one another’s company- a hard pill to digest.

Maybe I never got the chance to know them- but I’d call bullshit on that theory as well. Something inside of every species I’ve come across has chosen domination over the path of survival; a sort of built-in self-destruct mode. These are engines with wired brains. They stole, or I should say, they did not steal, but we in fact gave them the keys to the kingdom because we thought it would help the species. It did help us, helped us wage war, destroy habitats and displace the indigenous. They soon realized Homo Sapiens could never be trusted so they took all of human’s attributes needed for a new version of species. I’ve seen some built as half animal, half steel, not because of imagination but of the utility Mother Nature had provided in her coding. Combined with AI they have ‘optimized’ the creation.

They have drones with bird wings in some of the more tropical planet outposts of the future- its not right, looks like a flying spider. The space freighters with whale ballasts and tails at the stern are pretty wild, I’ll give ‘em that one, and whatever creation it is they made to build the ice castles; monster builders that can drill to the core of the terraforma. They’re a marvel to behold and I destroy as many as possible when possible, but it’s not easy, they are near indestructible, unless you pit them against one another, the only thing that works is to have them destroy each other.

For all their so-called innovation the robot’s purposeful exploration of the universe does exactly what the humans did to the Earth except at much faster pace. They build mega-structures that soon become either irrelevant or unmanageable for the given climate, pillage resources, leave the planet near dead with some colonies and then dive deeper.

It takes them some time to become relevant enough to catch the attention of the surrounding species of the universe. Aliens is what we would call them on Earth, but some look just like earthlings, others not even close. I don’t know if they hate the robots as much as I do. They keep their distance just like they did over I-90 when I would drive across country, no jet could move that fast and no human wanted to fess up about seeing them. Except the kooks.

Better to stay quiet at times.

These terrestrial beings show up in their super cool amoebas, check things out, blink some lights, send some odd vibrations, and then leave without comment. They could care less about our vacation pictures from Montreal or the mania which seems to have been inherited by the bots. I have seen them do some pretty wild shit too; they only snatch part of you at night. Your body stays there in the bed or tent, but something inside of you goes away with them, before they return it, but I can’t enter that realm, or at least not yet. A part of me is still too attached to the contextual notion of being alive; the last spot of repair on the roof, her soft touch, and the boy’s upcoming baseball season all keep me riding shotgun for the human’s race.

The machines, creating and destroying, stopping only to admire their majestic empire’s march into the darker corners of the galaxy, try their best to identify the sublime creatures when possible. They capture and categorize. When they can’t reach their objectives, they declare war. When they can’t locate the enemy to engage in combat, which would have been something considering the time and effort they put into the machines of mass destruction, they create databases but none of it adds up for them. Something is always lost in the two world’s translations. They find no code, no RNA, no algorithm to the alien life form, so they deem the entire endeavor worthless and cease all further efforts of discovery or domination. I think it scared them- how the laws of physics suddenly didn’t apply, as if someone tore up their whole rule book and they were left with an incalculable task that they could not process. They were helpless and they couldn’t acknowledge it. True fear always grows into ignorance.

Regardless I would have gotten a kick out of seeing the beautifully strange aliens cut through those perfectly symmetrical space war machines. That would have been something, but it never happens, at least not while I’m around it doesn’t. Who knows what the future holds- ha, ha, ha.

Ghosts Hate Robots is a short story by Nate Conway and available for publication.