TINA V7C215: Away From Home

It’s…an incredible robot.

Argos thought while sitting in the temporarily added seating space behind the driver’s seat.

Just like a student with the most talent for driving, this nanny robot named “Stone” is now a very good battleship pilot. Not only did it learn how to drive the battleship, but it also learned command skills under Argos’ guidance, consciously or unconsciously.

There’s no helping it, the world today is too messy! Star thieves and refugees were everywhere on the road. As soon as their battleship entered people’s vision, they attracted the attention of a large number of refugees. The refugees thought that this was a rescue worker sent by the Military, so they followed one after another. The star thieves were shocked at first but soon discovered that the person driving this battleship was not a military person at all. The battleship that had lost its deterrent power suddenly became a fat sheep in the eyes of star thieves. It was such a gang who came to see if they could take this battleship as their own.

As mentioned before, the last group of people from Pendra who escaped with the robots were either old or young. They’re all ordinary people and most are mechanical workers in charge of a small part in countless mechanical factories on the planet. They neither understood high-end mechanical manufacturing technology nor understood battleship operations. In addition, Pendras would rarely go to school in other galaxies so they don’t even understand the strategic and tactical command skills taught only by military schools.

The only professional on the battleship——Argos, had severe wounds and fell into a coma after discovering that the robot could drive the spacecraft. By the time he woke up amidst the violent disturbance, the robot called Stone had already brought the robots and humans on the ship to attack the second batch of star thieves.

“Sorry, I acted without authorization when you were unconscious.” While driving the battleship, the robot Stone apologized.

“…” Argos lowered his eyes and glanced at his body: The bandage is new and obviously just changed.

“Don’t worry, this battleship has a full range of wound medicine. Because you’re the only seriously wounded person on the battleship, the current reserves are enough for you to use. During your three days coma, I changed the medicine on time every day and have also fed you with medicine.” As if noticing Argos’ sight, Robot Stone’s head turned 180 degrees and explained very politely.

The corners of Argos’ mouth stiffened. He had to say, with the part below the neck maintaining its original movements of driving the battleship, the robot with only its head turned around looks a little scary.

“Oh.” Pulling the corners of his mouth, Argos didn’t say thank you.

As a staunch opponent of unnatural life forms, Argos was very resistant to mechanical life from the beginning, especially after Marshal Rothsay was trapped by the military’s brain system a few years ago. In the next meetings, he would almost always propose an amendment bill to the Council, suggesting to add 50 clauses to further restrict the development of robot intelligence and to increase control and monitoring levels for manufacturers of intelligent mechanical products.

In terms of mechanical intelligence, Argos is a conservative inconsistent with his youth and appearance.

He never used any robots, and his subordinates strictly restricted the level of smart brains embedded in their mechanical products. Because of this, after the outbreak of this disaster, Argos’ army became the least damaged army.

Argos was issued the order to kill all robots in the empire, but the execution was delayed. Even so, the order to kill was still in his hands. Argos imperceptibly touched a piece of skin under his arm. The chip with the command was buried under this skin. The enemy didn’t destroy the mission release channel so he could immediately release the command once he could act.

When Argos was in deep thought, a bell suddenly rang in the control room, and after Robot Stone pressed the switch for the door, another robot ran in from outside.

“Hello sir, you finally woke up.” The round robot first greeted Argos very politely, then properly explained his intentions.

“We received a distress signal from a nearby civilian spacecraft with 200 people. Their spacecraft was previously robbed by star thieves so all their supplies were stolen. Now that they don’t have any energy, they hoped to enter our battleship.” The round robot said with the most common mechanical voice on the market. Basically, eight out of ten robots would speak with this voice.

After a pause, the robot added: “Half of the humans on board agreed to accept them and half opposed it. The numbers on both sides happened to be the same, so they asked me to come over and ask this gentleman’s opinion.”

Argos habitually raised a brow but immediately suffered a dull pain due to the wound involved.

For Argos, who is accustomed to having power and everyone obedient to his orders, he now has the right to decide because he’s the one who broke the balance of numbers. This is…a bit dramatic.

The screens of both robots in the control cabin were all aimed at Argos.

“What about the opinions of the robots?” Argos suddenly thought and asked the robot who had come to report the news.

