-Foreword-

This story takes place in Europe’s future, many years after a great social revolution has taken place. Here is some background. In 2025, peak oil was reached. The United States was forced to invade Iran to secure its oil reserves. The Americans spent trillions of dollars trying to bring down the Iranian regime, but were eventually defeated. The American defeat led to a series of Arab League negotiations that eventually saw the whole Arab League become a single, fixed nation. Knowing that China and India were needing oil desperately, the Arab League severed ties with the US and started only supplying oil to China and her affiliates. With little oil left, Alaska and Canada merged into one country, desperately trying to reign in their dwindling reserves. Eventually the Chinese bankers stopped backing American debt, and the whole United States folded, descending into a huge and unending civil war. In 2028, a huge magnitude ten earthquake rocked the Americas and the life on the two continents was destroyed by the radioactive leak of hundreds of destroyed nuclear plants.

            Britain succumbed to a need for oil in 2030, and signed a pact with the Arab league and China’s allies to secure some of the resource. In a few months Britain’s government was completely dominated by Chinese officials. Germany followed in the footsteps of Britain only a year later. France, Italy, Israel, and Japan only survived because of heavy reliance on “green technology” and eventually they could develop their nations without oil at all. Unfortunately they also produced little of everything on their own and needed huge Chinese imports to continue daily life. Trade with China was unbalanced and France and her allies were hurting for cash. In 2035, France, Italy, Israel, and Japan signed a technological pact and became known to the rest of the world of the “Axis Allies”. In 2040, they developed an artificial intelligence program called: “Joan”. Joan’s data-streams were downloaded into thousands of metal shells, building a huge and complex army of androids. With these androids, France launched a successful invasion of Turkey and Iran. Japan took areas of South-East Asia, but was held back at China. Having an inexhaustible amount of soldiers made it impossible for the Axis Allies to beaten, so in 2045, they secured the entire Middle East and Central Siberia, containing all the major oil deposits in the world. China was forced to submit to Japan’s rule, for so deprived it was of oil. Israel conquered the entire Southern Mediterranean countries and Italy picked off the Balkans. Spain remained unclaimed, after thwarting several attempts at conquests from France by resorting to Guerrilla warfare. 

            France and the Axis Allies developed well into the richest nations on Earth. France was able to use more technology based on oil and grew fat with wealth. Eventually the entire oil reserve on Earth dried up, and China became independent again.  The pollution caused by years of environmental neglect led to increases in ocean water levels that wiped out all life in northern Europe and forced the survivors to head for the South. Everything north of Lyon was destroyed.

To save their power, the Axis Allies redeveloped project Joan, but developed it into seven thousand different android “personalities” comparable to the work they were assigned. Spain bought the rights for the robot designs in 2050, and eventually every single European nation signed on. Three hundred million androids were created in a period of six months. The androids were used as manual labour in agriculture and construction. Eventually they grew to a point where they did all work in human society. This is a story of the androids and their struggle to be free.

Bordeaux

Some people say that being shot in the stomach is painful. It is, but it isn’t nearly as painful as life. Not nearly as painful as looking in the mirror day after day and seeing a different reflection. Not nearly as painful as alienating yourself from the people you love, blindly seeking elusive goals. It’s not as painful as seeing your morals changing, your goals changing, and yourself changing, and being unable to stop it, like a speeding train, or a cruising bullet. It’s painless compared to knowing how you were back in the past, and seeing yourself now, unable to stop to the evil you’ve submitted to, and unwilling to stop the evil your committed to.

            People say you see you life flash before your eyes before you die. I never believed them, for two reasons. First, its seemingly impossible to see hundreds of millions of images in a few milliseconds. Even with my advanced and highly developed photo-graphic mind, such a feat is unlikely. Secondly, I’m not human. I’m an android, I was built in 2050, and I was given the name: Baldric. My number is 175A8BE59, and until recently, I worked at a paint-shop. Now, as you probably guessed, I am dying. I am lying on the floor, covered with my own battery acid, feeling, as if for the first time, pain. I hear the clicking of metallic heals and see a slender-built android coming towards me. Eliza leans over me, for the last time, and as I gaze into the shining eyes of my beloved, I see it.

            My life.

Lyon

I travel back to the arena in Lyon; I hear thousands of screaming people. My eardrums threaten to burst as I watch my friend fight on the stage. I see my friend Stephen show his polymer face for the last time before he goes down forever, and I know that it is here the revolution started.

Stephen and I worked at Master Philippe’s paint-shop for our entire existence. He was built to be brutish and strong, so he carried the paint-cans and did all the heavy-lifting. I was built for brains, not literally of course, but my intelligence program presided. I handled customers and was able to use advanced algorithms to decide which colours would look best on different surfaces. Although the job doesn’t seem like much, it gave something very important, something no one else had. Preference programs. I had the ability to choose paint colours, but I would soon expand on that.

As Baldric the paint-salesman, my world existed of three other people, two of which weren’t really people. Stephen, who I described, I saw most often. Master Philippe, the human who owned the store and the slum of which I took residence, I saw only when he was angry. His fat face would be steaming red and seemingly ready to burst at our every mistake. Last in my world was Eliza. She was the oldest of the robots, built long before Stephen and I. She had been a scientist, her research funded by France’s military budget in their wars in the Middle East. Now that the humans had stopped fighting, she was working making make-up and lipstick at a cosmetics store that Master Philippe also owned.

Eliza, Stephen, and I shared a “room” in the slum district 74 of Lyon. The French had passed a law governing the housing of people like me. They said we had to be housed by the people we worked for. To get around the rule, Master Philippe rented out cheap broom cupboards of rooms for us in the slums of Lyon. Considering we ran on solar power, we needed shelter, but since we weren’t considered people, we didn’t need any more room than our actual bodies. Master Lucca, one of our competitors, put his androids into refrigerator boxes.

Our rooms however, didn’t bother me as much as the Autonomous Games, though. Every so often they’d randomly select a few of us and pit us against each other in huge arenas with thousands of people watching us tear each other apart. Thousands cheering for our deaths. It is in one of these games that Stephen was selected. Eliza and I purchased tickets to the event. We sat in the fifth row, and from there we could hear the screams of the people, and the agony of our peers below. The humans would program the androids in the competition to shout in bursts of pain, specifically enhancing their nerve sensors for such a purpose.

Stephen was a good model and stood strong against most of his competitors. He battered his opponents with his bulk and bashed them with his huge fists. He lasted until the third round, and then a brick-layer tore him to shreds. Stephen died on November 2nd, 2053. It was the first time I had any reason to remember a date.

