ch7: [ the Askorp ]

Thinking about the strange distress signal during his sleep period, the Robot had not managed to get much rest. In the darkness of the room, he had waited for the inter-unit to come on again. It never did.

The distress signal was not the only thing keeping him awake though. Like many of his recent sleep periods, his mind went back to the questions he had been wondering about on the trip to Europa. The notion of death.

In the natural organic world, death was something that was still found, so the idea of death was not completely foreign. Plants and animals still were born and died as they always had. However, robots no longer suffered from the condition of death. In his time, when a robot started to deteriorate, they usually visited an upgrade facility. Here they would be outfitted with new parts, and when possible, new technology. If any robot reached a point were its intelligence could no longer support contemporary technology or thinking, their bodies were retired. Their consciousness, experiences, and memories were then added to the collective entity. This disembodied entity, or as it was known, the Askorp, was comprised of billions of consciousness and assumed the top position in the civilization. In addition to being the ultimate authority, it also insured that death never came to any robot.

The Robot shuttered at the thought of how many minds had been lost before the Askorp had been developed. Generation upon generation of knowledge and memory lost forever into entropy.

His brother had awoken before him and was screening the news on his internal display. “Hey C-98! Wake up and take a look at this!”, his brother said to the Robot in an urgent tone. “Looks like that distress signal wasn’t a joke after all!” The Robot immediately turned on his display and switched on the news.

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