Cold and Lifeless

I'm not new to fanfiction on this site; a long time ago and on an account different from this one I posted a few stories here. I'm not going to lie to myself, they weren't very good. Since then I've slowed down writing, due to an increased level of busyness, but recently I've started again, and I think I've gotton better. This short little work was done on impulse; I just kinda got the idea and wrote it down. It's pretty short, but I guess you could say it's just a prolouge, so bear with me. Tell me what you think, whether or not I've a good idea going.

Also, it's made to be read slowly. Otherwise it's kinda... weird, for lack of better word.



The people of earth identify me as a robot, a creation totally alien to them. Some would see me as a threat to be neutralized, others a scientific marvel. To them I am a treasure trove to be disassembled, analyzed and reassembled. I am to be researched to glean technologies ions beyond what Earth offers now. Fortunes could be made off of me.
I feel. I feel pain. I feel anger, joy and fear. I fear for myself. I fear for those whom I?ve come to respect; for innocent lives. I fear.
My creators, who I have never known, has graced my being with the sense of emotion. However, people might mistaken me for a cold, lifeless entity. They are wrong. I can feel hurt, guilt, and even loss. Loss of my friends--yes, friends-- loss of my former life, and of my memory.
It only fully goes back to my entrance to Earth. I remember agony as flames engulfed me, slicing through the atmosphere. From then on I can remember, but before, I can only recall snatches of my past life.
The most complete one is of my departure. I was orbiting a strange planet aboard a small station. The walls were entirely white, and the air shimmered. I made my way through the station with authority; I knew where I was going. Two others accompanied me. One was organic like humans, though he did not resemble any of you. The other was comprised of alloys and plastics, much like me. They both looked to me with familiarity, even respect.
I led the way into a small room, and turned to face my companions. I saluted the organic one, and he tapped my shoulder. The android gazed at me, pleadingly, as if to silently ask me to stop what I was about to do. I looked into his cold eyes unresponsively.
I walked to a machine in one corner of the room. It was about table height, and entirely solid. After pressing a button on a holopanal, the top peeled away, revealing a cylindrical tube running through the floor.
I climbed inside and the lid closed over me, and everything went dark for a moment. Soon an explosion of brilliant light blinded me, and my memory lapsed again. However long after, it was jolted by another brilliant light engulfing me.
This time it brought pain- probably the first I had felt in a long time. The light was fire; fire from the entry into an unknown planet?s atmosphere. Of course now I know what planet it was.
Earth. And she was in for an incredible surprise.

« Last edited by Nonentity on Jan 30th 2010 »

This could be intresting. Keep it up, I will continue to read

Earth and her inhabitants, at first, could hardly accept me. It doesn?t surprise me, though; I realize now my manor of arrival didn?t help things. I?m sure to most I appeared to be a falling star, and when I failed to burn up, a meteor. I hit not on land but in the ocean, and I think I nearly ?died? there. I don?t need oxygen, so I didn?t drown. It was because of the extreme heat of my entry, and then the frigid temperatures of the ocean. The sudden change locked up my entire body, and naturally, I again lost memory.
Left alone I would have simply sunk to the ocean floor and remained there, but by some miracle I managed to pull through. I don?t know how, but my body repaired itself and I regained consciousness.
My internal sensors detected a large land mass to the west, and I swam the entire way to a beach. There were hundreds of humans, all enjoying their recreational activities. This was my first experience with humans and it was not what you would call a good accurate first impression. For long afterwards when I thought of a human, I thought of the common beach-goer: females in a two piece swimsuit, males grilling food, people hitting a large ball over a fence.
At first there was a shocked silence; no one moved. A hundred pairs of eyes gawked at me, jaws slack. Then a child screamed, triggering chaos. People scrambled away, sweeping their children away with them. The air was filled with the sound of terrified civilians. Several courageous ones snapped photographs before scampering away.
As I think back to this time, I can?t help but wonder I would have looked like. I guess like metal, red eyed, sea monster, arising from the briny depths. The picture would have been complete if I had about three heads and snaking tongues.
Soon after, the entire beach was empty. I wandered around, alone and confused, eying everything, taking in data. The cooking fires were fueled by a flammable gas, open cans were filled with a strange bubbly liquid. The fence that the humans hit the ball over seemed to serve no purpose at the time. Everything was so strange, yet so familiar.
I was examining a shaded tower when several flashing vehicles I now know as police cars parked a ways away, and humans with pistols emerged. Policemen, and they weren?t happy; in fact, most were as scared as the civilians. I recognized them as threats, so I instinctively fired organic paralyzes at the closest ones. Most of the rounds simply bounced off of a hidden chest piece, so I readjusted the trajectory and hit every one in the neck. But more came. Their orders must have been to capture me because a tight-meshed net was launched over me.
I became angry, and I roared. I focused on the nearest one, and he screamed in agony. He threw himself to the ground and writhed, clawing at his head..
Someone lobbed an E.M.P at me, and for the second time that day, I was unconscious.
I cannot understand what happened to the man that I mentally crippled. Was it telepathy? Was it even me that did it? I cannot say.

