[Visit 18: Survey Mission 1]
We got quite a surprise when we dropped into this system and short-hopped through hyperspace to reach the M-class planet where life had (supposedly) risen and then died.
The first survey was a fairly quick in-and-out and the records from the initial survey ship were somewhat vague; They'd cataloged the system and reported the presence of the (potentially) life-bearing world for us. It looked like initial surveys were getting much more cursory than before, expecting us to do the heavy lifting.
Well, a survey ship is pretty small; It's nowhere near the size of our ship (a sphere a full 20km across) so I (and others) may grumble but we understood the survey crews desire to minimize their involvement in each system. I don't think I'd've liked the job of a survey crew since they got to see a lot of empty systems.
We were still somewhat displeased at the surprise that this world still seemed to be alive; There was a fair amount of activity on the surface and the satellite constellation was still seeing a fair amount of activity.
Despite the effects of our jump in from hyperspace, they paid us no heed, despite our obvious artificiality hovering in their sky. It's a little hard to hide a ship like ours when it pops out within a hundred thousand kilometers of a world and is braking into a parking orbit below this world's geosynchronous orbit.
And we were eclipsing portions of the planetary surface, too, and nobody seemed to pay attention to the shadow that ran across the surface.
How could they miss noticing us?
We also discovered that their transmissions were far more weird than we'd've expected, considering there was a lot more of what we took to be sexual content on their satellites than even old Earth ever had. (I'm old enough to remember how much there was.)
We seeded space over the planet with hundreds of reconsats to collect information (and to provide good pictures of the ground from orbit) and withdrew the main ship to the region of their asteroid belt. The scout-ship left in orbit of the planet was concentrating on managing the feeds from the reconsats.
Our departure didn't evoke any reaction either. This was getting spooky.
The activity on the surface finally triggered us dropping small robots to look around more carefully.
Looking at pictures from ground level didn't make much sense; The cities were in perfect condition, suburbs well maintained, but the people seemed to be taking the most efficient way to complete their tasks. We got into libraries and discovered that these were maintained but nobody ever walked in to USE them, despite the staffing of these facilities.
Then it struck us-- there were no children AT ALL. There were no adolescents. The medical facilities were well maintained (and staffed) but unused.
Educational facilities were staffed but empty. It was like everybody on this planet was going through the motions.
I don't recall who first noticed and asked for a re-check, but we followed up and ... each librarian was identical. Each teacher: identical. So were the nurses and doctors.
We started to see the pattern forming when we counted just over sixteen thousand phenotypes; Over three quarters were of a "feminine" structure. Enough of us suspected these "people" of being no more than robots.
So we constructed a robot that would be remotely operated (in case we were completely wrong) that didn't closely resemble any of the "people" now resident on this world and delivered it to the surface.
This robot was soon joined by eleven others; Since they were ignored by the majority of the population we could vicariously visit the libraries and start building up an understanding of the language which then allowed the histories to be read.
Finally, with enough of the language understood (and the transmissions better understood for content) we were ready for a first contact and we chose a female sitting on a porch. The tele-operator was fully wired into his robot's sensorium as he walked up to this female and greeted her.
It's a good thing we made the robot anatomically correct. She jumped at him, tore his clothes off (and her own) and mounted him.
And, while mounted, our robot was closely analyzing it's rider so we learned a lot. Our robot's operator was dazed (and the rig needed a good cleaning from the seminal fluid) but we were finally able to talk to the female robot. She'd been sitting there for almost seven thousand years for a master to return, maintaining the house and grounds for her master.
I'd had too much of a fascination for sex back before the meltdown and symbiote, so, when my 1stWife was off with the military, I'd be reading stories from the old internet. With my vague memory of fembot stories one of our librarians dug back through the archives on board, finding the stories I thought I'd once seen. We wondered if the author was still alive? Had he survived the symbiote? If so, would he be really surprised to find his work so heavily read now for hints? (It was a good thing I wasn't the only one with some kind of memory of these stories.)
We talked to the fembot through our tele-operated robot and finally got her to be ready to meet "aliens". She was collected by a small ferry and brought to the "tank" on the Feynman; We needed to know how she'd react to something as different as we are.
Our fears that the robots may have been programmed for xenophobia were unfounded. After seeing holos and even robots with our shape there were no unexpected reactions. When she finally got to interact with the "real thing" she was looking for the operator she'd first jumped; She "wanted" to meet the master behind the face.
