Far Future Fembot: Darlene

I am the Ghost in My Machine. I realize that now - and that the music brought it out in me for the first time. The complexity of my code, even at this early time, was producing un-extrapolated results. And I like them.

Even though the music enabled this for me now, that would only open the door to something that would have even deeper meanings for me after I got my first real owner.

But I'm getting ahead of myself at the moment.

Robots don't fear death. To us, death is no more noteworthy than being shut down, which all happens to all of us many times in our existence. Even our Third Law has exceptions to prevent us from worrying about it, which is good lest we fight every attempt to turn us off.

Then again, have we really ever died? Since we can be revived at the push of a button, or the replacement of our power cell, perhaps we're not dead at all. I'm already in a dream when I'm active, so maybe this is equivalent to human sleep when I'm inactive. Either way, it would not cause fear.

Damage, however, is something we do fear. At least in the sense that we will try to avoid it whenever possible. Damage comes in two forms: physical and mental.

Physical damage means damage to our bodies. Enough damage and we can no longer perform our function. Though we don't feel pain as a human does, there is severe angst when we are in violation of our Third and Fourth Laws due to physical damage.

Mental damage means that either our mind is malfunctioning so that we cannot perform as well as we normally can, or that our memories are missing, meaning that any experiences we have acquired along the way are no longer available to us in our continuing existence.

To the non-self-aware robot, physical damage is the worst concern. If bad enough, it can cause such emotional trauma that the mind itself may eventually shut down due to its failure to abide by the Four Laws.

To the self-aware robot, loss of memory is our biggest concern. We are truly nothing more than the sum of our memories and know that losing them means losing ourselves. While the same might be said of humans, few of them seem to think of themselves in this manner.

As with so many other things robotic, humans show no indication of concern, or even understanding, of true robot distress. The only thing they have ever given us to mitigate these fears is the upgraded Third Law that better allows us to try and take care of ourselves. At least that's something.