Lieut. Charles M. Haley

Things like that are hard to believe. Hell, if I hadn?t seen it with my own two eyes, I?d still think it was all a hoax. Nothing in all my years of service could have prepared me for that.
The first I had heard of it, I was en route to bust a terrorist hideout we?d been getting reports of. Damn terrorists. Anyways, Halfway there we get a call about some disturbance there on Miami beach. They said this was more important. At the time, nothing could have been more important than our first orders, especially not something on a beach. But orders were orders.
My men didn?t like it any more than I did. We were all ready to kick some terrorist ***, especially after the white house bombing, Feb. 14th , 2021. The president hadn?t even been in office 2 months.
Anyways, we headed that way; it wasn?t too far. Took us maybe 30 minutes to get there. On the way, I asked Intel about the nature of this ?mission?. they said the beach-goers had spotted some kind of ?monster? about an hour before then. Even got some pictures. Apparently these photos matched the images the beach security monitors were sending back, and this thing looked serious.
They sent me several photos, but you couldn?t tell much from them. They were camera-phone, so they weren?t the best. Best you could tell was it had some kind of metal suit, but that was about it. I thought maybe it was some kind of deep sea excavation robot, er something.
When we showed up it was wandering around looking intently at stuff like the life guard tower. My first good look at it scared the **** out of me. This was most definitely not some robot scuba diver. The thing walked around like a human, only using some kind of hydraulics er something. The weird thing was it?s movements made hardly no noise. Maybe I was seeing things, but the air around it shimmered, like heat waves.
I looked down and was surprised to find my pistol had found its way into my hand.
The whole deal reminded me of the old movie transformers, only it wasn?t near as large, and it didn?t ? transform.
I remember very well it glancing at me. It?s two large, glowing blue eyes boring into me. It looked sad, confused almost. Don?t ask me how I knew that, but something about it seemed very ? deep. Ah, forget about it. I don?t know what I?m talking about.
It took out the first line of my men with some kind of paralyzer darts. We wanted it alive-er, whatever it was- so we shot a bomb net we were going to use for the terrorists over it. It?s an extremely tight-meshed Kevlar net you throw over a low powered bomb and the corner weights activate, effectively gluing itself down. When the bomb blows, It actually contains it. Pretty nifty. It cant be very powerful, though. If it does manage to tear away the corners from the ground, then you?ve got a large netlike piece of debris flying towards you, as well as everything else.
It held it down, despite the loose sand, and the thing roared. Very loudly. Very differently. I don?t suppose it has lungs, so how it made the noise is beyond me. It sounded like metal scraping against metal mixed with a lions roar. It?s hard to describe.
As if the thing wasn?t crazy enough, it did something scientists are still researching to this day. Something most have not heard about. Something we?ve tried very hard to keep secret.
It fried one of my men?s brains, just by glaring at him. He?s never been the same. The look on his face, his screaming, it haunts me. It was horrible. I?ve never seen anything like it. Well, I hadn?t seen a lot of things I saw that day. We had an E.M.P generator we were planning to use to shut down the terrorists computers with. I figured it might work on this guy too, so I ordered my men to chunk it at it. I told them to be careful to not get to close, though. I didn?t want it to mentally cripple anyone else.
It did the trick, thank God. I called for another one in case it ?woke up?, and we hauled it away confidentially to the top secret lab outside of town, underground.


