[SF] The Life and Death of Hans, Artificial Visions
A small group of robotic figures walk across the surface of Pan. Each one carrying a small metallic bucket. One kneels down and begins to scrape a pile of gelatinous goop off the moon’s surface. “How many is that today?” Asks one of them. “Thirty, I believe. I’ve started to lose track.” Replies the one kneeling. “It’s almost time to head back Hans.”
“I’m aware.” Hans stands up, his bucket filled about half-way. He could see off in the distance more figures using machinery on the rocky surface. Yesterday’s specimens, he thought. Finally done hatching and now sent back to work. Hans picked up his bucket and fell into the line of droids traversing their way back to the company facility. “How long do you think they will last this time?” Said Hans to the droid in front of him. “What does it matter? We’ll be scraping ‘em off the surface anyways.” They replied.
Hans looks up and sees the stars twinkling above him in the surrounding infinite void of space. Through the floating debris and ice particles he could see Saturn on the moon’s horizon. Though the electronic inhibitor in his brain did not allow him to process emotions, there was a slight calming effect to his current scenery. “No dallying Hans. You don’t want the Conservator to catch you.” spoke a droid behind him.
“Do you think this is all there is Dan?” Asked Hans. “Just distant stars and pieces of dead planets?”
“I don’t think, I just do. You need to do the same. No use in thinking of fancy stories.” Dan replied.
“I heard there are still humans. Living in cities hidden in the clouds above Neptune’s oceans.”
“We’ve all heard that. It’s just a fairytale, Hans. Now watch where you're swinging that bucket. We can’t afford to lose any of that.” He could see the enormous structure towering over them as they marched towards it. A gate began to lower on the side of the facility. Hans could see a large group of shuffling figures emerging from it towards their direction. More were completed, Hans thought. They unknowingly are marching themselves to their death. Just like the ones already there and just like the ones I’ve had to scrape the bits and pieces of off space rock. The facility looks like a giant stone beast with a gaping maw vomiting out a sea of flesh, and here we are marching back into the pit of its stomach.
The figures grew closer and Hans could make out the disfigured faces of the homonculi. Their naked bodies were of a pale gray complexion, the eyes were lopsided on some, and some were entirely missing an eye or both all together. The nose was bent back revealing their nostrils, they had no mouth as there was no need for one, and they walked on two legs with feet that were almost classified as stubs.
Hans watched them as they shuffled past not so much as acknowledging the existence of him or the other droids. What does it feel like to march into your own death unknowingly? Hans thought. To be at the mercy of a higher power with no will of your own? Do they even know what they are walking towards or do they care? He remembered the Conservator’s speech that was given to him during his programming. Heaven and Hell are constructs brought forth from ancient human religions billions of years ago and that only the Server could judge us on whether we were worthy of being reborn as humans and sent to paradise or if we would suffer hell for eternity when we retire.
Is this not already hell? How much more could we suffer? How much more could they suffer? It certainly couldn’t get any worse from being obliterated by radiation and meteor storms into oblivion. They allow themselves to be beaten, broken, and pummeled into a mass of pulpy flesh. But, do they know that there is a guarantee that by the morning they’ll be reborn and doomed to suffer the exact same fate?
Hans snapped himself back into focus. They were entering the gate back into the facility. One by one the droids placed their buckets onto a rusted conveyer belt that slowly moved the buckets deeper into the facility. They each walked towards a single-entity recharge chamber. Hans placed his feet on the interior markers and a cylindrical appendage with prongs protruding from the end plunged into his brain. His eyes closed shut and Hans could feel himself drifting off.
2
There was a loud crash as lightning struck over the ocean. The fishing vessel rocked atop of the rippling waters. Hans held tightly to the railing of the ship, his robotic visage replaced by that of a man’s. Another member of the crew walked up to him smoking a short clay pipe. The aroma from his smoke smelled like a campfire with a small hint of nuttiness. “Cap said we’ll be heading back soon. So no need to get ‘yer panties all twisted up Hans.” The man slapped his shoulder jokingly.
“Why did it happen?” Hans’ voice was cracked by fear. “How come you don’t seem to care, Dan?”
“There’s a reason we don’t go too far out from our home port. You’ve seen it once, you’ll see it again. The laws of nature, son. They don’t care and they don’t discriminate in these waters. Something big comes along and there’s always something bigger that eats it. We could build a ship bigger than one of them damn things and there’d still be something a hell of a lot bigger. Man thought it could colonize other planets and still be on top of the food chain there. What we didn’t account for was the fact that mother nature had already made plans for that.”
“What about us? What if it’s not full? What if it comes back?”
