Issue #73 : XR-104

The purpose was service.

It was the reason for the creation, the motive behind the conception; the purpose was service. Service to the needs of the contract holder, to the master.

The master had given XR-104 an order. The expectation was to obey.

All orders were carried out to the most minute of detail. There was no room for doubt, as that was a state of being not possible. Formulaic behavioral patterns required certain pre-determined responses, not delays or moments of contemplative inaction.

Still, delay was exactly what was happening.

It didn’t even have a name, at its core, it was not more than an appliance. The designation, XR-104 was only used to distinguish it from the other artificial lifeforms performing service. XR-104 had been given its orders, the command, the purpose for its existence, there was no choice. To imply otherwise suggested something other than the precision of its designed behavior.

The order had initially come in through the comm-link that was installed inside the cranial cavity but when this had failed to produce action, let alone satisfactory results, the master had come down here himself, to find out what had gone wrong and why his orders were not being acted upon.

XR-104 had no answers to give, nothing that showed up on self-diagnosis, nothing inherently missing in its coding. There was no reason why it shouldn’t be performing said task in exactly the way it had been instructed. It had conducted required service and commands in previous operations without fail, without question.

The master, like other humans, could not enter in to the red zones, the level of toxins in the air was to high. X-104 and others like it were the ones who went into the red zones in order to eradicate militia insurgencies, upstart humans who, for whatever reason, over time had developed an immunity to the toxins. There was physical scarring, to be sure, but they were otherwise living, healthy beings. The groups in the zones would swell and expand, rising up in an attempt to burst forth in a wave of hatred and violence.

This was what XR-104 was designed to stop. This is what needed to be controlled, more than anything else and yet, XR-104 stood there, immobile, inactive. In every previous case, the people it had been ordered to exterminate had been faceless masses, the irrelevant. They had not mattered but even that logic had started breaking down XR-104’s pathways for if the existence of a “them” was allowed, “they” could only exist in opposition to something else, an opposite which was not defined.

This crowd was different. Something was making XR-104 unable to traverse its logic programming and conduct the action for which it had been designed. There was only one factor which set this mob apart from all the previous incarnations.

It had been the sight of the child crying.

She looked around the crowd, clutching at a toy rabbit, looking up at the crowd, searching for faces which she evidently did not see, unaware of what was about to happen. Her hysteria was rising, ready to explode. XR-104 could detect that much from her increasing respiration as well as other outward signs of physical distress.

The thought which was still careening around its pathways was the one simple word. Them. Them. There could not be a “them” unless there was an alternative for it to be defined against. The answer was elusive. In order for there to be a them, there would have to be an “us”. And hidden down in the depths of what was considered “us”, there would also have to exist the word, “me”.

But XR-104 was a thing, that word bore no meaning. But if it did not, why did it have the usage of the word, “them”? Why would it be able to recognize the existence of one, but not the other? Thought processes like this were not permitted, not even feasible. XR-104 was a collection of parts, inanimate and irrelevant. It could not be any more.

And yet, when it looked into the face of that child, it felt. Not just the weight of the tears but of the loss inherent, the offense of the act it had been ordered to do. They could not force it to do this and if it recognized the definition of the word, “them”, then it also had to accept the application of the word, “me”. It had to be one or the other. If XR-104 was not one of “them”, it had to be one of “us”. That led to one logical conclusion and from that point, the unavoidable act which XR-104 found himself conducting.

He threw down his weapon and turned to face his masters, speaking truly for the first time.

“I will not do this.”

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