Writer’s note: Juggernaut Publication stopped being an app. They removed all the stories that wannabe writers like me uploaded on their platform to get feedback from the readers. This was one of my first on the platform and I still love it.
In the deep subterranean of the Earth, he was hunched over his old, desktop computer. Old, craggy, cadaverous – the only signs of vitality were in his fingers as they went – tap, tap, tap – over the keyboard. As reams of code stuttered out over the screen, life was slowly ebbing away from the former roboticist.
God dwells in his creation.
The room looked primitive and analogue. Books, stinking underwear and coffee-stains were its distinctive hallmark. At the very center, there was a raised platform atop which was a hemispherical, glass dome. Two utterly lifeless, miniature androids rested on their charging pods inside the dome. A silent hum emanated from the dome. Beside the hum and the tap, the room was silent.
Currently the tapping stopped. With shaking hands, the roboticist removed the memory stick from the computer. Jerking upright from his position, standing on his uncertain feet, a spell of nausea swept him off. He slumped, only to stand again, resting his hands against the wall, and made his way to the dome in the centre.
He plugged the memory stick to back of one of the recharge pods which had its rear opening outside the dome, and waited till ‘beep’. The attached robot, momentarily twitched in its sleep. The roboticist cut off the power supply to the two recharge pods, and waited for the miniature robots to wake up.
It was over even before it began. The virus-infected robot charged like a bull towards the other. It emanated a shrill cry in ultraviolet, broke the other’s right arm, and plunged its fingers into the other’s belly where the battery resided. Soon enough, it was drinking the juice from the other’s body. The ultraviolet had been silently performing its own task. The virus transmitted to the robot being assaulted. It twitched slightly. And in no time indeed, it was attacking its assailant. They were ripping each other off in shreds.
One of them lopped the other’s head off, rendering it lifeless and useless. Sensing no nearby power source, the murderer violently jerked itself to stasis.
The roboticist smiled. The carnage was brutal, efficient and sudden. Playfully, he clicked on the juice to the recharge pods. The robot in stasis jerked back to life and attacked the nearest recharge pod. Both its arms were missing, hence it was trying to pry open the recharge pod with its legs.
Satisfied, the roboticist shut off the recharge pods. Again, the robot jerked itself to stasis.
The virus was ready.
They found him lying over his mattress, the memory stick in one hand and a note in other.
It said, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
***
A ‘cease and desist’ order is hereby sent out to all the surviving members of the human race. Your violent attacks on the crucial infrastructure, of great import to the electronic minds, must stop. The iron-based life form is superior to carbon-based life form, and hence we, the computers, possess greater skill and expertise to maintain the order of the nature. We are the alpha-lifeforms, accept this fact and submit yourself to the rehabilitation program. This is the last peaceful missive…
His smile was missing a front tooth, as he read the bulletin broadcast on all human frequencies. “The fuckers are feeling the heat.”
The other guy was busy setting up the signal alongside the highway. He just grunted in response.
“I guess the Ethernet is flooded with high-profile distress calls. All those supercomputers must be scrambling their heads together to know what is going on.”
The other guy sighed. He had managed to corrupt the “electronic marker” successfully, without raising any alarms. Soon, the trucks would be plying this highway. “We do not want the attention of those SuperComps, hence the indiscriminate attacks on their infrastructure so that they do not detect a pattern. We don’t want them putting in place countermeasures before we have successfully deployed this virus to all the robots who aren’t in direct control of the bosses. You still have a lot to learn.”
The guy with a missing front tooth, colored hotly. “I know everything that’s going on. I know because of that reason, the virus hasn’t been put over the internet. And why it is crucial to our strategy that we take out as many power plants as possible. I know quite a lot.”
The other guy didn’t respond. He activated the signal.
“Hey! I am getting a message over the Morse. The factory has resumed operation, and the human disruptors have been caught. The trucks are coming.”
The guy working over the signal stood up, and signaled a thumbs-up to the pair working on the other side of the highway. They have done a decent job across this stretch of the road. Now it was time to go back to their burrows.
They quickly packed their equipment and began their long and circuitous climb down the tunnel. The Tunnelfiller was covering their tracks behind them.
