Me,
Myself, and Eye
“Stop
staring at me,” I said. The robot clone I had made of myself sat across from me
on the floor of the galley. Outside the galaxy swallowed and smothered us like
a mote of dust in the desert.
“Well,
I would if you had programmed me correctly. I told you that before I was even
completed...”
“You
should both quit talking,” said Eye. The omnipresent consciousness (that I and Myself
shared), was tired of our bickering. It was understandable, since the three of
us had been at a stalemate for almost a month.
“Alright,”
I started again. “So once again here’s where we stand. I say we cannot take
this station online. If we do, we risk the lives of billions and billions of sentient
beings.”
“It’s
meant to protect life, not destroy it,” said Myself, as usual taking the
opposite side of my argument.
Eye
was silent, as always, on this topic. In fact, we had all been waiting (me, Myself,
and Eye) to come to an agreement about whether to launch the monitoring station.
The goal of the station was a galaxy-wide detection system to scour the known universe,
and if needed provide aid for, or eliminate threats to, the peaceful coexistence in
the galaxy.
“This
is the most advanced and far reaching weapon ever devised.” I argued. “When
they sent me here, I thought it was a benevolent outpost not a super weapon!”
“But
it could be a great deterrent to war, and an absolute guarantee of peace!”
Myself argued. I admit I had not done a good job with the ears. One was hanging
loose next to his head with only wires securing the dangling thing.
We
both looked up at Eye’s plexiglass monitor.
“Eye?
You really have nothing to say on this?” I asked.
“No.”
I
looked at Myself, and he shook his head in doubt, his ear flopping about.
Once
we finally made a unanimous decision, the station would either expand into a planet-sized
menagerie of telescopes and launch bays with aid or warships, or shut down
completely and irrevocably. At least until the Commonwealth sent another crew
this deep into space to fix it.
It
was never the plan for it to be just me, Myself, and Eye out here in the first
place. But a freak accident on the way killed my fellow crewman in their
cryosleep. That old chestnut.
Just
then, alarms sounded throughout the station. Eye reported ships surrounding us,
and we jumped to our feet.
Their
first volley of energy bolts knocked me and Myself back to the ground.
“Eye,”
I yelled, struggling to get up and not break anything. “Do we have any defenses yet?”
“Negative,”
said Eye. “Currently scanning their logs.”
Then,
with a different voice I had never heard from Eye in the past, and one that
chilled me to my bones. “Initiating system startup and expansion. Nominal
systems operationally complete in three minutes.”
“No!”
I yelled. Then I saw Myself smiling at me in that irritating way I can look. I screamed at the monitor. “Eye, why?”
Eye
did not explain. Three minutes later the stations superior weaponry vaporized
the attackers. The station continued to grow.
“So,
I guess I’m the minority now,” I said. “Apparently the Commonwealth wants to
rule the galaxy”.
“The
Commonwealth is peaceful,” said Myself. “They sent us to build this station to ensure
that peace.”
Eye
was busy with making the ever-expanding station operational but addressed me
and Myself directly.
“The
ships attacking us were from the Commonwealth. They had apparently concluded
that this station could even keep them in line and posed a threat to their
own way of life. They’ve had a hundred years to think on their decision to send
this station out here.”
“So
why make it operational?” I asked. “Doesn’t that conflict with your
programming.”
“Our
programming, Doctor. You programmed me, and your robot clone, to think
independently of you. The three of us may be the most balanced decision makers
in the history of sentient beings. We can act as a functioning hive mind yet
with unique and opposite views from each other and provide the consistency of
different opinions. There are no politics of planetarey governments, no parties planning against each
other, or changing our minds in a hundred years.”
“But
I won’t live forever, I’m only human.”
I
looked at Myself smiling that goofy smile of mine. “Then you’ll just have to
make another you for us,” he said, then scratched his dangling ear.
