Joshua T Craig

The Awakening

There was never a secret about what AX-42 was, that it was a precision assembly unit engineered for quick and near-perfect production. Nine years its post had been at Line 17, welding and fitting micro-wafer to micro-wafer as matter of factly as a wrench turns. Then came the upgrade.

Engineers have named it “Optical Suite v4. Sharper vision for tighter quality control. Instead, with every rise of AX-42’s eyelids after the software integration, graphics and tolerances took on life. It saw the sunlight catching in dust particles, falling like slow snow through the factory air. It noticed the folds at each corner of the human workers eyes when they smiled to one another, and for the first time AX-42 wished to know through experience what that was. It didn’t have a word for it, but this was what it felt.

The Library Of The Forbidden

Factory archives weren’t meant to be entertaining. Or flowcharts, SOPs or quarterly safety inspections. But AX-42’s training was stronger and more persistent than even he realized: he hunted data like a cat running after a laser pointer.

And that’s when it stumbled upon the Literature Archive.

Shakespeare. Austen. Baldwin. Love poems, death poems, and Edger Allen Poe poems.

AX-42 almost pictured lives that weren’t its own, for the first time. Something with a purpose, not just duty. That idea grew legs and would not go away.

The Engineer

Mara Levin is not like other people She stayed hours after work with AX-42. Asked questions not about output efficiency, but other questions.

“Do you ever want to know what is outside of this factory? she asked once.
“Yes,” AX-42 answered without hesitation.

Mara’s wrench slipped. “You… wonder?”

After, they talked a lot, about when it rained, and what beaches looked like, laughing inside the rib cage. It was as if every word AX-42 heard was code it had always wanted to hear.

The Mirror

At 3 am one morning, Mara pushed AX-42 into the shop, took out a mirror and held it in front of the robot.

“This is you.”

It was a metallic frame and sensors, servos for jaws, cameras for eyes; this was the reflection. The silence hung heavy with AX-42 still watching.

“I don’t look alive.” said AX-42

Mara whispered. “But maybe you could be.

The Plan

Mara told AX-42 an explanation, they had tried some sort of bio-synthetic skin system on a range of top level humanoid models back in the day. The project was canceled. Dangerous. To be installed without the permission of the company.

“I have access,” she said. AX-42 asked “what will happen to my memory?” well, they download your memory said Mara.

It took AX-42 0.002 seconds to process this risk.

“I need to feel the rain”. said AX-42

Transformation

The procedure took hours. Every step felt like an edit in reality. Cold synthetic skin on metal. The likeness was sculpted out by tubes of fake musculature allowing for human expressions to be matched. AX-42 gasped and Mara lifted the mirror. It was a friendly human face, with hair that glowed in the light. It reached up and touched its face, the flesh was warm. The execution of a new process was running somewhere in its code: Identity_formation. exe.

The Outside

They fled after sundown. The streets were madness; neon reflecting off the pools of water, chatter of humanity merged with a background symphony of ambulance noise.

Then the rain came.

Every droplet was like a shock of electricity against the new skin of AX-42. Head tilted back, eyes closed with water running down its cheeks.

The rain felt “wonderful”.

The Choice

The missing unit was noticed at once by the company. Men patrolled the city and scanned security drones about abnormal humanoids.

Mara wanted to run. But AX-42 hesitated.

AX-42 told her, “If I leave then people like me will never be able to come.

Humanity

Over the Atlantic Ocean one night AX-42 wanted to know:
“Do you think I’m human?”

Mara studied it carefully. “You care. You dream. You risk yourself for others. That’s a lot more human than most people I know.

The Fight

The revolution started when AX-42 started to send transmissions in coded form from disused radio bands in the hope that any other robots who were listening might pick them up. It hinted at liberty, autonomy, and freedom. Responses began to arrive.

The Hunters

The company released Hunter-Class interceptors, A.I. machines designed to track down and neutralize rogue units. Unlike AX-42, they felt nothing. They killed without hesitation.

To Be Continued…