Size Matters

Rædis found himself on a terrific world. The place astounded him. Great weather, amazing scenery and the locals were friendly, highly accomodating and quite remarkably advanced in how they managed the issues of their planet. They kept pollution in check, cared for their sick and old and educated themselves well.

One of the consequences to their global success, however, was that it tended to make them effete assholes. But this was okay with Rædis because he spent most of his time with his best friend Traveler and few people are more pretentious, arrogant pricks than a time traveler on drugs.

Another thing about these people was that, on average, they were about a dozen meters taller than Rædis. Humanoid in shape and proportion to Rædis they were just giant compared to him.

This made their voices rather loud and their furniture useless to him. Thankfully he could control the level of his audio input like turning a microphone down and his robotic physical prowess combined with a little gentle assistance from his huge hosts and he was having a fine time.

Traveler was off doing whatever it was he had come here for in the first place. He had not offered an explanation and Rædis was too interested in the place to be bothered to ask. They agreed to meet later where Traveler had parked their drop .

In the interval Rædis passed the time at a beautiful park, surrounded by fantastic flora of crystalline trees with translucent leaves that did highly visually interesting things with the light from the slowly setting sun of this picturesque world. He was sharing a sandwich with his current compainion.

She was a thin, muscular individual of reasonable fashion and intelligent curiosity about her diminutive new friend. She broke off a piece of her sandwich and shared it with him. It was delicious. They sat on a bench together made of an unusually soft type of porous stone.

Even though his feet dangled many meters above the ground he found the bench to be as comfortable as anything else he'd yet encountered on this idyllic world.

He swung his legs as he ate and conversed with the woman.

"I have to say, you've all done a spectacular job with this place. I especially like the architecture." He complimented his host. "And this sandwich is outstanding, thank you." He added happily. The huge woman looked down at him and smiled.

"It is one of my favorites. I'm glad you like it. I would not have thought a robot would appreciate food." She admitted. He looked up at her.

"Really? Why's that?" He asked, actually taken aback a little by her remark.

"Well, you are artificial intelligence, yes? Astoundingly complex, indeed but still more or less a program."

Rædis found himself offended by this.

"I'm an intelligence, yes. But I assure you there is nothing 'artificial' about it." He defended himself.

"But you are a machine. You were assembled, programmed and given freedoms to explore and add to or alter your programming as circumstances dictate. Correct?"

It was hard to raise the machine's hackles as such but Rædis found his new friend's statements personally offensive. He amplified his voice enought to indicate his annoyance, the remainder of the wonderful sandwich now rendered unimportant.

"But I'm alive. My sentience, intelligence, whatever you want to call it is every bit as genuine, real and natural as yours." He had not expected to become embroiled in a Cartesian debate over the nature of existence but he felt he had to set this lady straight on the nature of this machine.

"So you are alive merely because you say you are? Even though you were made not born?" She asked.

"Sure!" He replied without hesitation. "Aren't you? What's birth but the creation of life no matter what form it may take? It's a big galaxy and there are stranger things in it than you or I, trust me." He continued, refusing to fall silent until he's made a point she had to consider.

"But other than being highly advanced, what sets you apart from any other advanced computer programmed to mimick the behavior of sentient life?" She retorted.

At this point Rædis withdrew one of Traveler's cigarettes from his top pocket. His opinion of this well balanced society he was enjoying was degrading rapidly. But it was interesting to him how this person who depended so much on intelligent machines would be so unenlightened and to him, blatantly offensive about his deepest self realizations and existential beliefs.

Rædis saw this as a key opportunity to give an individual something astounding to consider and perhaps provide for them one of those moments when one realizes something profound. At the very least he will have established what a stuck-up cunt the woman was being about what he was.

He bit down on the filter tip of the cigarette. Its opposite end ignited and began to smolder a deep, emerald green. The air between the pair filled with the pleasant, aromatic scent of whatever it was Traveler burned in the things and the drugs he loaded them with had no effect on Rædis. Most of the time. He drew on the smoke, composing his thoughts then folding up his dangling legs to sit cross legged answered.

"What makes a living thing sentient is certainly debatable. Traveler's race, the humans, have debated it for millennia." He paused, factoring in his recent time travel. "...Or will have, might already have done." He said. Cringing slightly as the tense of traveling in time was always awkward and stupid.

"My point is, they give it a lot of thought. Some say the mind can't exist without the body. Others, the opposite. Some say they think they exist so they must based on the evidence of the world they create around them and, for the most part, all agree on certain fundamentals based on that evidence."

He thought about his own race's ability to share their experiences in every detail, thought and emotion and how humans could not do this. It was part of the reason he did not completely enjoy hanging out with his own kind. He personally found sharing his memory like that was uncomfortably obtrusive and there were some things his machine fellows would just have to take his word on and use their damned imaginations. A thing he had come to learn his kind was woefully lacking of. He was of a very small percentage of his population. There were other robots that preferred their autonomy but for the most part, the majority remained in a vast and complex collective.

"Humans can never truly experience the world from another one's point of view. But they are very good at trying and it is one of the things that make them creative and exciting. I've found many other races to be the same.

I have come to view my own existence as such. I am alive and individual because I say I am. The world around me is very different than yours, no doubt, but I'm making it up as I go. Not following some program that says this is how I should be and the way things are."

He smoked a bit of the cigarette, having concluded his statement. The tall woman thought about what he said as she looked down at his tiny figure. The faintest stream of smoke rose from him as he sat.

"But how do you know?" She asked. He looked up at her with the slyest expression on his little face. This was not lost on the woman.

"How do you?" He simply said.

That was too easy a trap to fall into. Had she really never considered this before? She blinked her yellow eyes and thought.

"I just never expected a machine to consider such things. Our computers and machines are merely...well, mechanical. We can make them appear to be alive but we know they really aren't."

Rædis smiled. He loved being as unique as he was. It made him feel alive, content, at times, particularly smug.

"Also, c'mon Rædis. It's not often I find myself hanging out with a tiny alien android from...well, wherever you're from."

He had to concede this to her. She was one of Traveler's friends and they had only met once before and not at length. They were being chased by numerous interplanetary law enforcement agencies for vehicle theft, chicanery and moving violations.

"My race preferres to be a collective. Everyone knowing what the other thinks and does. The decisions that have guided my civilization have stemmed from this resulting gestalt. The upshot being we pursue the most logical and efficient means for the continuation and advancement of my kind. The downside is that they...we, are very isolationist and boring. Pondering the existential holds no interest for them." He explained.

He flicked the remainder of his cigarette into the path below him. It was barely visible to the giant woman and burned away to ash in the rich air.

"So you are different than others of your kind? An outcast?" She asked?

"Within every closed system or well...system at all, I would say, anomalies occur. Among the other machines I am an anomaly. I prefer autonomy from this collective. And we are machines. We don't have 'outcasts'." He said, dismissing that as more of a trait of organic sentience.

"I just run different than the others. It's good for us. Keeps things interesting."

She chuckled, appreciating his curiosity and sense of adventure. They sat in silence as the final rays of the sun grew shorter against the horizon.

"Rædis...?" She said gently, lowering her voice as not to assault his hearing during such a serene moment.

"I'm sorry if I offended you." She offered in earnest.

He smiled, his affinity for this world renewed.

"It's okay. It takes some practice to be as cool as me." He said, feeling somewhat vindicated. She grinned. He was pretty neat.