R62 is a robot. It is named after a New York City Subway car that was built in 1983. Now it is the year 3046, and New York itself is but a thing in the digital history books. In the new Empire, R62 is a defense robot, one of the many mechanical soldiers built after the Neptunian forces attacked in 2980. The attacking army was destroyed, but so was more than seventy-five percent of the human race. The survivors knew that they could not live through another attack, so they built an army of soldiers that could not be killed—because they were not alive.
Two, four, six, turn. Two, four, six, turn. R62, along with several other defense robots, patrolled the Eastern Sky Roads, part of an enormous set of invisible roads that had been built in the sky as a way for the robots and their caretakers to walk between the spaceships that they called home. Suddenly, R62 detected an unfamiliar figure walking along the Sky Road. R62 raised a weapon, but the figure held up a card before it could. R62 scanned the card. Valid.
“New caretaker,” R62 beeped to the other robots.
The opening on the caretaker’s face turned up, something that all the robots knew meant approval. The caretaker sprinkled something on its hand, then reached up and touched R62’s shoulder.
“You must be R62,” she said, smiling.
She? How did he, R62, a robot, know that the caretaker was female? And how did he know that he himself was male? Or that the caretaker was smiling? All he’d ever known was the numbers. The commands. The codes. But all those were gone now.
“I am R62,” he beeped. “Who are you?”
“I’m your new caretaker. I’m A-153.” She said. “Follow me.”
R62 was on duty. It went against his programming to leave during that, even when asked by a caretaker. But somehow, he was able to follow the caretaker into a small spaceship.
“R62,” said the A-153. “Listen closely. As part of a new, secret experiment, I’ve attempted bringing you, a robot, to life. If it worked, you should be thinking and feeling differently.”
So that was it. He was alive. “It worked,” he replied, staring at A-153. She had brought him to life. How had he ever been content with his life as a robot? Of course, he had never been aware of anything besides the numbers. The horrible numbers.
A-153 smiled again. “That’s what I thought,” she said. “You’ll need to keep this a secret until I can get another spaceship to take us back to the headquarters.
“Okay,” said R62, trying to imitate his caretaker’s smile. She smiled even bigger at his attempts. As R62 walked back to the patrol area, his sensors detected several large shadows coming toward the spaceship base. He hurried back to the other robots, fighting the panic.
“Alarm! Alarm!” He beeped. “Invaders!” The other robots took up the call as they readied their weapons and activated their defenses.
As the shadows swooped in to the base, the shapes of the spaceships became visible. They were Neptunian ships. And they were landing. The aliens came out, covered from head to toe in armor. They aimed their weapons at the robots and fired. The robots fought back, and it soon became clear that although the humans had been given time to recover, the Neptunians had been given time to recover, as well as build up their forces to launch another attack. The robots were powerful, but there were not nearly enough of them already made to defend Earth against the attack. Other robots were blowing up all around R62, and then he thought of it. His caretaker! The invaders were already ripping open spaceships and destroying everything inside of them, living or not, and several were approaching his caretaker’s spaceship.
R62 rushed toward the ship and fired at the Neptunians, who were already in the spaceship and were searching for anyone hiding inside. He had already eliminated half of them when they turned on him and fired. Impact. R62 froze with his weapon in the air. Two, four, six, turn. What? Alarm! Alarm! Signal surrender. Two, four, six, turn. Two, four, six, turn.