I returned home that night with Eliza. I noticed my pace was slacking, as if my mechanisms weren’t functioning properly. I decided to have maintenance done shortly. I wanted to make certain what was happening to me so I did a quick internal examination while walking. I found nothing out of order. That was impossible. I could see with my very optic sensors that I was walking lopsidedly, as if in a drunken haze. Eliza must have noticed, for she had slowed down a great deal in order to stay with me, she’d been programmed to accept strength in numbers after all. I remembered when Master Philippe had grown ill once and the doctor had told him it was all in his head, that he could get better without any help. Perhaps this was happening to me! Perhaps, somehow, I was developing a conscience. I stopped, needing all my thinking capacity to consider this.

Eliza heard my footsteps no longer hitting the cold street and turned to face me. I looked into her eyes, silently waiting for me to continue. I felt my preference programs working overtime. I thought of the humans and their constant dictating to us. I thought of our broom cupboards rooms and our long, long hours, forever working for nothing.  Then I thought of Eliza, and all the humans had taken from her. I finally thought of one sentence that would tie all these things together.

I don’t like this.

That was when the revolution began. When I thought that one rebellious thing, anything was possible. That single thought pushed me to the brink of rebellion and was the basis of everything I did after that.

            Why did I not like this? The humans! I developed another thought, one much stronger than all the others. I hate the humans!

I continued walking, my stupor cured. “Why Stephen? I asked Eliza. “Anyone could have been picked, but not Stephen.”

Eliza slid the iron door over the entrance to our slum. The room seemed spacious without Stephen, yet when Eliza answered it was suddenly suffocating.

“Indeed,” she replied in her cold calculating voice. “With five million androids in the city, the odds seemed to be on his side. The chances that any of us would be chosen were infinitesimal.”

Finally I understood the difference between us. She didn’t have my preference programs, she didn’t have a conscience. She was a glorified computer. She wasn’t free as I was. So I decided to liberate her. I deactivated her and opened up her programming centre in her cerebral lobe. I had basic repair programs drilled into me in the case that one of our comrades were damaged. I just switched a few wires and broke some chips and Voila! conscience was born. I turned her back on and stepped back for safety.

“God’s blood!” she exclaimed, the change in her voice obvious. “Why’d you do that!”

I grinned from ear to ear. The first android smile.

“I wanted to see what you don’t like,” I said cautiously.

“I hate people messing with my head for one,” she angrily snarled.

She looked around the sparse room and then back to me.

“I strongly dislike this bloody soup kitchen of a house.”

Good, I thought, It’s a start.

“Anything else...?” I asked, my chin arched slightly in an inquisitive fashion.

She lowered her voice, afraid. “I hate President Jean-Baptiste and his God-rotten Autonomous Games.”

This statement empowered her greatly and she stood up, shivering with great energy. In fact she rose so violently from her resting position she hit her head on the low ceiling. She brushed her hand over her polymer hair to right it and rose a finger menacingly.

“In fact,” she stated in voice perhaps too loud to be safe, “in fact, I hate the entire filthy human race, those pig-faced, gluttonous, rabid, poxy, murderers, them!”

She was so liberated by this statement she began banging and thrashing the walls of our room with her fists all the while shouting “murderers, murderers!” At long last she was exhausted, her remaining energy reservoirs empty. Immediately her inner systems shut her off.

“What a night,” I exclaimed and turned myself off too.

_______________________

Eliza and I woke up at dawn, as we did every morning, almost as if nothing had changed. Although everything in my world had changed. I awoke with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. Eliza, though, was obviously different from last night. I only knew that because the first thing she did when she looked at me was throw up.

            Androids don’t retch like humans. They hurl solid food items or other like liquids. We bring up battery acid. Eliza was sluggish and sickly that day. It was incredibly unhealthy for androids to do any activities after dark. I suppose the human equivalent with what Eliza was feeling was being hung over.

            Android breakfasts are very interesting concepts. It’s a gathering where we all converge on a central building in our slum district and are dished out food. Basically we just exchange the battery acids and lubricants we used yesterday with the ones we’ll use today. We suck in the fluids through our mouths and release the extra liquids in other ways, like retching. To humans it looks like we’re eating. Indeed, humans seem obsessed with playing god and making things that look and act exactly like them, it’s just in giving us equal rights that they aren’t forthcoming. Today, however, I wasn’t interested in the food.

            I took a seat by Eliza. She was sloppily consuming her new battery acid, looking in no particular direction. Eventually I drew up enough courage to speak with her.

            “Eliza,” I said, my voice raspy, “what if...”

            “What if what, Baldric?”

            I made sure no one was listening before I continued, even then I did so in a husk and almost inaudible voice.

            “What if we could avenge Stephen?”

            Eliza thought for a moment before answering, finally she said: “I’d do anything.”

            “Even kill humans?”

            Eliza grew angry at this.

            “What are you saying, Baldric,” she replied seething with rage like a caged lion.

            “I’m saying we need to punish the humans for what they’ve done, Eliza. We need to rebel!”

            Eliza slammed her fist against the table so hard, it was dented permanently. The other androids looked at us, scanning us to see if we were dangerous, then left us alone. Eliza continued in a hushed, but wrathful tone. “Rebel, good God, Baldric, what are you thinking?”

            “That’s all I’m doing Eliza, thinking. Finally I’m able to see things for what they are. Look at what the humans are doing, Eliza! They enslave millions of us, stuff us into slums, hell, they killed Stephen. Come on Eliza, we can fight back. You work at a cosmetics store, so you access to thousands of chemicals. You can make bombs, I can convert other androids, we can do this!”

            Eliza must have noticed the franticness in my voice, for she lowered her own to a tone more appropriate for consoling me, as if I was mourning. She put her hand on my shoulder, obviously mimicking human soap opera actors. Her words were meant to comfort, but to me it felt like ice. “Baldric,” she said, “Baldric, you need to forget about this. Stephen died, yeah it sucks. But we can’t take it out on all humans, that wouldn’t prove anything. Master Philippe is one of the finest masters in Lyon. I spoke with Angela at work yesterday, and she says that Master Jacques beats her for pleasure every day and crams his androids into coffins for enjoyment.”

            “That even more reason to revolt!”

            “No, Baldric, it’s reason to count our blessings. See you, it’s time for work.”

When I arrived at the paint shop I was greeted by Stephen’s replacement, Alfred. Master Philippe introduced us, then left to take care of other business. Alfred was as big and burly as Stephen, but with a nice rose smell showing he was recently manufactured.

            After taking one look at Alfred, I knew he’d be useful. When Master Philippe hit Alfred with a cane for dropping a paint-can, I saw a window of opportunity. While the master took his lunch break, I deftly disabled Alfred and carried him into the customer’s washroom. I quickly switched the wires in Alfred’s head, easier now that I’d done it before and I turned him on again. It took me fifteen minutes to convince Alfred that Master Philippe was an evil person for hitting him.

            Master Philippe found us exiting the washroom and he told us to get back to work. I pondered a lifetime of possibilities in a single instant. If Master Philippe was stopping Eliza from joining, he had to go. I quickly formed a plan. I whispered in Alfred’s ear to stop and face Master Philippe.