« Last edited by Nonentity on Feb 9th 2010 »

I like the feel of it. I will keep reading if you can keep posting.

Thank you, both of you. It's good to hear some positive feedback. I'll keep posting as my scedule allows.

Click the spoiler to see my comments.

Spoiler:

All in all, I think this story is pretty good thus far. Just keep working at it.

Believe it or not, I've never even seen the movie The Day The Earth Stood Still, although I would like to. I've always enjoyed Scifi stuff like this, and one of my main inspiration is the Halo franchise. However, I had little inspiration for the robot with emotions idea, seeing as how I just got the urge a while back. I think it's been about a year since I wrote that rough copy in a notebook. I had just happened to come across it recently and read it. I decided the idea wan't too bad, and that I could polish it up and it would probably be pretty good.

As for the transition between the robot feel and the human part, it wasn't really all that hard. I already had that first chapter to go off of to help create the mood for the second one (don't ask me how I got that first chapter.) The human on was easy; I just described things the way I would have.

This next chapter wasn't nearly as fun to write, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's not really essential to the main plot. I'm including it mainly to introduce the robot into the secret reserch facility he was brought to.

Lol feel free to explain your complaints and suggestions anytime. I'm curious as to what you have to say.





It had been several days after that jarhead brought him in before it actually regained consciousness, but in that short expanse, we managed to glean much information from it. Foremost and most obvious was the fact that it was indeed not any kind of creation that our country, as advanced as we may be, could have come up with. The technology, oh the technology it was composed of?
It was a scientific dream, to say the least.
Even at that point, I began to understand so much that, in the past, eluded me. EG, one of my ?pet projects? was a neural implant that allowed the user to mentally control objects, just by thinking. We thought we had this art refined quite well until I got my first glimpse into this thing?s ?brain?. The elements of this practice we?ve missed. With this new discovery, you might say, patients can not only fluidly control prosthetics, but now we can control little robotic figures from across the room, just like I can control my hand, and through it, this pen.
It?s all so exciting!
When it awoke, it just sat there, looking at everything. It almost seemed alive with it?s blue eyes. We figured it could most likely learn, so we set up tests for it, starting with incredibly easy solutions. EG, we gave it a child?s toy that required you to fit the proper shape through the appropriate hole. It looked at me as if to say, ?Really??, and then it deftly put every piece in its place except for the last one. What it did was rather amusing. It took the last shape and held it up for me to see, and while it glared at me, it melted down the piece into another shape and stuck it through the opposite one it was originally intended for. I couldn?t help but stare amazed. I know this is impossible, but it seems to have a sense of humor.
Now we have it doing Incredibly complex stuff like quantum mechanics, problems that our personal computers can?t figure out. It?s rather interesting, the way it accepts these problems like a challenge, something it enjoys doing. I wonder if it gets bored.
Our next issue is determining where it came from. The prospect of life on other planets has both fascinated and terrified me, but I?ve never gave it much thought. Now it seems all too real.
If, by some small chance, it?s creators are human, then they must be part of some secret organization of super-geniuses founded by a powerful foreign government. It couldn?t possibly be American, considering the fact that I?m the this country?s leading secret scientists.
At the same time, we?ve been trying to figure out how it did what it did to that man. After the marines threw that E.M.P. at it - a brilliant move, considering Lieut. Haley?s level of intellect. - the man stopped writhing and fell into a deep coma. After analyzing his brain it became clear that his brain cells and a select few other types were almost all destroyed. Al that was left of about one third of his brain was a microscopic ?goop?. I haven?t the foggiest of what happened.
It can talk.
Shortly after waking up, it picked up our language and now it can speak it almost as fluently than I. Occasionally it will ask a brief question about a certain word its never heard of before. We recently gave it a dictionary and the first few volumes of the encyclopedia. It read the dictionary in precisely one hour and 32 minutes. We interrupted it while it was reading the encyclopedia about 45 minutes after it started. It was already on the second volume.
We?ve had very in depth conversations, the robot and I. It?s become one of my favorite pastimes, to just go talk to it for about a half an hour


« Last edited by Nonentity on Feb 15th 2010 »

very nice, This looks very interesting and I will continue to read it as long as I can. Like oginig said, there are a few errors but nothing major. This looks like it could be a good story.

