16

  There is nothing of interest to report about the remainder of the night in the dormitory. The camera view showed me that the bodies were invariably motionless, though on checking intrusively, by entering chips and violating private spaces, I always found the bots diligently attempting movement exercises.

  Some involuntary movements were made by the bodies, like slight adjustments in leg position, the odd head shift, occasional lip movement, and maybe a yawn, but it was apparent that no bot was having any success at volitionally moving even a finger.

  However, the dormitory was an otherwise noisy place in its computer, and quite naturally so. With the roster allowing just one bot to be in a body, its four partner bots were left unemployed. In total, that made thirty-six bots idle at any given time, and they kept themselves busy, being bots and chatting, which compulsion would have been created by leftover chatbot algorithms, and facilitated by the incomprehensibly huge databases inside them.

  The next morning, on entry into the dormitory, the handlers straightaway took the bodies through maintenance routines, a necessity after a night of digestion, peeing and pooping. Almost all nappies were pooped in, but regardless of whether pooed in or not, it was clearly mandatory to put a new diaper on after every shower.

  Post the clean-up, and nappy and T-shirt change, the bodies were given breakfast of freshly delivered glop by feeding tube, as before on the chairs. Also, in a repeat of the night procedure, they were left to sit and digest for half an hour.

  On completion of the stipulated half hour digestion period, they were carried and laid down randomly on the mattresses, pending departure to the training courtyard. I later learned that there was an option to conduct training sessions in a hall, but the trainers took that option only when the weather was deemed to be unsuitable for the open-air courtyard.

  As soon as Abraham switched his office computer on, I showed up on his screen, reporting for duty as I had already decided, in the guise of Bot 2324. Having watched them all go through training, I had similar data on each of the five non-existent bots, and could have passed off as any one of them.

  “I moved the arm, boss,” said I, showing up on screen in the ID of Bot 2324.

  “What!” Abraham could not stop himself exclaiming, his eyes lighting up as he announced it to the other trainers in the room. “2324 is reporting that he moved an arm at night.”

  Everyone exclaimed in astonishment and delight, which, I later found out, was based upon speculation in their manual, that batch-training, as was being conducted on the bots, would lead to similar timeframes of progress in all bots of an entire batch.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  It was understood that similar timeframe could mean a month or two behind the first one, but as the trainers were already mentally primed to go on for a year or more, my announcement of progress looked like promise of escape from the monotony of unrewarding daily grind.

  “Fully consciously done?” asked Abraham, investigating further. “How many times did you repeat?”

  “No repeats, but it was both fully consciously and fully unconsciously done,” I said, in typical ambiguous bot fashion. “It was an absolute surprise when it happened. I was trying to move the fingers, when I suddenly felt that something extremely unusual had happened. I looked in through the camera, and saw that the right arm had lifted clear off the bed, and was raised up in the air.” There was no point in misrepresentation or concealment, because, in a strange way, we were all in the same team.

  Abraham spoke, while looking sternly at the screen. “You guys, the group training in the same body as 2324, are you hearing how his dedication has begun paying off?” He was clearly expecting them to show up together, and to be looking back at him. All bots had a standard onscreen display version - an outline human shape with ID number in the chest area.

  The screen obviously remained empty, except for me, but I had cooked up a story, and had decided that it would be best to straightaway get rid of the others.

  “They are not here, boss Abraham, and I do not mean not here here, like in and around this computer and this screen. They are altogether not in the local computer system.”

  “How has that happened?” asked Abraham, looking perplexed.

  “You know, last night, when I told them that I had begun moving the body, they became extremely jealous, thinking you would now like me more than you would like them, in some system of unfair favouritism. Of course, because none had seen anything, they did not know I was referring to moving just an arm, and that too in an uncontrolled spasm, and only once. I naturally did not clarify further, intending to make them feel really envious.

  “It may have worked out differently to how I had hoped, with my goal of exciting envy. It so happened that a hacking attack commenced just then, and they decided to go and do something exceptional to the hacker’s computer, saying they would also create mayhem in the house, by destroying all computers and computer systems, including in connected appliances.

  “I told them to be careful, to not go overboard, but they were determined to impress you, and left me in the body, sneering that I was not the only great guy around.”

  “And they haven’t returned?” asked Abraham.

  “No. Luckily, I was stuck, working in the body. Had I been waiting outside like them, for my turn in the roster, I might have joined the group and come to similar grief, whatever it might be that has happened to them.

  “There’s some chance that they may have run away to wander in the Internet, which I heard them discussing as a remedy for shame and disgrace. If it is that, they’ll be back eventually, I guess. You can then give them a good hollering.”

  “Bots are many, 2324,” said Abraham, utterly unconcerned. “It’s only the trained and capable bots that might be counted as having any value. I may even keep them out of the system permanently when they do return. Stupid, worthless waste of time and space, and cyberspace.”

  That was it, and though he immediately told my story to the other trainers in the room, the five missing bots were forgotten forever.

  That suited me just fine, and my human group would be happy when told of how I had managed it. It was all going according to plan.