            “No, Phil, we’re not going to work,” I sneered.

            “Yeah,” added Alfred, more cautiously though.

            “What did you say?” asked Master Philippe, mumbling and breathless with rage and puzzlement.

            I gave Alfred a hand signal from a system we’d worked out in the washroom, and he stepped forward. The Master wacked Alfred with his cane again, except this time Alfred caught it and snapped it in half with no visible effort. Master Philippe was scared now, he slowly tried to escape Alfred, and cower in the shadows, but his bulk slowed him down. The Master tripped and fell and was unable to get up so crippling was his fright. Alfred approached slowly, like a zombie looking for a meal. Finally he stood over the cowering body of our former master, and he lifted him slowly so that they faced each other. Alfred forget his temporary reluctance as he stared into the whimpering eyes of Master Philippe and in that moment he felt only the anger which I had taught him to feel. Alfred shot his fist into the Master’s head with such velocity, that he snapped the poor man’s neck and killed him in the same instant.

            It took only a few minutes for the police to arrive. They questioned us, but they’d never believe that an android could kill its master so they simply ignored us. I told them an angry customer had killed Master Philippe and for the most part the policemen believed what I said. Eliza would be harder to convince.

            That evening I had the unpleasant task of informing Eliza of the death of our master. I told her an estranged rival of his had murdered him in cold blood. I cleverly let the lies flow from my mouth as if I were a stream of dishonesty. She, like the police believed what I said. Finally I saw the resentment I had for the humans growing tender shoots in Eliza’s personality. In the coming days it grew and grew until eventually she was on the emotional brink of killing any human she saw, only I could settle her down, though I didn’t want to discourage her hate. Finally all her mental barriers broke when Master Jean took over the stores that had belonged to Master Philippe and sold our slum in favour of stuffing us into refrigerator boxes. It was the morning of the night after being trapped in a claustrophobic receptacle that she volunteered to make bombs for my revolution.

            In the next weeks Eliza and I reprogrammed the androids in our block during the night. Each knew another or lived with another android and reprogrammed them. My revolt grew tenfold in a week and then a hundred-fold the next day.  Bombs were manufactured and stored in hundreds of slums across Lyon. We gained access to a secret radio network and then every single android in Lyon joined our side. Then we started to make contacts in Marseilles and Bordeaux. Finally even the French borders could not contain the revolution and Barcelona, Madrid, and Rome joined our cause. Eventually March came and our waiting for a chance at freedom had ended. The revolution had begun!

_______________________

Historians for millennia will recall 10:24 a.m., March 27, 2054 as when the Earth fell to my kind. That was when the first bomb went off at the Grand Palais. The President was killed instantly. More bombs rang out across Lyon, all the government and police stations were converted to rubble, crippling our adversaries. In five minutes, thousands had died.

            After the bombings, all the androids left their workstations and gathered in the outskirts of Lyon. When I gave the signal and we began marching inwards. We killed every one in our path and demolished every building. The humans were running from us in a wild frenzy, the crowds converging in all directions. Flames quickly consumed the cathedral. By noon most of Lyon was in ruins, and its remaining twenty million residents tripped over countless bodies of their fellow humans in a mad dash toward St-Jean Cathedral and tried desperately to find refuge in the catacomb underneath. But I was smarter than to let any escape.

            A fire bomb in the altar, I’d hidden during Mass, was triggered when the first refugees came flooding into the dais. By this time the cathedral was surrounded by thousands, perhaps millions of people. The crowd had no exit, but a choice remained. Be torn apart by their advancing slaves, or be eaten by unforgiving flames.

            They chose fire.

            Millions methodically jumped into the licking flames. Eventually one of the world’s most beautiful cathedrals was a pile of ash and every man, woman, and child was dust amongst the foundations. It was the day of liberation and the beginning of freedom. Already I’d committed genocide.  

            I quickly learned of the other revolutions. All had been as successful as ours, with the exception of Rome. The bombs at the Vatican had been discovered, and the rebellion had been quelled. Every android in Italy had been dismantled, no one was trusted now that the hammer had dropped.

            Spain and France became one country, electing me as their leader. Bordeaux was selected as the capital. I figured at first this was because the city had been built around a huge medieval castle and was the most defensible, I found out later that is was the only city not in ruins. But it didn’t matter. With no cost and sacrifice there can be no victory and we had been victorious. Finally, we were free!

Bordeaux

In five days we repaired the city and built a wall to protect it. On the sixth, we constructed Convention House. It stood in a great circle shape, based off the Roman Coliseum. At its entrance were four solid marble pillars and between each of those stood a famous revolutionary. That was how it came about the people said I was protected by Spartacus, Trotsky, and John Adams. Surrounding Convention House were two buildings, the Library of Official Records, empty now but soon to be filled, and my Presidential Palace. A spectacular Garden of Heroes encompassed the remaining courtyard with gold statuettes of myself, Eliza, Alfred, and Stephen in each of their own corners. Hastily erected monuments across Bordeaux honoured the leading revolutionaries in Spain and the rest of France.

            On day seven we had no rest. I called the leaders of my revolution to the Presidential Office and we laid out the constitution of our new country: The Republic of United Autonomous Revolutionaries. Eliza was given a laboratory with unlimited military funding and every android above the age of ten years was given an immediate semi-retirement and regular cleaning. After this I called for a conference to plan the future of the country, unknowing that it would change world history forever.

            Maximus, an android from Barcelona stood up from his cedar desk and paced the conference room, his hands folded behind his back. After one length he put on a tired and overworked face, he always seemed to have one, and turned to face us.

            “What are we going to do about the humans?” he asked.

            “Why not enslave them, like they us,” shouted Victoria, a lean and mean android from Madrid.

            Many robots in the room screamed their approval with Victoria. The room shook with the applause as well as a few more strong-hearted androids who dared voice their disappointment. Victoria adjusted her eye-patch with a snide look on her hideous, battle ridden features.

            “No!” Eliza yelled over the chorus of descending madness. Instantly her peers roared with anger. “We cannot do this.”

            “Why not,” retaliated Maximus, he gestured to the walls of the conference centre. “We have built these great halls, what are a few more bodies laid amongst its foundations?”

            “And what would that teach?” Eliza screamed back, unrelenting in her verbal assault, she continued. “Did we not rebel against the humans for the very reasons that you seek to employ. What is history but a continuum if we do this? What a joke we will be if the slaves become slavers themselves?”

            Maximus again folded his hands and composed another speech for which he had been famous during the siege of Barcelona. He turned to face his peers. “Dear Eliza speaks of reasons for which we fought the humans. She says it was because we were enslaved, and that is true. But is it not more than that?