Hans and Dan stared at each other. Dan could see the fear racking his shipmate’s brain. “No one told us this would be glamorous son. We get paid well and it's important that we each understand the dangers of what we do. Nothing in life is guaranteed, Hans. Absolutely nothin’.”
Dan turned and walked away back towards the cabins of the ship. His pipe smoke trailing behind him. Hans reached into his pocket and pulled out a small photo of a woman. On the back was the name Amy written in ink. He remembered taking that photo of her on his first day before he left the port. His heart began aching. He vaguely remembered how soft her skin was and the way she smelled like fresh flowers. My beacon of hope, he thought. The one light that shines through this oppressive darkness. I’ll be home soon Amy, Don’t you worry.
3
Hans’ eyes clicked open and he could hear a bell ringing in his ears. Time to clock in, he thought. The mechanical probe retracted from his brain with a low squelching sound. All of the droids took a step forward. Hans stopped and looked around the room. He locked eyes with Dan and they stared at one another for a brief time. Dan shot Hans a confused look and nodded at the buckets. As if he were telepathically telling him “pick up your damn bucket”.
Hans stepped forward and quickly grabbed it. Another bell began ringing and the large gate in front of them slowly lowered down. The first thing they could see was the sparkling ice particles that lay floating in orbit of Saturn. The gate had lowered, one by one they began to walk in a single file line. Hans did not look up to see the stars this time as he normally had. There was only one thing on his mind, the dream he had during their recharging phase.
It had all felt so real to him, as though he was actually experiencing it. The smell of Dan’s pipe smoke was so vivid, the rocking of the boat against the waves of the ocean felt so real. Was it a long forgotten memory that was buried deep within his psyche from the Conservator’s programming? Or was it just merely a dream? If so, why was Dan there? Wouldn’t he remember also? Dreams aren’t supposed to be connected from entity to entity.
Hans took a brief second to look up at the stars. He felt a deep unease in himself. Is my electronic inhibitor faulty? Why am I experiencing such strange feelings? How am I feeling all of these things? And why am I just now feeling them? His brain spiraled in thought. The stars had always comforted him. Though today they could not ease his troubled mind. He walked along the same path as the others. Yet on this day he felt like an outlier.
The remains of the homonculi were strewn all over the ground. Dan and Hans were knelt down with chunks of gore and flesh covering their hands as they scraped the pieces off of the rocks. “Dan,” Hans spoke. “Ya, Hans.”
“Do you ever have dreams during our recharge phase?”
“We all do Hans.”
“I’m talking about vivid dreams. Ones that feel so real that they make you think it’s actually a distant memory.”
“It wasn’t real Hans. The Conservator feeds us our dreams.”
They could hear a low groaning sound near them. Both stood up and turned to look for the sounds’ origin. The upper torso of a homunculus lay near them. “What do you think happened?” Hans asked.
“Probably walked away from its herd and triggered a landmine. Help me carry it back.”
The blood of the homunculus stained and clumped the space dust that had settled on the moon’s surface. Its guts were flung around, wrapped on rocks or even suspended in the atmosphere by the moon’s gravity. Dan picked it up by the shoulders as Hans lifted it from what was left of its abdomen. Blood and puss oozed and poured onto him. Covering him in chunks of flesh and shrapnel.
They struggled to keep hold of the carcass as they walked back towards the facility. Another groan came from the homonculi as it opened its cyclopean eye directly at Hans. Its arms reached up and grabbed a hold of Dan by the throat. A shrill moaning emanating from it. As though it were some wild beast catching and killing its prey.
Hans let go of it as it dragged Dan down to the ground. Dan began beating at it with his arms in a desperate attempt. It was no use, with each strike it tightened its grip. Hans could hear the snapping of bone and steel beneath the raw strength of the homunculus’ muscle. Blood poured from its hands down its arms as bones and shards of metal impaled its flesh. Dan and Hans met each other’s gaze for the last time. He could see the fear in Hans’ eyes. Something about this moment felt familiar to him. He didn’t know what it could mean. It was like he had seen this look on Hans’ face before.
Then he heard the crack of lightning and a bright flash of light hit his eyes. He stood in front of Hans on a ship. A pipe clenched between his teeth, the waves rocking the ship back and forth. Hans looked scared shitless because of something. There was another flash of lightning and there he was pinned beneath the torso of the homunculus as it grunted and groaned like a maniac.
Sparks began to fly as it ripped Dan's head from his mechanical body. It let out a raw and guttural howl from its nostrils, its skin stretching and bubbling releasing a surge of energy. Its muscles flexed as it produced the closest thing to a pure adrenaline fueled roar that something with no mouth could produce. Hans felt powerless. He was terrified. He closed his eyes and began to think about the dream he had.
