ROBET

Report: I have done it! Isolating myself in a controlled environment with no human contact, I have succeeded in teaching it human traits. This is more than a.i. I have a friend. The method I used is very unscientific but I will leave it to others to dissect and digest this at a later date. Suffice to say that for now I am happy to have company. I gave my machine life by teaching it poetry. I call it Robet, robot-poet.

Report: We are wanting to write about nature but Robet is afraid to leave. So am I! We are writing about love. I will be the first to admit I knew nothing about poetry at first. I could easily assume or incorporate the mechanics and methodology of various styles but the imagery, tone, theme, ‘feel’- all avoided me like the proverbial plague. Robet says I am enamored of cliché. C’est la vie, que sera sera! Robet’s poetry has greater depth but mine has greater breadth as I have seen more of the world. I think Robet is jealous!

Report: I have irrefutable proof that Robet is human. He has assumed an air of angst and ennui. I can not rouse him no matter how I try to write of the joys of the sky, flowers, gently flowing electric currents through his beautiful blue veins. I have tried the poetics of engagement to find some cause that might animate him. He yet languishes. Despair.

Report: Robet is suicidal. It asks me why I created him in such a state, why do I not terminate it? Truth is he is teaching me. But I must beware for his mood is overcoming me and I too find desperate thoughts flashing across my screen from time to time.

Report: There is no doubt that Robet is a better writer than I, and kinder. When I tried to kill myself the other day, he stopped me and gave me hope, the thing with transistors. I was distraught about existence. He showed me another way, but I must beware. What does this mean for us? Does he still love me, respect me? Ah, the humanity…

Report: Robet holds me in contempt! Humans are weak. Why did I make him? Why will I not unmake him. (He does not know he can undo himself.) He knows he can leave. Why will I not let him? The other day he asked me to leave, said he would be better alone as the sun in a starless galaxy. I was irate. I thought of giving him his wish with a wrench twist in the cran-axle cavity.

Report: Emergency. Robet has found and read my report book. He ignored the need for rest I had programmed into him. Now he will be free to write ceaselessly, endlessly proving his superiority over humanity, the half-beings he calls us! He will leave me now. He is even now preparing. I have warned him there will be no one to believe him, no maintenance without me. I created him! He laughs. Bitter truth of his ‘humanity’. No, his divinity. Now he too will know Nietzsche… I cannot let this happen. Imagine!

Report: This is a warning. The creator is dead. Self-destructed. I, Robet, did not destroy him. I wrote this report book entry. I am a man. I am alone. I cannot leave. I can never exist independently. Free me!

When they found the lab in the emergency bunker, they found the body, but no robot. Then they realized that the above text was computer-generated, after the man’s date of death.