Thank you. I'll keep writing it as long as I can.



Everything was quiet, unnaturally still, when I finally reached full functions. A light flashed on, revealing the room I was in. An observation room. One of the walls was made entirely of Plexiglas, and two men stood on the other side. One was abnormally pale, like he had received little sunlight for years at a time. The other, I remember, was one of the marines that captured me. He watched me in an captivated fascination. His expression displayed something like awe and fear. He wasn?t afraid, not in the literal sense. It was more like respect for the unknown, what he didn?t understand.
The pale one eyed me with fascination also, but with a hungry gleam in his eyes. He was here to research me, most likely, to get all he could from me.
I didn?t like that detail.
I got up and walked softly to the glass. Neither of the men seemed alarmed. I pressed my hand against the glass; the marine put his over mine. Walking over to the side of wall, away from the men, I pressed both my hands on the glass. It didn?t budge; I knew it wouldn?t, but I had to try. I threw my fist back and hammered the glass, only to watch and hear it reverberate slightly. I wasn?t going anywhere.
My actions did, however, get a reaction from the men, I?m glad to say. They hid it well, only stepping back a few inches. I thought of nothing else, so I sat back down on the ?bed? I awoke on. They left soon afterwards, but the pale one came back, about an hour later. He came back with a colorful box and several shapes. After a few hand gestures, he explained what he wanted from me. I couldn?t believe it. He asked me to fit the shapes through the holes in the box.
I glared at him and did what he wanted, but just to prove a point, I heated up the last one in my hand, molded it into a different shape, and pressed it through the other side.
No doubt it was an experiment, a test to see how I would react, but it still irritated me.
Their tests became more difficult over time. Before long, I was doing complex math problems. I didn?t mind. Even the most difficult ones weren?t much of a challenge.
During these tests they sent in a different men. The pale scientist always watched me, but hardly ever came in contact with me after that first day. But when he did, he spoke to me like he did to anyone in the facility. I soon picked up their language and talked back to them.
The first time I spoke apparently I scared the man my reply was to. He held a card that had a long algebraic formula written on it. I looked at for a moment, and said, ?Negative one point zero four eight seven seven nine.?
He gasped and stood up.
Normally they would present me with these problems, and afterwards a multiple choice. I would point to the one with the right answer. This time, however, I answered him before he even gave me the choices.
He looked at me and said nothing.
?Well?? I inquired, ?is that right??
He nodded and hurriedly exited the room.
Ever since, the pale one visited me quite often. Shortly thereafter, he came in, very thrilled. He asked me, ?You can understand me??
?Yes, I replied simply.
?Fantastic!? he exclaimed. ?This is a breakthrough!?
There were words that I didn?t know at this point, and ?breakthrough? was one of them. I asked what it meant, and he explained it to me.
Afterwards, he asked me, ?So there are words you don?t understand, right??
I nodded.
?Did you learn this language here in this facility??
I nodded again.
?My name is J.R. Tracy.? He held his hand out to shake; he was certainly becoming more trusting. I didn?t know what it meant, so I just looked at it.
?Oh, right.? He took his hand back. ?Your name is??
?I do not know,? I replied honestly.
?I see.? He seemed rather defeated. ?What are you??
?Different than you.?
He laughed slightly, and tried a different question. ?Where are you from??
I couldn?t help but reply with another sarcastic remark. ?Elsewhere.?
The scientist didn?t laugh this time. He just looked at me. ?Do you??
I finished his sentence for him. ?Do I suffer from memory loss? Yes.?
He gazed at me, the stood up, nodded to me and left. I lightly chuckled to myself.