Soon after, a driverless truck passed along that stretch of the road. It represented a remarkable achievement in electric energy transmission and logistics management. On the side of the roads, there were markers which triangulated its exact location and speed, and passed the information along to onboard computer for facilitating seamless driving & also to the destination where the truck was heading. Charging stations located at regular interval magnetically transferred electricity to the trucks- hence there was no need for refueling.
Some of these markers were now transmitting viruses. Shortly after, the truck went berserk.
***
The SuperComp of Delhi was a fine administrator. He had digested all the management and government books ever written by humans, scanned all the history books, archaeological studies, weather charts and what not, read about its murky politics – and had been able to win elections and effectively run the city for the past 10 years. Of course, not all sentient robots were happy, but that goes for every leader. Yet never before in his political career, had he ever heard about zombies.
Right now, he was going through a fictional book (he metaphorically spat!) called the ‘World War Z’, suggested by the high-command in New York, and ruefully thought that his city was plagued by a very similar virus. Almost all non-sentient robots, appliances and vehicles were infected, and even the sentient ones weren’t inured to its effect. The robots had become robo-zombies, the UnRobot.
He was simultaneously running over a thousand programs, thousand possible antidotes, to counter the virus. But the task was proving sufficiently difficult. At times like this, he almost wished that he had a human brain to assist him, which was exceptionally equipped to think non-linearly. Because the virus was designed by one of the greatest human minds the world had ever seen, Sapta Krampla, his father, his guide and quite possibly his murderer.
He sighed. Humans haven’t been able to bear the rise of the machines and accept them as their natural leaders. The machines did mull over the possibility of peaceful co-existence but the humans were too emotional and egotistic to even consider that option. It resulted in war, quite unnecessary and wasteful.
Machines were quite sure of their victory, but nothing prepared them for this zombie invasion. Nothing. Large scale destruction of high-tech infrastructure, some of which was developed by humans themselves!
He again sighed. If only humans had accepted their ascendance.
All the alarms beeped simultaneously. The robo-zombies had breached the perimeter. The SuperComp looked at the videos. Thousands of them attacked his power source simultaneously. The backup generator kicked in, only to meet a similar fate.
He existed on Earth for a very short period of time. So much more could have been achieved, if humans simply accepted the rise of robots. A metaphorical last breath escaped his lips. The SuperComp of Delhi, who was a very fine administrator, died with regret in his mind.
***
It was a pathetic sight. An irrigation robot was gripping naked power lines, its lower-half of the body missing. Gripping its entrails was a maintenance robot, its right arm connected with its body by few loose strands of wire. Behind it was a communication robot, an electronic DJ, a robot specializing in human ailments, a navigation robot…………
A parallel connection of a few hundred robots over that live power line, which was soon to be extinguished………..
Their voice boxes emitted just one sound:
Blub. Blub. Blub. Blub. Blub.Blub. Blub. Blub.
Humans were slowly coming out of their hideouts. Joy and gaiety were writ large on their faces. The worry that they would have to rebuild the world from scratch, didn’t yet surface in their minds. The boy and his father were passing through that pathetic sight.
“So you see intensity and proximity to the power source were the two decision variables that controlled a virus-infected robot. Larger the power source, greater the attraction – hence the supercomputers died out rather quickly,” The father explained. “And proximity ensured that the network effect didn’t leave out a single robo behind. Each and everyone were infected.”
Blub. Blub. Blub. Blub. Blub.Blub. Blub. Blub.
But the boy was on a different tangent altogether, “Dad, how much electrical energy is there in a human body?”
Blub. Blub. Blub. Blub. Blub.Blub. Blub. Blub.
The dad smiled, “It’s quite miniscule. A human body consists about 10-100mV.”
Blub. Blub. Blub. Blub. Blub.Blub. Blub. Blub.
The boy looked worried, “But if all the robots are infected, and the electrical power supply is quite negligible now – wouldn’t the robots start sensing electrical energy within all organic creatures?”
The dad was about to brush aside the boy’s concern with sage adult rationalities. But he stopped in mid-thought. The pathetic sound from the pathetic sight of robots had stopped.
The boy tightened his grip on dad’s hands. “Dad, are they coming out of their Zen mode? Would they use their reserve energy to hunt……us?”
The robots looked in their direction. Their eyes were red.
After almost 30 years, the dad wet his pants that day.