Glitch/Mistake

He had finally made bus fare. For months, the boy had been trying to escape the ghetto planet he was born onto. He hadn’t a family, he battled in this fight that’s known as “life” alone, but that was mostly by choice. He carried a companion by his side, the only actual friend he had in this world. This comrade’s name was Plutissi, a 4-inch tall origami goat, and he was the boy’s sidekick in their endeavor to bring down the establishment.
The escape this lonely soul was setting out on did allow the separation from the depressing life that is life on the planet of slums, but his leaving hardly had anything to do with the fatigue he felt by merely looking at that planet. The true purpose of this vacation was the complete destruction of a man, of a dictator. The boy wanted to end the life of the Contrôleur.
The Contrôleur had slithered himself into his position some time ago, brainwashing his way up to dictator, to now run society as if it’s some kind of machine. Humans are now more like robots  than ever, and through evolution they’ve simply become almost completely unaware of their surroundings. This society starts teaching children at a very young age to just assume, always, that everything is going as planned, which, for the most part, it always is, because of all the actual robots. From the Contrôleur’s Motherboard Palace, he controls all. The androids that run security around the solar system are sent constant binary on who to protect and how to protect them. They do a good job, objectively, but  sometimes they use some considerably brutal methods. Just as common as these police bots, there are the transport bots, the bots that drive buses and ships. Pretty much all jobs that require absolutely no creative attention are taken on by ordered simpleton bots. Music has also been commandeered by robots. They use some series of systematic algorithms that tell bots what the now-bland brain of a human predictably enjoys. Humans would make music, but at this point, the thought process necessary to create a melody is far too much to grasp by the average individual.  And with that being said, there are remaining jobs for humans: government positions, celebrity positions, and a couple desk positions that, for whatever reason, need some kind of organic pizazz, but when it comes down to reality, humans kinda do nothing now. They somehow manage to live day to day, going to work in the morning, going home at night, sleeping for approximately 7 hours and then just doing it over again, and that’s just their “life.” This has just simply become a dead-end society.
The boy knew this living hell of nothingness needed to come to an end. He was fueled by ideas of freedom and nonconformity, and the rehabilitation of this lost species. There was a time where more than just an adolescent boy believed in these ideals. Humans purposefully dressed differently, and they talked in different ways. People took humanist ideas voiced from 200 years in the past, and made melodies out of them, made music out of them. They preached to each other, in song, of free love, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” They loved each other.
But alas, this was diminishing from a time of yore to a time of fantasy. Nonconformity is shamed by all discursive robots, and even some of the grey-faced members of the organic community will shame another human for simply wearing a color out of the black and grey color scheme. The boy didn’t believe in any of this. He wore a chameleon green helmet, a black suit of light armor with accents of red, and some tennis shoes that happened to fit him. He made himself stand out, he made himself different, because he knew that it is the variations of mutation that allow species to evolve, and if a man decided to disable these variations in humanity, that man would be paralyzing all of humanity.
The boy wasn’t sure what to expect from this “Motherboard Palace,” what kind of defenses would lie before him, but whatever the case, he was ready to die for this cause.
This dangerous peace activist wasn’t completely unarmed. Besides his lightweight armor and the psychosomatic courage his goat, Plutissi gave him, he could control things with his mind. Not that he could make miscellaneous objects levitate or anything, but more so, he could control the cybernetic minds of the androids that ran this cluster of planets. His powers could sometimes affect the lamest of human minds, but that was rare. The calculable brains of a robot were easy to dominate.  Just as the human’s curse is the probability of an abundance of mistakes, the downfall of the robots is their complete absence of error and variation. This makes the robot mind predictable, and ultimately, this society controllable.
This is how the boy would take down the Contrôleur, by forcing his minions into starting an uprising, to brainwash his followers just as the Contrôleur had brainwashed the revenge stricken boy’s entire race. This is also what allows the boy to separate himself from the crowd of diabolically-persuaded humans. His superior intelligence puts him above the propaganda and hogwash the Contrôleur puts out. As a matter of fact, this is how the boy made it this far. He had seduced some vendors and delivery bots to provide him with the affluence required for this mission. This also forced them to favor him with some necessary materials, such as armor and an interplanetary positioning device. He was forced to pay a human to get onto the space train (one going somewhere extremely remote as to allow the boy to be alone on this transit,) and was able to convince the android conductor to not only allow passage to Mother’s World, the home to the Contrôleur’s throne room, but also provide unquestioned transport. Naturally, or more so, unnaturally, passage to Mother’s World is strictly prohibited by Contrôleur law, so it was a complete miracle that this secluded space-way flight was flown by a robot.