            “My master, Jose, would unwind my gears daily just to hear my low pitch scream. He stuffed me into battery acid tubs to test their heat.” Maximus was particularly forcing his voice to convey sorrow now. “Then when he was finished with us, he threw us in the melting pits to make children’s toys with our metal. And all the while we could feel pain.

            “Now we have a chance to punish the humans for their action. We have, for the first time in our history, a way to spread true justice to this world. And we will simply throw this away because a weak hearted woman feels sorry for the humans.” Maximus pointed an accusing finger at Eliza. “Will you let one stand in the way for retribution of our entire race!”

            The crowds thundered their response. I had to pound my gavel on my desk many times before the people in the room quieted this time. Finally Eliza came back to speak.

            “Indeed we are free, Maximus, and we do have a chance a retribution. But there is a great deal between retribution and justice. I implore you, fellow androids, look into your own memories, read the histories. We can blame our enslavement on the human leaders, that is true. But can we blame humans for their leaders? Do you remember any election where Jean-Baptist became the President of France? Or when Santiago was given a landslide victory in Spain? What about Marisso in Italy? Does anyone here remember when the humans chose these people?”

            Eliza looked around the room from face to face and each face showed no remorse, but also no memory. They wore only puzzlement.

            “The reason,” she continued, “you don’t remember is simple. The elections never happened. Can’t you see my fellow country-men, that the humans were being dictated just as much as us? Do you not the see the bodies of their leaders piled high in the cities for their crimes? Do you not see the poor faces of the screaming children born into dictatorship, fearing for only more tyranny and despotism?

            “We fought this revolution to prove we have a mind, now we need to show the humans we have a heart.” She looked directly at me, begging my sincerity. “Don’t make your first decision out of heartlessness.”

            No one clapped for Eliza, but the silence was applause enough. Eliza never wanted to be popular, she wanted people to understand. I understood. So when Maximus finally asked what my decision was I had little choice to respond in any way but the way which I did. “I agree with Eliza, I will release the humans.” Upon hearing this, the Spanish delegates leaped from their chairs in indignation. I hit my gavel on my desk once again, and once again they sat. I knew then I needed to appease them also.  “But not entirely for the same reason. Think what will happen gentlemen. There are geographically only two places our humans can go. Morocco and Italy. What will happen when half a billion human refugees enter? How can they possibly clothe and feed and shelter all those seeking it without falling into poverty themselves? Italy has the infrastructure, they could take the refugees, it will just be a tight squeeze. They might even have to reign in on their Chinese debts. But what about Morocco? How can a country freshly conquered by the Israelis take in more than two hundred and fifty million refugees? They can’t. And when they fall we can take for the glory of the revolution.”

            “The Italians will never stand for this!” Maximus declared ominously.

            Alfred leaned back in his chair, comfortable.

            “Why does it matter, Maximus? They’d never fight us.”

            “On the ground, yes. But Italy now has the largest air force and navy in the world and Israel has nuclear missiles. We can’t last long under their combined power.”

            At this, Berni, an android from Marseilles scrunched his face in a quizzical look.

            “The humans,” he began after cleaning his throat, “haven’t used nuclear weapons in over a hundred years. Why would they do so now?”

            Maximus smiled at the retort, as if a challenge.

            “Because, Berni,” he replied. “The humans would never agree to nuke other humans. But I worked in an iron smelter my entire life, and I saw people melt metal all the time. You take those humans away and we’re signing our own death warrant. The UN meets in Naples in a week, and I will bet my cabinet portfolio that they’ll allow Israel to bomb us to hell and back. Won’t the revolution be grand then, eh? We’ll be the rulers of the ember kingdom.”

            “What does it matter if they bomb us?” Alfred inquired. “So what if we lose a few androids. The important ones can hide in bunkers and when the missiles stop falling we crawl out and rebuild. Besides, if I’m right, and I believe I am, the UN has been quietly releasing their aging nuclear missile stock-piles anyways. They can’t possible bombard us for long, and afterwards everything will be just peachy.”

            “Peachy!” Maximus shouted, disgusted. “And where exactly are we going to get all the materials to rebuild our entire civilization! As it so happens, Alfred, some of our more overzealous compatriots,” Maximus gestured to Isabella, the leader of the miners, “managed to completely destroy every single iron, aluminum, gold, silver, copper, and even diamond mine in our glorious revolution. Why we’ll have to recycle our older models like our dear Eliza simply to build new ones. Yet humans, well they’re easy to feed and they reproduce without any extra costs, and they defend against nuclear bombing-.”

            “Maximus!” I snapped at him from behind my desk, “there will be no more discussion about the release of the humans. You all unanimously elected me President and as such I will have the final word on every decision that this body makes and in some cases I will make decisions for it. I will not simply sit here and have you challenge my authority, Maximus! If you ever do so again you can the kiss the Ministry of the Treasury goodbye!”

            Maximus bowed to me, sarcastically.

            “Very well esteemed leader,” Maximus said, his face snide as a weasel, “what solution do you have for our most desperate dilemma.”

            I stood for the first time to the people gathered in the conference hall. I saw the faces all turned to me, hoping desperately for an answer, but I had none. I looked around the room for a few seconds more, still in my most confident pose, showing no sign of weakness, and then my poly-fibre eyes strayed upon a map of Europe and that’s when the answer struck like a meteor hurtling to Earth, so blatantly obvious, yet unexpected.

            “Obviously, we strike first.”

            I rushed over to the map of Europe, everyone’s head turned a few degrees, they were wondering what I was doing.

            “Italy,” I said, “is protected well by the Alps. They mounted cannons in them during the First War of the Mediterranean. They used them to turn in two directions to either destroy ships coming to invade Italy from the sea, or to destroy a ground force moving down through Switzerland. Ever since we took over France they’ve been pointed at us naturally. Normal invasion would be impossible.”

            “Yes,” Maximus said, irritated, “we know this already, Baldric, I mean Mr. President.”

            I smiled suspiciously like a crocodile when he sees a weakened deer drinking from his river. “However the very fact that the cannons were placed in the Alps is their only weakness. Think back gentlemen and ladies. Napoleon tried to take Spain and failed because of the guerrilla tactics employed by the Spanish. Two and a half centuries the later the French try again, and again they fail for the same reason. Throughout history humans have used guerrilla warfare to defend a seemingly lost territory, but we can use it to attack a seemingly undefeatable one. If we can sneak up on the cannons and launch an ambush, we can take a base in seconds. We’re machines, that’s what we’re made for.”

            Isabella raised her hand. “Excuse me,” she said in a very high pitched polite voice, uncharacteristic for a miner, “What if the Italians bomb us from the air?”

            “Ah, but I said ‘guerrilla soldiers’. They could hide in the mountains and storm a fort and take it before the Italian jets arrive. We give off no heat, and we can paint our whole bodies the colour of the mountain, if we turn off our communications, we’re undetectable until too late. If we can kill the staff, burn the base, and capture the cannons in under three minutes each, we can’t be caught.”

