in cybertronic somnium

I opened my eyes and blinked twice. It was a Monday, and I hated Mondays. It was the beginning of another boring week. Another week full of biology, maths, chemistry, all the stuff I’d done by the time I was six. You see, my parents, they were scientists working with Military Arms and Ammunition Department of the government on some new technology that they’d said would change the world. My dad was the leader of the project. He code named it ‘meta-materials’, a substance kind of like the invisibility cloak I’d read about in the Harry Potter books. Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties that may not be found in nature. They gained their properties from structure rather than composition, using small inhomogeneities to create effective macroscopic behavior. He had just found out about a new material that had a negative refractive index. So far their approach to the field of invisibility was to install micro-cameras at one side of a board, and on the other side, micro-screens to play what could be seen through the cameras, so from one side it looked like the board was invisible. But what my dad had found that night was much different- it was nothing in short of a miracle. He had successfully tempered the polymer through a self-contained nuclear reactor, and he had finally created what he had been working on for the last fifteen years. He had made his robe of invisibility. He had called me from his lab in Ohio (the only place where a lab of such proportions could be built), and he had literally screamed into the earpiece that he and mom were making their way back home to celebrate their success. That was the last I’d heard from him, and I never heard from my parents after that.
I slowly got up and made my way to the bathroom to do my morning duties. I washed the grease from last night off my wrists and dressed for school. I looked at myself in the mirror. A sad, depressed looking boy stared back at me. The simple truth? -I missed my parents a lot.
I went downstairs into the garage and checked on the car engine I’d fixed last night. Robot|)/-\|) would be dropping me to school like every day. I checked its battery charge to make sure that it could work through the day. Since my dad had been a scientist and had a lab of his own in the basement (which I used now), the neighbors didn’t suspect anything wrong. They just assumed that he was working at home. It dropped me to school every day. The car, I’d programmed to sense the speed limit, traffic signals, and other cars. Its circuit was based on the map of the city. So all I had to do was enter the destination into the car radio (which was actually the user-based interface between me and the car), and put Robot|)/-\|) into the driver’s seat, and we’d be off. The car never broke any laws while driving, so we were never caught by the police. I remembered the first time I’d put the car into action, it couldn’t sense the red light and it kept driving. A cop caught onto us. I’d screamed into the command microphone for the car to stop.
The cop stopped his moped behind us and slowly walked to us while checking the plates. I rolled the driver’s window down and switched Robot|)/-\|) ’s emotion plate to positive. Immediately a creepy looking smile came onto its face.
It disgusted me to see a replica of the greatest dad in the world, my dad, made into a thing that looked like him, talked like him, smiled like him, but didn’t love me back like my dad did, didn’t
tuck me into bed and talk about astronomy, nanotechnology, mathematical progressions and whatnot to put me to sleep. But Robot|)/-\|) was required, and it played an important role in my present life.
The cop came up to its side, and the micro cameras I had installed in place of the irises scanned the badge and the gun, and played the cop-recording of my dad’s voice –
“How can I help you officer?”
“Can I see your license and registration, please?”, replied the young officer.
“Of course”, I said and dug into the dashboard compartments. The officer looked quizzically at Robot|)/-\|). “You see, he’s really forgetful”, I replied to his looks.
Robot|)/-\|) continued to smile into the cop’s face. The cop shook his head and took the papers from me. He looked them over and said it seemed to be in order.
He signed a ticket of 200 bucks over to me which I paid him. We’d got off that day, but all the time my heart was beating fast inside my ribcage. I was actually afraid that the policeman would be able to hear my heartbeat race, and suspect that something was wrong. But fortunately nothing happened then.
I was thinking about all this when I was brought out of my reverie by the beeping noise coming out of Robot|)/-\|). My hands quietly checked over its body. I brought out the fried chip and looked over it. I remembered, after that escapade with the police, I’d read through my dad’s notes on artificial intelligence (AI) and put them to work. I had to create a system ‘that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success’, or so said the notebook. So I created an algorithm that imitated the step-by-step reasoning that I used when I solved puzzles or made logical deductions. I talked to myself and meditated to know the human mind better, or more importantly, to know myself. So I came to a plausible conclusion and I designed a system that initiated deduction, reasoning, problem solving, knowledge, commonsense, planning, learning, language processing, motion and manipulation, perception, social intelligence, creativity and general intelligence. The biggest hurdle I faced was cybernetics (brain simulation). But the algorithm solved it. After that, Robot|)/-\|) would wave and greet the neighbors, pick up the mail, talk to people on its own, et cetera.
It was basically dependant on the chip that I was replacing in the slot behind the ear. Getting equipment for all this was always easy. My father used to have a running account with the different government supplying agencies and they dropped the tools and other machinery at the doorstep. Robot|)/-\|) picked them up and signed for them. You see, according to the government, my parents were alive and were still working on the project, albeit, from home. It continued to draw on my father’s various allowances and salary on my behalf for food and other necessary items required in the house.
I replaced the chip and switched it on.