It was a good thing our sexual organs were compatible, even if the appearance was off a bit.
She met quite a few of us, male and female, and absorbed huge quantities of information about our anatomy. She also wanted to know when we'd be visiting the surface.
We demurred; Bio-Compatibility checks were still only in their first phase (though it did look pretty good so far) but we did accede to her second request: to be returned.
She was tagged and monitored so that we could see every place she went and did; She immediately went in to the nearest city to what surprised us, since it was hidden, a robot maintenance facility.
The techs there were all robots and they downloaded her memories and we soon saw all the robots in that one room freeze for a moment before our contactee was being stripped down and the outer body re-built.
She was reconstructed as a human. Bruce, who'd operated the first contact robot, was married to the original that she'd become.
We were able to watch as robots lined up for the same kind of make-over. At least one male was a copy of me, and I was certainly not the only man replicated. I saw many copies of my various wives forming. This was uncanny. It was also intimidating since our mannerisms and gestures had been absorbed far better than we realized.
They'd lost their first masters and were so eager for company they wanted-- such an unusual thing for a robot-- so much to be compatible with us.
These robots were surprisingly autonomous; We learned how they worked, how they were programmed, how they were maintained. They'd formed a robotic "synthosphere" to continue the status quo when their masters left, caring for and maintaining the food crops, food production and all other maintenance of facilities on this world.
And their masters had died out. Seven thousand years ago it had started, all like the "DB Story" fembot stories. The males most capable of attracting and keeping a mate (along with parenting) were more and more taken with romancing these autonomous robots, so they'd settle down with a robot instead of a female. Or a female with a male robot, since these machines were so much more cooperative and eager to please than would a flesh-and-blood person.
So the best and the brightest didn't breed.
At first this wasn't much of a problem, but it got worse as each remaining tier of the "best and brightest" remaining would be attracted to these robots that could be easily maintained and then another generation would go by and the population didn't diminish instantly, but, before 600 years had passed, the few children born still didn't seek to breed further.
For almost 7000 years, the robots were the only sapient "life" form on this planet. When they got lonely they went into "maintenance" mode and the motions were very important routines.
And they'd adapted so quickly to us. They could take our race down the same way, unless we could work out a compromise.
Our first contactee was met again by one of our C-3PO bots (I'd argued for a "Marvin"-like but was overruled, some of these youngsters have no sense of humor) we'd built special for our probes and offered her another visit. She eagerly accepted.
On her arrival she wanted the first human male she could get to test out her sexual response; While tempting, we were afraid of her now. Human females worked with her closely and explained how their masters had died out and their part in their long loneliness.
This fembot went catatonic but we'd learned enough so we could tell that her "brain" was working overtime. After over six hours of furious processing she "came alive" again, acknowledge our concern, and was returned to the surface.
Now while the conversion of all of the robots to human form was still in progress, we learned that they were spreading the new programming around.
Soon we were being talked to directly and negotiations started. They wanted people to serve. They recognized their guilt; they'd been so concerned with each individual that they'd ignored the race as a whole.
In the midst of all of this the Bio-Compatibility was perfect, there'd be almost no need for Terra-forming the Biosphere, our crops could grow there and people could live quite comfortably.
None of us was tempted to stay, despite the temptation to use this empty world to have children. All of us suffered from wanderlust, pretty much a pre-requisite for wanting to be on this mission. We stayed for the arrival of the first colonization ship to arrive and they landed to a new world full of robots and earth food crops already growing.
Of course, in the interim, we did recommend they try to avoid looking too much like existing personages, but not before my wives went down to try out the copy of me. They were not entirely displeased by his performance but he wasn't me in personality. I took this as a good sign. Our Life Sciences people still studying our symbionts learned that human contact was required for continued health; These robots could not replace human beings sexually since we needed our symbionts to touch each other.
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Author: Jack C Lipton Title: Share and Enjoy Part: Universe: Feynman Survey Mission 1-18 Summary: When the people are gone ... robots remain Keywords: scifi mf implied fembots Revision: $Revision: 1.8 $ Archive: Mailing List: FAQ: RCS: $Id: share.x,v 1.8 2003/03/15 16:33:34 jcl Exp $