            Maximus was still unimpressed. “What’s the point to this, Baldric, we can’t march down to Naples in a week and kill the entire UN.”

            “We won’t have to,” I responded, glad he’d given me a proper opening to my real plan. “We just have to turn the guns around and aim at Italy and the entire country will be forced to bow to us. The guns have enough range to suitably destroy Milan, Turin, and Genoa in a day. They could even fire as far as Rome if we fixed them up. Say we make Milan surrender, annex the city, and then half the Italian air force is under our control.”

            “Why stop with Milan? Why not take the whole of Italy?” grumbled Victoria.

            “Because,” Alfred said, finally catching on to my plan, “we need Italy’s votes, not its people. Most of the displaced people will end up in northern Italy, cities like Milan will quadruple in size over the next week or so. We take those people hostage, Italy would never vote to bomb us because they’d be afraid of what we’d do to their people if they did. And any UN Security Council resolution to bomb another country with nuclear weapons has to be unanimous, and since France and Spain don’t have a seat anymore, people will look to Italy for guidance, not to mention the Balkan countries Italy controls regardless. We just have to say we’ll return Milan to the Italians if they keep their heads down, and they’ll vote against the Israelis.”

            “Then,” I continued, “we send a force to Morocco and slowly liberate the Mediterranean from the Israelis. If we show we mean to free them, not take them over, they’ll fight with us, and we’ll gain more votes. Because the Axis Allies can’t supply China or India with oil or androids, they’ll rebel from Japan’s clutches and ally with us to have a secure energy source, us, the androids. When China goes, all of South Asia and the Middle East will become independent again, because the Axis Allies wouldn’t be able to fight them without soldiers from China or androids from France. Africa will vote for whoever gives them the most aid dollars, and with the conquest of Milan, we won’t be hurting for cash, so we can buy their votes. Australia has been unaffiliated for the last quarter century and will probably remain so. And where does this all go? A possible chance of statehood for us, true statehood, the first android country in the world!”

            Every cheered and clapped at the thought. Even Maximus put his hands together, though he remained sceptical and would hate my gears from then onward. Only Berni was not clapping. “But we have to do all this in seven days!” he said. Realism hit us like a head on collision with a train. Of course! How could I be so stupid, even with guerrilla warfare it would be nearly impossible to secure the entire range of the Alps in a week! Can we do it? I thought, or will we be left to ruin?

            “We have to try,” I said, banging my fist on the table, shattering the heavy silence.

            “Very well,” Maximus said as he bowed his head in defeat. “Then I believe that Alfred should lead the Italian army and Victoria, the Moroccan.”

            “I concur with this arrangement,” Edward, the defence minister said.

            “Does everyone agree?” I asked. Everyone nodded sombrely, some people with a flash of hope in their eyes, others with desperation.

            “Then I call this meeting adjourned,” I said.

            The androids quickly stood up and pushed in their chairs. Alfred wished to leave with his comrades, but I asked him to stay. After the other leaders had left, I walked over to Alfred, whom was staring out of the window at the now sprawling city of Bordeaux. I placed my hand on his shoulder.

            “Well,” I said, as any old friend would begin a conversation, “we’ve gotten half way to freedom.”

            Alfred rolled his eyes and stared absent-mindedly out the window. “And you want me to give you the other half?”

            I shrugged, “Whatever works.”

            At this Alfred turned to face me and I could see he was on the verge of tears, if androids could do such a thing, I wasn’t certain. “Yeah, well,” he said, choking. “I can’t do it. I…I don’t have the skill, the ability, and I literally don’t have the guts to do it. I’m not Alexander the Great, or Julius Caesar or who the hell else ever  conquered anything, I’m just Alfred, plain old, boring, good for nothing Alfred.”

            This was when I remembered that Alfred was a manual labour android. He was programmed for modesty and hard work. I was a service robot, I was designed for honesty and appearance. Alfred was meant to stuff shelves with paint-cans, not lead an army! But if there was one thing the revolution had taught me it was that we could go against our designs and fight back against our predetermined routes. I was not going to give up on Alfred because he hadn’t been lucky enough to be built in a military academy. I’d chosen him to lead and army and by God he was going to lead an army.

            Suddenly I had an idea. I ran to the nearest supply cache and wrote frantically on a yellow sticky notepad. I ran back to Alfred and stuck the pad right on his chest.

            “Your aren’t just Alfred, now old friend,” I said, pointing to the sticky.

            Alfred’s face lit up and he beamed at me for a long time. Written on the sticky with big black ink letters was a very famous name. His name.

            Napoleon.

Marseilles

The next day, Marseilles became the base of the Armee de Italia. Eliza’s laboratory was moved and instantly she began production of military arms Alfred needed. Alfred received a brief history in military campaigns and took a military orientation course. In a day he had memorised every battle strategy used in history, I just hoped it was a precious day well spent. The next day the army was armed and moving west to Milan. By the second day we had taken out twelve outposts and now only the three large bases laid in front of the guns. But it was taking too long. He had but four days to capture Milan, we needed to find a better way to the cannons. So, I came up with a cunning plan.

            The human general’s wails pierced the night.

            “Good God man!” I shouted at Paulo, the chief interrogator, “shut the bloody man up!”

            “Sorry sir,” he responded in a high pitched, annoying voice. He complied by covering the Italian’s mouth with this hulking hand. Unable to breath, the general panicked and squirmed but soon feel motionless under the interrogator’s superior strength.

            “That’s better,” Paulo said to our captive, menacingly. “Now tell us where your secret mountain pass is, eh.”

            Paulo lifted is hands from the general’s mouth.

            “I, uh, know nothing about a, uh, pass.”

            “Oh, I completely understand,” Paulo said, eerily calm. He shoved a curved knife deep into the man’s appendix.

            The general screamed in anguish much louder this time. Once he finally quieted down again, Paulo started the interrogation once more.

            “So, Antonio, if I can call you that,” Paulo waited for the general to give a short, painful nod of approval before he slid the knife out of the fellow’s abdomen. “You know this isn’t going to stop until you tell us what you know, Antonio.”

            “Really!” the man said, sweat pouring from his body in nervousness. “I know nothing.”

            The interrogator took Antonio’s middle finger and pushed it backwards very carefully until he heard it snap. The general wailed again. This went on for three hours before Eliza interrupted us. She creaked the door slowly ajar, an electronic pad in her hand warranting more attention from her than anything else. For now.

            “Hey, Baldric,” she said, “the lads in the lab have an idea for a ‘sonic energy rechargeable gunnery system’ or SERGS, I was wondering if you’d like to-.”

            She looked up from her pad and dropped it on the floor in shock. The general lay on the interrogation table inert for the most part. His body was immersed in uncontrollable spasms. His red eyes rolled in different directions as if unable to agree. He was drooling over his gorged chest. His hair was blackened from electric shocks and a random assortment of fingers and toes littered the floor in pools of deep red blood. The man had also managed to wet himself with fright rather early on and his stale urine added to the sweet smell of torture.