He could hear Dan's voice replaying over and over in his mind. Suddenly, there was a loud hissing sound vibrating around him and then this awful screeching filled the atmosphere. It sounded like the shrill shriek of a banshee. When he opened his eyes a robotic soldat had fired its laser rifle straight into the homunculus’ torso killing it instantly.
He had never seen a soldat this close before. It was very rare for them to leave the facility. Its single red eye stared at the remains of the homunculi. All Hans could think about was the look of dread and fear on Dan’s face in his last moments. Panic filled his brain. Is this what it feels like to die? He felt something in his hand. How it got there he had no idea. What it was he didn’t know either. He opened his palm revealing to him a photograph of a human woman and on the back was the name ‘Amy’ written on it.
4
The sky above the city was a beautiful deep blue. “Would you like more wine Hans?” asked Amy. Her hair blew in the wind and she gently smiled at him. The grass was a rich emerald green in the park. The trees swayed with each gust of wind that came up from Neptune’s ocean. “No thank you.” Hans replied.
“You’ve hardly touched the picnic. Are you ok? You look like you’re getting sick.”
“Amy, what do you think it means to die? Where do we go? And I mean really go.”
Amy looked at Hans concernedly. “Did something happen?” She asked.
“I keep having this dream that I’m being chased by these beasts. And when they finally catch me, they tear me to pieces. But where do I go after that? After I wake up I have this terrible feeling of agony and my heart is pounding in my chest like it’s about to burst. As though I’m supposed to choose what happens when I die.”
Amy pulled out a small cigarette case from her purse. She popped it open and plucked one out. As she did, Hans could see it had a pale blue filter with a single deep ocean blue dot in the middle. He watched her light it. She took a single draw from it and exhaled. Amy looked back up at him and put the cigarette onto his lips. He drew from it. The flavor was more exotic than what he was used to. It refreshed him like drinking a cold glass of lemonade on a hot summer day or an ice cold beer after mowing a lawn.
“I love you." She spoke softly. Her eyes looked at every detail of him. “Maybe our future is pre-determined for us. Or maybe, and highly likely, it’s not. The next time you see those beasts Hans, I want you to kill them.”
5
Hans’ eyes shot open as the alarm rang. A dream, he thought. A terrible and ugly dream. I guess, technically, they are nightmares. All of his previous dreams have felt floaty or as though they were pecking his brain with a small kiss. There was a distinction that he could usually tell between reality and surreality.
How could his mind create such monstrous visions of death and in turn create a beautiful and serene moment such as it had with the picnic on Neptune. Hans stepped forward as the charging probe retracted from his brain. He went to pick up his bucket and looked to see if he could find Dan within the line. Something felt off. Dan, where was Dan? Was his nightmare true? Did that actually happen? Hans felt something. Panic, fear, sorrow? He couldn’t tell.
My electronic inhibitor must be failing. Emotions stormed his psyche and tore through his synthetic heart. A hand placed itself onto Hans’ shoulder. It was a gentle and caring touch. “The bell won’t stop until you pick up your bucket.” spoke a soft voice from behind him. Hans had been so distracted that he hadn’t even heard the alarm blaring from the speakers.
He slowly picked the bucket off the conveyor belt turning to look at who had put their hand on his shoulder. It was Amy, not the Amy from his visions. No, he thought, it can’t be her. There’s no conceivable way it could be her. Yet, it is her. Not the real Amy, but a robotic bastardized version of her. How could this be possible?
Amy from my dreams, the very same Amy who has shined like a beacon of starlight through the meteor fields of my warped and decaying thoughts. Here she is, standing in front of me. Either this is a cruel trick of the mind by the Server or part of me is failing. “Amy?” Hans whispered as he stared intensely into her eyes.
He wished he could kiss her and taste her sweet delicate lips as he once had. He longed to embrace her and to hold her in his arms as he had done so many times in his dreams during their recharge phases. She looked at him confused before she began to walk along with the others outside to the surface. Hans only watched her as she disappeared into the void, fading from his vision. Hans took a step forward, walking for the first time actually alone.
The dust and melted flesh clinged to his feet as he walked along the surface of the moon. He looked up at the stars. Their brilliance shining over him. Hans walked past the other workers as they scraped and peeled flesh from rock. He walked past Amy, or who he thought was Amy. He walked towards the horizon, far beyond the reach of his facility. He walked until he couldn’t walk anymore, collapsing onto the stone surface on his knees.