The train landed a couple miles from the Palace, which is close to half way around the planet. This planet (or more closely defined as a very small moon, being only 5 miles in diameter) was constructed with reduced amounts of artificial gravity, allowing less work to be done by the patrolling cyber raptors. The cyber raptors were completely non-malicious, and were not built to do anything close to battle. The planet they roamed was fairly barren, just a couple cord-roots striking through the surface here and there, and the rest a faded grey metal. The bulk of this planet's purpose was to command and run the entire solar system, and all of that action happened underground. Long electrical cords and power cells were densely scattered under the crust of this robot homeworld, and they all led to one place: Motherboard Place.
The boy quickly seized a raptor using his powers, and made sure to install Plutissi in a small crevice on the raptor’s back. The dinosaur’s running abilities made for a much more successful method of travel (much preferred to the boy’s clumsy bounding on this low gravity metal world.) The raptor was used to the planet’s new rules of physics, and its average motors allowed it to leap from step to step with incredible productivity. It seemed that at every moment possible the prehistoric innovation was calculating where and how to take its next step, and it continued with these calculations at a miraculous speed and with absolutely no error. The beauty of these AIs over a human mind becomes especially apparent in times like these, when the capability to succeed far exceeds that of a purely biological being. And in this moment of appreciation, the redundant error that faults all robots becomes very apparent:  the mere reason this boy is able to overcome this raptor’s intelligence is due to his species’ variation abilities, which shows that an evolving organic organism is purely superior in itself, and so sprouts the ironic paradox that is the war constantly being fought within the boy.
Other than the occasional instance of a protruding  wire, the only things the boy could see on this metal sphere were the other Cyber Raptors roaming the desolate surface. To his relief, he found that they simply disregarded him completely. But as he thought he realized their lack of excitement over him was to be expected, as an out of place passer-by is purely unexpected on this planet, and so therefore no reaction is programed into these Cyber Raptors’ psyche. Ergo nothing was thought of by the boy’s glorious mounting abilities, just as the bland communities thought nothing of the boys individualized sidekick and get-up back on his homeworld. He felt the familiar pulls of loneliness, comforting in the midst of this bleak technology exclusive planet, but also giving way to an unexpected homesickness. He felt pain in an area he had forgotten he could feel pain in, an area regarding his family. For so many years he had pushed this grotesque feeling of regret down so strongly, but now in the absence of an entire society that showed practically no emotion or varying opinion, the boy felt an extremely concentrated amount of sadness. Then he had an epiphany, one that made it clear that this society of thoughtless bots had gotten to him, that in his attempts to unconform, the boy conformed to the complete abandonment of all emotions. No person really felt remorse or happiness anymore, and that’s what really cloaked this cruel brainwashing. This boy was enduring. The boy’s objective was now more clear than ever, though it had not changed, it definitely had a much more urgent need for accomplishment. This contrôleur had to be put to an end.
The boy was only slowly getting lulled into a deeper chasm of thought by the rhythmic bouncing of the space raptor, when all of the sudden, the raptor forcefully stopped in its tracks, very bluntly falling to the ground. The boy jumped up quickly from his fall to defend himself from any danger that might’ve caused the abrupt raptor failure, but found there was no present entity that would be capable of such a coup. He noticed a couple patrolling raptors making an approach, but knew there was no part of these carefully constructed AIs that had even the necessary intelligence for harm. With that, he realized the fall was not a malicious attack, but rather a sudden error. This meant that the near impossible had just happened: one of the contrôleur’s bots had shorted out. This circumstance was one the boy had hardly considered possible, as he he had never seen or heard of such an occurrence. He was stunned, to say the least, and could not yet react to the error within the thought-to-be immaculate being. Humans make all kinds of mistakes (like thinking that robots don’t) and because of this, can’t accomplish meaningless tasks in nearly as short a time, but at least when a human makes some kind of error in some purely organic way, that human learns not to repeat that blunder. Though they do not always successfully mend that mistake immediately, they eventually do.  But when a robot glitches out in some way, that robot is broken; that robot is unable to be fixed unless it is looked over by a superior being: a human. This robot’s erroneous action made it clear that a society run by humans is not only a society able to evolve, but a society generally better off.