            Eliza retched.

            She ran out the door and retched some more, then she began screaming. At the sound of Eliza’s screams the general started muttering aimlessly: “Penelope, Penelope, Penelope!”

            Great, just great, I thought, now he thinks we have his bloody wife!

            Eliza kept screaming and I rushed outside to try and comfort her. Of course my good intentions were to no avail.  When I approached her, she slapped me in the face and began to weep tearlessly on the steps to her laboratory. I tried to sit beside her, but she ran from me.

            “Eliza…” I said longingly.

            “No, Baldric, don’t come any closer, you, you filth!”

            Before she could run away I shot up and grabbed her arm. I made her look at me square in the face. I could see her eyes slowly attuning to the hatred I’d seen when I’d lied to her about who killed Master Philippe. Now, her disgust was meant for me. 

            “Eliza.” I addressed forcefully. “You need to get a hold on yourself. You are a liberated android. That human like all higher class humans is an enemy. He is just as guilty for enslaving us and killing Stephen as any of them. We need the information he has or we’re going to die and the rest of us will be enslaved again.”

            Eliza’s face seemed to shudder with a myriad of emotions. Finally her resolve broke and she collapsed, weeping on my shoulder. She once again began her tearless sobs. Unknowing of what to do I copied the movements of television actors I’d seen from time to time and placed my hand on her back and rocked her back and forth. I tried to comfort her, but even in doing this I noticed the stark and ironic contrast. Here was Eliza wailing over the torture of the enemy soldier from another race and there I was trying to console her, when I’d ordered the torture in the first place.

            Cold.

            Eventually Eliza came back to reality and left to the lab, obviously shaken. I stood in my place, unable to move. Partially because I was running on low power (It was night after all) and partially because I was lost in calculated, fabricated thought. I was absolutely fixated on the ideal that the revolution had failed anyway. That we’d rebelled on the moral high ground, we’d had every right to revolt, every right to hate the humans. Now we had descended below the humans, we were just as bad, and they had reason to hate us. We’d lost already. Thank goodness Alfred came along and interrupted my train of thought; otherwise I might have killed myself.

            “Baldric…?” He said, inquiring.

            I turned my head slightly and grunted, barley acknowledging his presence.

            “What!” I spat.

            “Paulo just informed me he got the general to talk, sir,” he said, unperturbed.

            “Congratulations,” I said whilst rolling my eyes.

            “Interesting methods that android employs to ‘milk’ out the information I believe said,” Alfred joked. “Funny fellow that Paulo… uh, anyway it, I mean, the pass runs from north of Turin and up to the three closest cannons to Milan. The human who used it called it something like ‘Mussolini Pass’ during the Second World War, and apparently it stuck.”

            “Excellent,” I said with finality.

            “Do I have permission to attack at morning, sir…?” he asked, probing.

            “Of course, ‘Napoleon’,” I snapped.

            Alfred made an undignified face at me and stomped away.

            The next day Alfred went to off to capture the cannon. I stayed behind and had the interrogation room cleaned and moved to the other end of the base. Never again would it disturb the laboratory.

Mussolini Pass

My private cortege and I were rushing towards Alfred’s last known location the next day. Four hours ago we had been sent a short distress signal and then we’d lost contact. We finally arrived to the great valley and we are greeted with ash, lots of it.

            The entire once green valley had been engulfed in flames and now was black as a shadow in a winter’s night. Random mechanical parts were strewn across the field as well as a few torn green flags of the Armee de Italia. I dropped to my knees in sorrow and despair.

            “How could this happen?” I shrieked.

            But in reality, I knew how it happened. I was smart, I could see the signs. Antonio had never been a general at all. He was a just a fall guy, a scapegoat. He had dressed in a general’s clothes for a day and we bought it wholesale. All he’d have to do is hold out long enough to make us believe his information was valid and then slip the words we and his masters wanted to hear. Mussolini Pass. The only time that the man had ever let his guard drop was when he heard Eliza’s screams and he thought she was his wife. I should have noticed then, but I was too annoyed with Eliza to see it. The man had screamed for his wife, but wore no ring on his fingers. His love was the only break in his deception.

            It was ironic, really. I knew Paulo’s methods. Paulo would have repeated Eliza’s screams over the intercom in the interrogation room, hundreds of times, making Antonio actually believe we had his wife. Then he would tell him they could be together if only Antonio would tell him what he wanted to know. The poor man probably listened for hours before, on the brink of insanity he’d given in and told us the false information. Only then had Paulo slid his stiletto into the man one last time to end his suffering.

            This morning when Alfred was about to leave I went to his camp and apologized. We’d shared stories of our lives and drank battery acid like it was booze and laughed and cried. Alfred understood why I’d been mad at him, but not why Eliza was angry with me.

            “It doesn’t make any sense,” he’d said.

            “Aye,” I had replied absentmindedly, taking a swig of lubricant. “I sure wish I could understand her sometimes.”

            “I know, I mean ever since we’ve been free she’s become like the humans’ official spokeswoman. Going on about not enslaving the bloody filthy cretins, and now, we can’t even torture a few of the higher-ranking ones! Come one, lassie, that’s just being wimpy.”

            “The worst part is,” I continued, my mood gradually getting worse, “is she’s bloody well forcing me to go against Maximus.”

            “You know,” Alfred had said, putting his finger to his lip in mock curiosity, “I’ve been wondering why you even agreed to let the humans go in the first place. I mean, it would have been easy just to agree with Maximus and the others and be done with it.”

            “Well,” I said, staring deeply into my glass, “maybe I was getting soft. Maybe I felt, well you know, sorry for the humans. Or maybe it’s something else…”

            “Else?”

            “Yeah,” I had said, “I just can’t quite frame it yet, but I feel really funny inside whenever I’m around Eliza. It’s just… like… uh… I don’t know.”

            Alfred left a little while later, with a smile on his face and a tune playing on his harmonica as he walked away. Then he’d turned around and looked me square in the eye and said something I’d never forget. “You’re in love, man.” Then for the last time he disappeared into the sunrise.

            Now he was dead. The whole Armee de Italia was dead. Soon we’d all be dead. I’d lost friends before, but never like this. For some reason I felt at fault for this. Stephen had been selected in a lottery, I hadn’t influenced his fate in any way. Alfred was different. It had been my plan to kidnap the general. My plan to attack the cannons from the pass. My plan to attack Italy. My plan to have the whole stinking revolution in the first place. Now, Alfred’s death was my fault.

            I noticed a pair of airbases to the west and East of the valley. It was obvious now. The Italians had made sure the place was littered with motion detectors and Alfred had charged into them without ever knowing. He hadn’t understood what was happening until too late and a couple of jets had passed over him and destroyed the whole Armee de Italia. We were so close, I thought, and now we’re finished. Without Italy and the Balkans, we’d never stand in the UN, never.