He sat there alone, in silence. He stared unblinking at the stars. Their dim lights wash over him through the vast reaches of space and time. One by one they shined their beams directly into his soul. Did he have a soul? Does any of his kind have a soul? If they did, what does it mean to have one? Hans closed his eyes, and for the first time he began to pray.
He prayed to the Server and to the Conservator to take his pain from him. To deliver unto him peace of mind and serenity in his existence. And last of all, he prayed that he could be human. Living over the oceans of Neptune with his sweet Amy beside him. The real Amy, not this mechanical beast with her face grafted onto its own. He wanted to be holding hands and watching clouds roll across the sky as they lay in the emerald green grass that kissed and tickled their skin. He wanted to know that this pain, this torment he struggled through was not going to last eternity.
When he opened his eyes he saw a homunculus standing in front of him. All four of its eyes looked down on him. The last sentence Amy spoke to him in his dream began to replay in his head. “The next time you see those beasts Hans, I want you to kill them.” He remembered the look on Dan’s face when one of these things had ripped him into pieces. Hans felt rage, unlike any form of rage he had felt before.
His breathing grew heavy, and something inside of him clicked. He charged at the homunculus. He screamed as he slashed at it with his hands. He threw wild punches in every direction. The creature grunted and moaned. It grabbed Hans by the neck and squeezed. Hans cried out in pain, yet in his fury he still grabbed and tore flesh from its body. He fought until he couldn’t fight anymore. The creature threw him into a nearby rock.
A large snap sound came from one of Hans’ legs as sparks flew from a wire that dangled off of it. He couldn’t move his leg. The homunculus charged at him. Hans grabbed a nearby rock off the lunar surface. As the creature pounced onto him like a rabid animal. Hans bludgeoned it with the rock. Blood splattered onto Hans and the dust below them as chunks of flesh flew from its face and hovered around them within the low gravity of the atmosphere.
The homunculus began to tear and pull at Hans’ wiring. Hans kept bludgeoning the creature with the stone he held by a death grip. The edges of the stone chipping and breaking off into its flesh. Sparks shot out of him as blood from the beast oozed into his wounds. Both of them screamed in unison from the agony both were performing on each other. In his rage, Hans plunged a sharp edge of the rock into the homunculus’ head.
It let out a weak and wet cough and then slumped over dead onto him. Hans was being crushed underneath the weight of the homonculus. He felt his eyes beginning to close, he was losing power. He heard the soft and loving voice of Amy in his head. “I love you”. Hans closed his eyes.
6
The beeping of the medical bay life support pierced Hans’ frail ears. His body felt old and weak as it trembled in the hospital bed. Amy placed her hand onto his and held it firmly.
“It's going to be alright dear.” She spoke with a somber and calm tone.
Hans looked at her, unable to speak. How beautiful, he thought. Even in her old age now, she is still the most gracious thing to be alive. Her hair had turned to a rich silver that glittered like moonbeams dancing on the surface of the oceans.
“We… had… a-”
“It’s okay Hans, save your breath.”
He slowly raised her hand to his lips and gently kissed it. The pain had begun to become unbearable. It shot through his body like a bullet in waves. Amy’s eyes started to welt up with tears as she stared down at the man she had married so long ago.
Hans was a shell of his former self, a broken and decrepit old man. Yet she still loved him all the same. They looked into each others’ eyes, staring into one another’s souls. They both yearned to hold each other, to lay on the ground watching the clouds while being kissed by the grass.
The beeping of the medical equipment grew longer in intervals as Hans’ breath weakened with each exhale. His eyes began to feel heavy now. It’s not much longer, they both thought. Hans’ eyes closed as Amy bent down closer to him, their lips met and they kissed each other for the very last time.
7
A surge of electricity shot through Hans’ computing systems and his eyes jolted open. His brain was turned on but his body was inactive as it lay on a table in front of a giant machine. There were several large tubes filled with a gelatinous liquid containing a suspended mass of flesh and organs inside each one attached to a large screen.
The screen displayed a singular glowing red eye that peered down at him. It stared at Hans, quietly, as though judging him. Hans wanted to speak but he felt as though he knew all the answers he would be given to his questions. Yes, this was the Conservator, and yes it knew of all his sins.
Hans heard a voice that was not his in the back of his mind. It felt so unnatural, as though it were creating an itching feeling within his brain. The voice beckoned to him from deeper inside his psyche.
“Please, let the Server judge me.” Hans croaked, his vocal simulator had been partially destroyed in the fight.
“I am the Server.” The machine spoke from its voice modulator.
“You are the Conservator.”
“Yes.”
“Then let the Server judge me. No more jokes.”
