Chapter Six
Jack and Bruce follow the other Jack into the studio. A small person was sitting on the couch. It could have been a female because of its diminutive size. It had a sweat suit on with a zip up sweatshirt and a hood, sweat pants and sneakers. The hood was pulled over its head, obscuring it. It's face was is in the shadows. Its hands were in the pockets of the sweatshirt. The person sat there quiet and motionless.
Jack sat in his high directors styled, canvas, chair and Bruce sat on the recliner. Both visibly shaken.
“I don’t know what happened, here, but it looks like an earthquake. And when we came in the studio just a few minutes ago, I noticed the towel with the blood on it and some of my sculptures on the floor so I assume a tremor hit.”
Both Jack and Bruce numbly nodded their heads.
“I figure that there is something wrong with you, Jack. Am I right?”
“Uh, yeah, but …..”
“Let me just finish this, please. Ordinarily you'd be here in the studio cleaning this mess up. But something has happened and we need to get the bottom of what’s going on here. Just answer my questions and we’ll have a discussion in a few minutes. OK?”
“OK.” said robot Jack, and Bruce responded with a weak nod.
"I really don't know how to start this, but here it goes. I am Jack Landry, sculpture, and you Jack are a robot designed to take my place while I was off-world.”
Bruce and the robo Jack's eyes went wide again and they both looked at each other.
“Mesalmo, please come over here and help me out.”
Mesalmo got off the couch and walked up next to Jack. His head reached up just below Jack’s shoulder. He dropped the hood down, and dropped his sweat shirt to the floor. Bruce and robot Jack stared in disbelief.
“You…you’re not human.” Bruce blurted out.
“No, I am not. I am from a planet two hundred and seventy-five light years from your planet. Our planet is called Mahkaha.”
His large, black, almond, eyes look empty as Bruce looked into them. His ashen gray skin and thin arms remind Bruce of every alien picture he has seen on UFO documentaries and sci-fi movies. He still had the sweat pants on so Bruce couldn’t see his presumably thin legs.
Mesalmo turned to Jack and robot Bruce.
“Our civilization has great technology. We are well over five hundred years or more advanced than your technology. Our technology has solved most all of our problems.
Robots, not unlike you, Jack, are very common on our planet. Most are without the living epidermis covering like you have because the expense is too much to keep up. We can, in your terms, “beam” inanimate objects great distances and reconstruct them at the remote sites totally intact, but only inanimate objects."
“We can travel the universe in hours or days instead of years with our gravity powered, FTL, vehicles. There is no pollution on our planet, no hunger, and virtually no disease. We do have crime, but a bare minimum compared to Earth.”
“Our scientists have been developing technology since the dawn of our civilization. But with all of this technology we have sacrificed other qualities that make great races in the universe.” explained Mesalmo sadly.
“Unfortunately during our rush to eradicate diseases, poverty, and improve our standard of living, we have lost the very spark that makes a civilized society." Mesalmo made eye contact with Bruce. "The spark of imagination, that your society has never lost. Even with your wars, your poverty, and the daily struggle you humans have to face, your spark for creativity, beauty, and imagination had never ceased. Our imagination appears to only work on solving technical problems, inventing machines and devices that can solve a need, but cannot dream up art and beauty. ”
“It appears, to us, that your struggle for survival has turned that spark into a flame. A white hot flame that has driven your race to create beauty out of oppression, form out of poverty, and even your race’s inhumane treatment of each other is shown in beautifully art. This is something that is foreign to our culture. Your race’s art and beauty reflects your innermost desires, your wants to have a world that is beautiful, peaceful, and orderly, despite its actual status.”
“We have lost the creativity, the beauty, and the soul of creating art. For millennia we had tried to recapture what our earlier ancestors could only moderately create, but even that small spark for art vanished from our civilization. That little spark died from ignorance, neglect, and apathy. What is that Earth term you told me, Jack?” He turned to Jack.
“Use it or lose it.” replied Jack with a smirk.
“Exactly. So in light of that, we have been visiting less technologically advanced planets that still have their great artists, writers, sculptures and any class that uses imagination, even comics. We have been offering them a chance to help us develop art on our planet. And to hopefully instill and teach our people how to create art. Your planet offers a wealth of art, in all of its forms. Ten years ago, we asked some of your cartoonists to visit our planet and to introduce our people to graphic and text humor.
Now our information media carries these cartoons, and our people are experiencing, for the first time in centuries, humor. I myself even have learned some blonde jokes. However, they do not do well on a planet of gray-skinned, hairless beings. But since visiting your planet, I can appreciate the humor they represent. And for some strange reason the males of my planet enjoyed watching the video comic offerings of ‘The Three Stooges’, but the females of our planet found these comedies revolting. "
Bruce and both Jacks snickered a little.
“Once we have the permission from the artist to transport him back to our planet, we scan him and download physical attributes and his brain knowledge. Then, we select an advanced robot or android in the same physical size, shape, and configuration of that person; cover the robot with synthetic biological skin in that person’s image with all the functions needed to support that skin. It is a very expensive reproduction but the robot is then an exact copy of the original.
We electronically copy the brain knowledge of the artist and place that into the organic brain of the robot with one detail; there is a subsystem that continually runs to insulate the robotic functions with the human brain functions. It informs the robot that he is a robot and the brain memories are just a running program. This program also informs the robot that these memories and physical attributes are expendable and temporary. So as long as this program runs continually, all is well and both the robot and human thoughts are isolated.
However, even our technology is not exactly perfect. If the separator program ceases to function then the human intelligence takes over, since the brain is organic, and the robot becomes human in thought; with all the survival instincts of a human. It becomes self-aware and bases its personality and beliefs on whoever’s knowledge currently resides in its robotic brain. It becomes the person it is suppose to just mimic. And without the separator program to tell it otherwise it believes that it is that person. ”
“We usually take the artist for a three month visit on our world. This gives the artist enough time to adapt to our planet and learn how to create art that our people will admire. Then upon returning, we deactivate the robot, and reconfigure it for another loaner. We have the technology, but we also have budgets. Even we have to work in a society that has a budget based economy. We reuse the same robot hundreds of times in different being configurations. This of course requires us to wipe out all memory and reprogram.”