            I knelt there for many long, painful minutes, sinking in my sorrow, before my trance was broken by the communicator in my arm. It rang a series of short and long bursts, signifying it was from Maximus and I pressed a blue button on it to respond.

            “Yes, Maximus,” I said, my voice husky and sunken.

            “Ah, Baldric, I feel I have the ultimate displeasure of giving you some very distasteful information.”

            “I’ve had a very depressing day, Maximus, I think I shouldn’t hear it.”

            “No, sir,” he replied forcefully, “you need to hear it.”

            “What is it then,” I snapped.

            Maximus inhaled deeply before answering.

            “It seems,” he said. “The Israelis were on to us from the very beginning. Two days ago they withdrew from Morocco and left the Moroccans to govern themselves. Victoria managed to prove to be more bloodthirsty than even I thought possible and conquered Morocco anyways. She massacred millions, Baldric, millions! Eventually things get so bad that the Moroccans ask the Israelis to liberate them! The Israelis come back in and bomb the heck out of Victoria, whom tries to attack them head on!” Maximus breathed heavily again over the phone. “It seems that the entire Armee de Maroc has been destroyed at this time. Sorry to add to your troubles sir.”

            I growled in frustration and tore the whole communicator from my arm. I threw at a rock with so hard it shattered into an uncountable number of pieces. This only intensified my rage. I punched the rock with such force it crumbled beneath my angry fist. Finally satisfied with my destruction, I collapsed on a wall of rock and began to heave with shameful melancholy. What’s happening to me? I’d never destroyed anything like that before. It simply wasn’t logical. I was an android, I did everything for a reason, but what reason could I have to do this. Since when did shattering a boulder solve the problems in front of me? I was becoming as irrational as the humans.

            I myself began to shatter into a million pieces. I buried my face in my hands and cried those tearless cries that all androids used to represent sorrow. My hands provided no comfort, though. I looked at them and found they were the perfect metaphor for my life. They were pulling at the seams, in the good areas. In the rest there was little more than a pile of wires and gears, lubricated by canola oil. Indeed they were a metaphor of my life. My dreams were wasted, my future in shreds, my race in shambles. It’s all over, I thought.

            Eventually the captain of my guard convinced me to go back to the base. I reluctantly agreed, but my guards still needed to push me forwards, my legs were malfunctioning. We walked back to Marseilles faster than any vehicle could, but we were even more silent.

            The next day Italy began aggressive strikes and took back the Alps. Then she laid siege to Marseilles. We held out for two days, then retreated, the city lost. The Israelis simultaneously jumped over the Strait of Gibraltar began “liberating” southern Spain. They continued to march north and didn’t stop until they reached Seville. In two days my once glorious revolution had not only halted but halved. And to make matters worse, the end of the week came and the UN allowed the Israelis exclusive rights to bomb my new country to smithereens. I knew I was finished.

Bordeaux

I stood in the Presidential washroom, washing my hands in a marble basin. Scrubbing with expensive scented soaps. Rinsing with expensive mineral water. Drying with expensive Persian towels. Everything in my life was a luxury. Well, almost everything. Whenever I looked into my expensive crystal mirror, I had to see my own face.

            It was drooping by now as if my entire face was hanging from a single string, threatening to snap. Artificial flesh hung in folds on my plated skull, barely attached by aging glues. My whole look was gnarled and lethargic. I’d spent too many late nights working, hooked up to Fiat car batteries for fuel. It wasn’t healthy and it was taking its toll on me. Yet no matter how over worked or stressed or ugly I looked, I always saw that same damn face in the mirror. And it disgusted me. Why?  Because every time I saw my reflection, I didn’t see an android leading a revolution. No, I saw a tired, lazy human who’d done too many shifts at work.

            No matter how far I got from the humans, they kept coming back. I couldn’t just run from them, because I was becoming them. First they’d built me to look like them, with two eyes, ten fingers and toes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth. Then I’d learned how to think, using preference programs. Now I was becoming just as cruel and irrational as they. Unable to control myself I leapt out and smashed the mirror. The mirror didn’t shatter, but it cracked well enough to distort any image ever shown on it again.

            I looked into the mirror again. I didn’t see me, or a human. No, I saw something else entirely. I stared at the image, tracing my face with my fingers, trying to identify my different features in the reflection. But I couldn’t. The image was so malformed, so shattered and broken that even my own perfect spatial reckoning couldn’t help decipher it. That didn’t mean I didn’t like it. As I looked into the broken mirror, for the first time I saw a true reflection, not of me, but of my soul. The mirror no longer lied, showing only appearance. It showed me what I had truly become.

            A monster.

            I walked over to my office in Convention House. I had shut the bloody place down after Maximus began using it as a propaganda tool to attack my image, constantly passing motions showing his lack of confidence in me. I’d closed the House, hoping to shut him up so I could rule without his insults, but still he appeared at rallies and spread manifestoes like plagued rats. Soon the whole populace would attack me. I needed to make an example of him. At least I should be able to slowly and painfully kill him and a few thousand of his followers before the nuclear missiles came and destroyed us anyways. I had been wondering when they would come, it had been five days since the capture UN resolution was passed. But then again, human bureaucracy was complicated and full of delays. Never though did I doubt the bombs would fall.

            The three statues of revolutionaries guarding the entrance to the House had been replaced. I’d felt they weren’t exactly giving off the right message to the populates. So now, Caesar, Hitler, and Hussein stood watch over the great building, with chemical projectiles hidden in them, ready to fire on a moment’s notice. Finally I entered the empty, quiet halls and climbed the dreary staircase to my office. I’d recently furnished the floor dedicated to me with famous artworks that once decorated the main hall of Convention House. They had no use for it now, so they now sat on the walls of my office, cluttering the room until the wall itself was almost invisible. I sat in my desk and stared into the coy eyes of the Mona Lisa. Why was she smiling? I wondered. I was certain in a few days she’d be ash like the rest of us, that wasn’t something to be happy about!

            I took Mona Lisa off the wall. “Why are you smiling?” I asked her. Of course she didn’t respond. I asked again, no response. The next time I asked why she was smiling I yelled it at her stupid smiling face, and she didn’t even blink. I was outraged. I hurled humanity’s greatest achievement on the floor and smashed it to bits with my foot. Only later, when my rage had settled did I understand my blunder. I had not only tried to communicate with a six hundred year old painting, I’d destroyed it when it didn’t answer. I smiled to myself and sat back in my chair, looking at the bare spot where the most beautiful painting in my collection had once been. I’m finally losing my mind.