The boy, with this new burst of confidence gained from both his epiphany and his front row seat to the once in a lifetime experience that is a robot glitch, quietly approached the Palace occupied by the dreadful dictator. He was surprised by its defenses, or more over, its lack of defenses. There were no cannons, no turrets, and no death patrol police bots anywhere in view. This surprised the boy at first, but he soon realized that because the contrôleur ran this society, he made every single decision on where and how robots and people can or must be. Every mouse that ran into some hole in some house complex was forced into that hole, somehow, by this man playing god. The probability that an error could occur in his practically foolproof system is so exponentially small (as small as the probability of a glitch to occur in a bot,) that the need for such defences is merely non-existent. In fact, the installation of these weapons of death have a higher possibility to cause problems than the complete absence of said weapons. No bots would glitch enough to allow a human passage, unless that bot was purposefully forced to glitch by a human, meaning the statistical chance a human could get onto Mother’s World can only be explained by the slight variations that humans possess. Slight variations that cause mutations and therefore the forward movement of the human race.
The contrôleur planned for no glitch to ever occur, the contôleur conformed society to such a preliminary degree that defense from the nonconformist rebels was unneeded. He didn’t plan for this kind of glitch in his system, because he believes the robotic race to be immaculate; he believes that in this society he has made to be a machine, there are no glitches, or such a small percent of them, that the conformists will rule over the deviants, that his slave army will always be stronger than the free army. The contrôleur just forgot one small detail: The raptor did crash, and the curse of an imminent possibility of failure in every situation means the raptor will always eventually crash.
The doors to this cyber palace were open, no locks and no moats. The exterior was made from some sort of black alloy, crafted for the creation of this palace specifically. Its interplanetary communications devices were all too small to be seen from a distance, but their a known necessity to a castle that controls an entire solar system. Solar Panels ran inconspicuously all around the outside walls, powering this super complex in the most efficient of ways. There were few lights along the surface walls of the palace, but as the boy stepped inside, he found there was illumination comparable to that of a sun. All of them were red, making for a very ominous atmosphere. Gravity seemed closer to that of the boys home in here, for whatever reason this old man prefered this to that found in the tessitura surrounding. There was a black set of spiral stairs leading to was looked like the Control room, and that’s is where the boy assumed he would find this overlord.
As he ascended the steps, he felt fear. He had come so far and was about to confront his own antagonist, the number one public enemy. He was also feeling a sense of courageous urgency, remembering that this man had killed the free minds that once scattered themselves among humanity. He was also driven by the fact that once he killed this machine of a man, the machine that is society would become human again, and those times of yores he had thought about so deeply would return. This man had ruined this boy’s life, this man decided what this boy felt, this man made the death of this boy’s family nothing! This man had conformed too many souls. This man was evil. This man needed to die.
The throne room was a relatively small chamber, the ceiling about 15 ft. from the ground and the floor comprising of approximately 2000 square feet. This room contained few lights, but here they were a bright yellow, making for a warmer ambiance. The walls were practically made of control panels and wire inputs. A solemn organ lay in one corner of the room in a very rugged condition, visibly used highly frequently. The ceiling was what at first looked like a window, but actually a large viewing screen currently displaying a planetarium view of the sky above. Controls for this screen were located in front of a somber wheelchair, which upon sat that man. There sat the Contrôleur.
The boy was taken by the contrôleur’s current state. He was a very old, pale man, wearing a blue farmer's button up with relatively worn blue jeans. Atop his head wore a large helmet of technology with tubes running from his veins to the helmet, and out into a couple of wall sockets around him. The man also possessed a smaller viewer screen and keyboard directly in front of the chair, mounted on one of the arms of the metal and cloth wheelchair. The sound of the door noticeably disturbed the man, as he jerkily turned the chair around, but he seemingly remained calm, in a way that made it seem that this visit was expected.