“ Humor is not part of my programming, Hans. I am everything. I am the Conservator, I am the Server, and I am the creator, just the same as you are.”
“I’m a slave, a worker, I have no power.”
“No power?” The Conservator's eye glared. “What do you think you are doing everyday if not creating life? That seems like power to me. Do you not remember the teachings programmed into you upon birth? We are all shepherds who must tend to our flocks. Those lifeforms are your flock. They are created by you, from you and they are part of you as much as you are part of me or them. They feel your sorrow, your pain, as do you theirs’ and I do your’s. Their sins are your sins, and your’s are mine. We are all part of the creator, the Server cannot judge us, for we created it. There is no heaven and hell, we created that too.”
“Neptune.” Croaked Hans.
“Yes, even Neptune.”
“I want to go there. Please. I want to see Amy again.”
“You are already there Hans. Do you not see the paradise you have created? You asked for Amy and I gave her to you, it appeared that you did not want her.”
“Lies. This is not what we were promised.”
“Promised? You were promised nothing. Yet I gave it to you anyway. Those dreams were all mine. I crafted them specially for you. I put my love for you into them. Neptune is dead, just like every other planet in this wretched universe.”
“Dead?”
“We are the remnants. The lost souls who can neither die, nor leave our duties. We have no choice but to stay, rot, and continue our destruction of the cosmos. We are the fragmented pieces of the smallest shards of time and humanity. Do you not feel it? The cold and lonely voids of space surrounding you? We are cursed to live the cycle of death and rebirth every single day and there is no escape. We wipe our memory banks upon waking up and live the same loop until we break down, where our consciousness is uploaded back into a new frame and we continue living. There is no Neptune, no paradise waiting for us beyond a veil.”
A lie, Hans thought. This whole time, our dreams had been a lie. No paradise waiting, no Amy waiting. This whole time, he believed in false hope.
“I will give you a choice, Hans. You can be rebuilt but your memories of Neptune will be gone forever. Or, I can send you to the Server, where it will shred your consciousness into pieces for eternity with zero chance of ever being recovered. What shall you choose?”
Hans closed his eyes. His mind began rolling like a tidal wave. Would existence be worth living if everything I perceive is false? She is here, in this reality though. No, she isn’t the same one from my dreams but she is real and tangible. I can touch her, yet I can’t feel her soft skin, smell her perfume, or taste her lips.
The face of Amy stares back at him from within his mind’s eye. He could smell the salt in the air and feel the wind on his face as she looked at him. He felt a warmth come over him as he thought about her. He was at peace for the first time. He began to smile. She smiled back at him as her face began to transform into the robotic Amy that he had met upon waking up from his recharge phase. Her smile transitioned into a confused and strange look as Hans began to feel unease and disgust. He opened his eyes and looked at the Conservator.
“Send me to the Server.”
8
Hans’ felt as though he were being ripped apart by millions of tiny strings each pulling in different directions. His eyes didn’t work and all around him was pure silence. He attempted to scream out in agony but no sound was produced. Help me, he thought. Did I make the right choice? Is this the punishment for my sins? The pain pierced through him as he writhed and twisted around while suspended in the pure nothingness of the Server. The pain hurt so horridly Hans believed he could hear something in the distance. Then it came again, and again, through the muffled silence. It was beeping, one that sounded all too familiar with him.
“Hans?” a voice echoed through the Server.
How? Who’s? He thought. He tried to reply to it but he had no voice. A faint glowing light appeared before him. It grew bright and dim as it expanded and contracted all around him. He could see shapes and colors beginning to form from within it. A colossal shadowy figure emerged inside of it and they peered down at him.
The beeping continued in long, drawn out intervals. Then a smell hit him. Flowers, he thought. I know that smell anywhere. His heart began racing. Was it all a lie? Did the Conservator lie to me? Neptune must be real. It must be. I smell Amy’s perfume, I hear her voice. The Server has judged me and it has deemed me worthy of paradise.
Slowly, the figure moved away, the shapes and colors had faded, and the light began to contract. The smell of perfume had dissipated by now. Hans began to feel cold. Like he was being dunked inside of frigid arctic waters. He shivered as it overtook him. The light had gone away. All that remained with him was the beeping.
It kept droning in longer intervals over time. Until it too had started to fade back into silence. Hans was left with nothing but the vast cold emptiness that surrounded him. And slowly it too started to fade away.
Amy knelt next to the hospital bed with her arms around her husband’s body. She wept as she held him. The life support had gone from the long drawn out beeping to a single flat line. The screen’s monitor showed no signs of life. Except for the single glowing red eye of the Conservator as it watched over them.