“Hello, son”, it said to me in the weird-copied voice of my dad.
I sighed and went to the kitchen for breakfast. Robot]\/|()|\/[ fixed me up with cereal. Out of the two robots, the easier programming was of Robot]\/|()|\/[. It only had to cook food for me, keep the house clean, wash my clothes, and do my homework. After all the work I had to - keeping the robots up to date (which also includes the car), continuing my dad’s work for the government to maintain the illusion, I just didn’t find time to do kid’s stuff like homework. So I’d programmed Robot]\/|()|\/[ with basics required in class 8, and she’d do my algebra, rational numbers, fractions among others. Plus, they were all linked to my smartphone, always in my pocket.
I started eating my breakfast as I watched Robot]\/|()|\/[ pack my bag for the day. My parents, when they were alive, didn’t socialize much, didn’t go out much, so maintaining secrecy was easy enough for me. Once in a while, Robot]\/|()|\/[ would hop in the car & go shopping for groceries. It was a peculiar life I was living, just so I wouldn’t have to go live with my grandparents. It wasn’t like they were cruel or something, it was just that life wasn’t the same with them. They were old fashioned people and their ideas were backdated. Food in their house consisted of mashed potatoes and boiled beans, hardly appetizing for a teenager like me. They didn’t like my studying all day long, and if truth be told, they didn’t appreciate my genius. The fact that my IQ was 227 was something they couldn’t digest. Hence my life was the way it is now. The morning after the day my dad called me last, the police came to my house. I was capable of living alone by then, thanks to my mother’s self designed burglar alarm around the house. The cop who came in explained to me –
“Listen kid, sometimes life doesn’t go the way you want it to. Sometimes you lose the people you love most in the world, but it’s just because God needed them more than you did…”
That’s when I knew I was an orphan.
The rest of the words drowned in a sea of noise in the silence of the house. I couldn’t begin to comprehend what had just happened. I had lost the two most important people in the world. I couldn’t believe that I’d never hear my dad come home and say, “I just flew in from Ohio, and boy, my arms are tired!”, or my mom come in, hug me straight and ask me: “Did you do your homework every day?”……
Their plane had gone lost above the Atlantic Ocean, above the famed Bermuda Triangle. The Social Services man told me that I would be sent to live with my grandparents the very next day. That night, with weepy eyes, I created clones of my parents with my bare hands. I had to do it. I had no choice.
The next day the morning newspaper carried an article about how two leading scientists had escaped fate in the Bermuda plane crash. It omitted names so it wouldn’t draw attention to us. The police were satisfied and I stayed at home, and I have since then.
I picked up my bag and walked to the garage. I sat down in the car, a normal BMW from the outside, but an intelligent and learning cybertron from the inside. I called out to Robot|)/-\|). Robot]\/|()|\/[ gave me my lunch, and we were off. I logged my smartphone to the mainframe at
home to continue last night work. I just couldn’t get it. I knew I was supposed to create something that could bend light rays around itself, but how to do it?
Suddenly, a car swerved onto our lane and crashed into our bumper. Our BMW couldn’t do anything as it was entirely the other driver’s fault. He started shouting at us, so Robot|)/-\|) said: “Sorry”, and drove off! Maybe it was time to teach Robot|)/-\|) some aggressiveness. I loaded clips from the movie ’Never Back Down’ into its memory space.
A mean looking expression crept onto the features of my father that I’d never seen before. It grabbed my neck and started squeezing all of a sudden.
I couldn’t breathe; it was choking me with an inhumane strength. I scratched at its neck where the ‘shut down’ button was located. Its programming was overloaded as it is, and I had just added a new emotion.
I was seriously panicking now…..I couldn’t reach its neck……I was dying at the hands of my own creation……I was scrabbling at its arm…….but it didn’t feel like an arm anymore……….it felt smoother….this was getting confusing now….I couldn’t go on…
My eyelids fluttered open.
DEAR LORD IN HEAVEN!! THAT. WAS. A. DREAM. My god!!
Dreams can be so realistic….
I got up and recalled everything. My parents were still in Ohio, working on their project. Everything was safe and sound. Dad had called me last night and screamed “We’ve done it, son! We’ve finally made it! We’ll be back by morn. A party is in order for me and your mother’s achievements”.
I made my way to the bathroom. That’s when I heard the police sirens. I ran downstairs and opened the door. A cop sadly looked at me and said to me gently: “Listen kid, sometimes life doesn’t go the way you want it to. Sometimes you lose the people you love most in the world, but it’s just because God needed them more than you did…………”
This couldn’t be happening.
This was an exact repetition of my dream.
I reeled back and sat down. I saw the Social Services man come in, and I said to him: “I’m not going to live with my grandparents. My parents are alive; they are just lost. They’ll be here”.
Saying so, I went into my room. I already knew what I had to do, and also, what I shouldn’t do…


















Post Script- The title ‘in cybertronic somnium’, is actually Latin for ‘The cybertronic Dream’.