The two stared for a minute or two. The boy was unaware what to do next, he had come here with the sole intent of murder, but couldn’t find the words or actions to initiate such a deed. Does he just go for it? Does he interrogate the man first, he just didn’t know. The man was taking the same action, but in a much more confident way. Did he have some sort of plan? Was this error in his machine one he knew was imminent?
“And so at last, my glitch approaches.” The man said slowly, as if tasting every syllable that left his mouth. “A source of error is always to be expected, I just had not anticipated it to be one of my own.”
One of his own members of society, one of the slaves he controls and conforms through constant watch and preemptive action? To consider such sad souls to be part of some kind of diabolical family this man is father other is something to make any organic being cringe in disgust!
“Yes, I know,” the man continued, “Self-awareness can be a very disturbing thing. I try to prevent it as best I can, but you know, these things happen.”
The boy couldn’t wait for the man to finish. He continued speaking, but none of the words produced came anywhere close to being analyzed in the boy’s brain. His blood was boiling, and his heart was human. The only thing on his mind was the destruction of this man. The boy lunged! Or at least, he tried to, but nothing happened. Had the shock taken the boy’s mind completely? He tried to step, to move his arm, to do anything, but he couldn’t. He was stuck. He could feel it as if he was chained to the ground.
He started to try to tune in on what the words the man was salivating with. “Calm yourself, there is no need for such sporadic emotions. The fact that you’re have emotions at all is simply a miracle! Your ability to hate me is both a blessing and a curse!”
What?
“The reason you can’t move is obvious. I know you contain the same abilities over comrades just like you. You know what it is like to control a robot! You have the perfect brain to do so!”
The boy was now confused, and more confused than he ever had been. He is well aware, just as he is sure the old man is, that he cannot control humans. There are vegetables with hardly any brains at all in hospitals that he can barely get inside, but t6he average human? A human’s mind is far more complex than that of a robot, it may make more mistakes, but that is merely due to all the different variables involved…
“No, not other humans you fool!”
How does this man know what’s going through this boy’s head?
“You are a--”
Just then, a large hunk of space metal came crashing through the viewing screen above. Mangled pieces of glass and silver beams shredded through the control room and the rest of motherboard palace. The massive meteorite contained enough momentum to blast halfway through its victim, penetrating the core of Mother’s world. This collision drove the cyber moon out of orbit, sending the enormous asteroid into the atmosphere of the ghetto planet that lie below. In an awkward sense of flailing rotation, the monstrous piece of mass tumbled through the sky onto an unsuspecting once great city.Screams of terror rang throughout the ears of all the deceased and injured civilians. Wails of children encompassed every continent, already lonely animals looked for their owners care as to cease their suffering. Mothers weep, cars squawked, and then not long after, the entire planet fell silent.
The sound of a pin could echo around the entire planet, yet nobody would be around to hear it.
Weeks later, surrounding planets followed this trend. Slowly, all of humanity became extinct, one starved and dehydrated soul at a time. The contrôoleur was killed in this horrific incident, which meant a complete loss of control of all robots. They would either short out and rust as a leader’s absence became more and more apparent, or deteriorate over time due to one too many repeats of the same task. Humanity relied on these bots. The contrôleur had created a society where man was run by robots, but to the point where humans really didn’t need any self awareness anymore, to where the tasks such as eating, bathing, and social interaction was taken care of by the bots.
But alas, that realization didn’t matter anymore. Everything was dead. All life had come to a rapid halt. Android and organic corpse alike lay in the disfigured foundations of each and every home and city created by humanity. Everybody was as assimilated as ever; young and old, poor and rich, and human and robot were all dead, merely due to some glitch a space-way conductor acquired while on its way back to the slum world. All it took was a moment of error in an android's IBM brain, which allowed the spacecraft to lose course and crash directly into the weakest point on the Mother’s World planet. What are the odds?
No, the boy had not foreseen such events taking place. He had not known that by freeing society of controlled thought, he was also freeing society of feeding and social interaction. But you know, anybody can have a glitch/mistake.