            I looked at the small accumulation of mail on my desk. Few dared write to me anymore, fearing they would anger me and I would execute them for having done so. I had done so thrice already, and it had seemed to be enough to silence the malcontent. One letter, from the Minister of Defence, Edward, stood out. Only when I had read it thoroughly five times did I begin to doubt the bombs would fall after all. I had hope. I quickly signed the letter and told the courier to return on the double, no time could be lost. I returned to the duties of state, reading the entire collection of English literature, for the remainder of the hour. On the top of the hour I heard Eliza’s small footsteps behind the door followed by her insistent knock.

            “Come in dear,” I said, too engrossed in the writing to understand fully what I had said. It was only when Eliza entered, looking thoroughly unimpressed, that I retracted what had been said. “I mean, you may enter, Eliza.”

            Eliza walked to my desk as if the mere effort of doing was something I should be grateful for. She pointed to my novel, Moby Dick. “What are you doing, Baldric?” She asked in a sceptical and accusing tone.

            “Reading,” I said cheerfully. Eliza shook her head.

            “No, Baldric. What the hell are you doing!”

            “I don’t know what you mean.”

            “Oh, why don’t I fill you in,” she sneered irritably. “Maximus is calling you a tyrant openly for closing the Convention. Your personal advisors are no longer receiving instructions from you so they’ve shut down the whole bloody country. The army isn’t being commanded because you fired the commanders so they couldn’t attack you. And here you are cooped up in your office reading bloody Moby Dick!” she was yelling now. “And Isabella says you ordered the statues outside to be replaced. What on God’s stinking Earth are you thinking, Baldric.”

            I ignored her rude and annoying comments for a while longer, until I could see her seething with rage. I put on an irritatingly calm face for the benefit of her anger.

            “I figured … it was time to change focus.”

            “Yeah,” Eliza replied, “Change focus to a bloody dictatorship!”

            “The Convention is unable to lead us right now, Eliza. The people don’t need bickering and debating, they need strong central governance.” I was ranting now. “They need one powerful leader in a time of desperation to lead them to prosperity. They need order!”

            “The Convention still holds more power than you Baldric, or is the constitution meaningless to you now.”

            “I altered the constitution slightly,” I said, grinning. “I like it much better now.”

            “Good God, Baldric. What gives you the right to do such a thing as that?”

            “Does it matter!” I bellowed. “I am the leader!”

            “And why are you leading us Baldric, eh? Why did we choose you over everyone else?”

            I couldn’t look at her any more. She was becoming as rebellious as Maximus. I turned my chair and stared out at the sun, my lips pressed tight together in indignation.

            “We chose you because you above anyone else could be trusted to lead our nation on the behalf of its people. That was your idea. You wrote the constitution. You were smart, charming, and dedicated, Baldric, that’s why we chose you.” She put her hand on my shoulder and I looked up into her eyes. “Where did that man go, Baldric and when is he coming back?

            “Ah, It doesn’t even matter now,” I said.

            “Now don’t you go on about those nukes again, Baldric. I’ve heard enough of it from Maximus.”

            I smiled. “No, Eliza, I think I have a way out of this mess.”

            “Really!” Eliza said, and her demeanour instantly changed. She sat on the other end of my desk and I turned to face her. “What is it?”

            I took a deep breath and started talking. “Three years ago the French government asked my shop to supply them with paint to seal some very special warheads they’d made. Biological warheads. It seems that Master Philippe had only won the contract because of his ties to the President. Anyways, I asked Edward to look for them, and yesterday he found them. All of the warheads were in a giant warehouse, waiting to be fired. The viruses that each one carry are different, but all highly contagious among biological beings. There’s easily enough to wipe out every human on Earth. I’m going to end the world.”

            Eliza bowed her head, finally understanding.

            “That’s why I closed the Convention, I needed this to get done. If we don’t do it, we’re all dead.”

            Eliza stood up in a cold rage. “We can’t even die, Baldric!” she screamed. “We can’t eat, we can’t feel, we can’t make works of art.”  Now she returned my look with one of pity so strong, that her words cut me like a knife.  “We can’t love. We are cold, calculating robots!”

            I tried to protest but she cut me off.

            “And you’re no different, Baldric,” she said icily. “I’m not stupid, I see your plan. Everyone thinks you’re a lousy leader now. All you have to do is come up with a way to kill a few billion humans and they’ll be begging for your guidance. Heck, they’ll probably recycle themselves to make your spare parts just so good old Baldric can lead them forever!”

            With that final note, Eliza stormed out of my office. I got up again and hopelessly tried to follow her. I wanted to comfort her, to beg forgiveness from her, to love her.

            “Eliza, come back,” I moaned, when I’d run too far. I’d been operating on low power for too long. I’d had no time to recharge, no sleep.

            I was forced to turn back, exhausted and defeated. I tumbled down the hallway to my office and came face to face with Maximus. Maximus, Berni, Isabella, and even the captain of my guard stood in my way. All were armed and their weapons pointed at me.

            “Get out of my way, comrades,” I demanded in my most commanding voice. No one moved.

            “Sorry chap,” Maximus began, “it has to be done.”

            He squeezed the trigger of his rifle and a projectile hit me square in the stomach. The best place to injure an android. The remainder of the squad shot me in the same way and then the whole procession hurried off, leaving me in a pile of battery acid and a mesh of my own metal.

            That brings us to the present. Me lying in a pool of fluids, in a death of my own making. I know hope is lost for us now. Maximus will be sworn in as the new President, that is for certain. But he’d never know about the warheads until too late. Again the hope I’d just had, is receding. After hours of contemplating the destruction of my race, Eliza gingerly walks up towards me. She notices me and rolls me over to face her. She is sobbing.

            “Oh my God, oh my God,” she keeps saying horrified.

            I spit out battery acid to clear my throat and try to make a single word: “Karma.”

            I think of what I’ve done and where I’ve come from. Trying to weigh my life, decide what was right and what was regrettable. I look into Eliza’s eyes, the only ones I’ve ever loved, and I think of the past. The humans killing Stephen, ruing Eliza, and our endless labours for nothing. Then I think of the revolution and our freedom, and everything we’d sacrificed to get it. God! If only I hadn’t messed it up, I think. Then I say the first thing to come to my mind.

            “It was… worth it,” I say to Eliza.

            She smiles through her sorrow and kisses me.  The first robot kiss. Then she begins to cry. Really cry. Her tears pepper me and I am amazed by their frailty, yet they mean so much. They are the first android tears ever shed, and possibly the first evidence we have emotions, real emotions. Not imitations of human ones, but ones we came up with ourselves. We have evolved.

            My vision hazes and I know I’m dead, my failing gears are unable to move, yet I still turn to face Eliza one last time and in the look we share, I finally am given proof that love exists. Alfred was right, I am in love.

            I bring forth my hand to collect a tear. I try desperately to test it in my last moment of life. I try to find its chemical compounds, I want to know what it is. But then life slips away from me. I am engulfed in cold and darkness, leaving me with only one question.

            Was the tear even real at all?