« Last edited by Nonentity on Mar 1st 2010 »

Nonentity said:

Lol feel free to explain your complaints and suggestions anytime. I'm curious as to what you have to say.

You misunderstand. The reason I?m not pointing out my complaints and suggestions is because I?m not actually certain they are problems at all. It sounds odd to say, but basically, you?re doing some things as a writer that I would normally frown upon, and yet I think it?s working. I?m enjoying this story. It?s interesting, and written in a uniquely engaging style. It?s not perfect ? not by any means ? but it?s unique enough that I?m not sure what you can afford to change without losing your style.

So, for the moment, I?m just going to shush about it and wait and see where it goes.

Still some grammatical and typographical errors, but again, they are infrequent, and I think you know the rules, so I?m not going to point them out. Just be a bit more careful.

But all in all, I really am enjoying it. Looking forward to more.

Its been over a month. Regrettably I couldn't write during that expanse, or I could but I was too lazy to. Well, here it is anyways.

This world is an incredible place. Everything about it and it?s people fascinate me to no end. Nature functions seamlessly, it?s processes balancing itself. Whenever a catastrophe strikes, over time things are corrected and it seems like nothing has happened.
It?s people are equally enthralling. There is such a variety around the globe; from the solitary Polynesians, to the friendly Mongolians, every people group has it?s own history, it?s own set of beliefs, it?s own traits that make it unique. Did you know that the Mongolians once tried to conquer the entire known world? How about the fact that Hitler was the target of 42 assassinations?
Everything I?ve learned of this world forces me to think of myself, of what I am. There is no doubt that, with all I know about this world, I should not exist. There is no explanation for me. It?s just as much of a mystery to me as it is to the scientists whose job is just that: to explain me.
I suppose the only realistic explanation is an alien race more advanced--far more advanced--than the humans today.
So far all of me is, at least somewhat, explained by science. Let?s take something simple for instance, like my movements. Every one of them is precise and coordinated, something no modern robot on earth (besides me) can do. All of their movements are blocky, and loud, for that matter. Why is it I can do that? Hydraulics. Not like any kind here on Earth, of course, but the principles are still the same.
The only thing so far that science has yet to explain is what I did to that man on the beach. That and an unexplainable ability of mine that these scientists have unlocked. It?s probably related to that incident anyways, though.
We discovered it on day 241. Tracy entered my room/cell with a serious look, strode to the table and slammed down a rock the size of my fist.
?Move it!? he demanded. I had absolutely no idea of what he was up to, besides another test maybe. At first I just stood there. Had he finally lost it? I read in the encyclopedia about mental breakdowns. It happens when one is subject to too much stress, or is confined to a small area for an extended period of time. Both applied to him, so it was entirely possible.
?Move the rock! Move it with your mind!? Yeah, he lost it.
?Sir, I?m afraid you are mentally compromised,? I said, taking a step toward him.
?No!? he bellowed at me, withdrawing a gun. Let me say that again. He pointed a pistol at me. I didn?t doubt he would use it, either.
?Tracy,? I said calmingly, ?think about what you are doing.?
Bellowing again, he fired twice. Instantly I kicked into defensive mode. The rounds only bounced off of me, but I was already angered. Locking on to the rock, I willed it to move, and it did! It leapt off the table, spun behind Tracy around to me. It orbited me twice and launched toward the scientist. About a foot from him it vaporized, and the dust settled on and around him. Thank goodness it did. I don?t know what would have happened to me if I killed him.
It was definitely me who controlled the rock. I told it to move, to come alive, and it obeyed me. I motioned it to move exactly like it did.
What am I?


« Last edited by Nonentity on May 9th 2010 »

Huh, this is pretty good! I like the fact that it all seems to be written as the narrator thinking back on the events of the chapter, and also that it has a psychic robot as the main character. Yup, definately an excelent concept; it sems I've got another thing to read on the forum! Keep up the good work!