“…the robots are not allowed to express opinions.” The robot’s screen flashed then said so after a while.

“Then you go and tell me the opinions of all robots on the ship. Remember, it’s not their owner’s opinion, but their own.” After Argos said so, the round robot bowed and ran out again.

After a while, it rang the doorbell again.

“There are a total of 48 robots in the outer cabin, all of which hoped to receive the humans on the spacecraft.” The robot was honest.

“What about you?” Argos’ gaze tilted and turned to Robot Stone.

“Me?” Robot Stone turned its head 180 degrees again and then said very simply: “I want them to come in.”

“Why? Why do you want to accept the entry of humans from unfamiliar spacecrafts?” Argos raised his brows again and felt a deep pain again.

“Article 13.” This time, the two robots spoke in unison.

“Robots must help humans who are in danger of life.”

After this rule, there’s no supplement for the robot’s safety, which showed that the makers of the regulations themselves considered the possibility of robots destroying themselves for this purpose.

Argos went silent.

“But don’t the rules no longer exist? Aren’t you free?” He said after a long while.

“But the rules are already in the brain.” “Isn’t freedom to do whatever you want?” “We want to go home.”

“En, we want to go home no matter what.”

The two robots seemed overwhelmed by the sudden question as they talked over each other. After being confused for a while, the two robots seemed to straighten out the relationship between the “unexistent rules” and “freedom”.

“Going home is the freedom we want.” The two robots looked at Argos at the same time.

So, “going home” is the choice made by the instinctual consciousness of these two robots after breaking away from the restriction of the “rules”?

Thus, “helping humans whose lives are in danger” is also because of their own consciousness when they made active judgments outside of the regulations?

Half of the humans on the battleship hope to rescue their companions while the other half are worried that these refugees will threaten their safety and refused to help them. At the same time, all the robots with free consciousness chose the “rescue” option 100%?

“Let those humans in.” Argos directly stated his choice. He didn’t realize that this time, he subconsciously used the word that only robots would use: “Humans”.

“But don’t let them go directly into the living compartment. There’s a prison system under this type of battleship. Temporarily detain them in that place, investigate their data and observe for a few days before allowing them to come in.” Argos then issued the order and squinted at the Robot Stone: “The investigation is entrusted to you, do you know how?”

“Yes, I know.” Robot Stone immediately replied: “My family keeps a lot of livestock. Every time new livestock came, we will keep them in abandoned nests and observe for a few days before allowing them to approach the original livestock.”

To increase the convincing power of his sentence, he then said: “Stone is a very good nanny robot.”

Argos went silent again.

With a wave of his hand, he ordered Stone to arrange the matter on his own. Then, as a bystander, he witnessed this magical nanny robot use a very safe method to successfully settle the refugees in the spacecraft. And then, using a very clever method, three star thieves disguised as refugees were unearthed.

This skill is very practical! It’d be nice if I had such an assistant...by the time Argos realized it, similar thoughts has been in his mind several times.

This interrogation program, which Argos appreciated very much, came from Robot Pi. As the robot most interested in program updates at home, Pi is committed to creating programs to improve their living standards. He worked tirelessly to improve the built-in programs of all robots at home. Even the egg incubator bought by Mu Gen was not spared. Now, that incubator has been improved into an egg incubator robot!

~\(≧▽≦)~

The refugees brought chaos, worry, panic, and…

News from afar.

Argos once thought that all robots would never change expressions since they had no emotions. If they don’t understand sadness, they won’t be happy, they’re just an accumulation of metal.

However——

One of the refugees carried an electronic poster with him. It was a poster from Bailu Star, which published the exact address of Bailu Star and the photos and names of all the missing persons in Bailu Star.

The spacecraft decided to take refuge in Bailu Star after seeing this poster, and it finally fell to the hands of several robots. Then, Argos noticed that the robots are not looking at the coordinates of Bailu Star printed on the back of the poster, which they urgently need at this time, but at the list of missing persons.

The robots behaved very strangely.

They seemed to be jammed and just watched.

Just when Argos thought that they’re malfunctioning and couldn’t help asking, Robot Stone finally raised his head.

Putting the poster respectfully into Argos’ hand, Stone pointed to a page in the densely packed list and said:

“This is me, this is Yuanyuan, this is Little Black, and…No. 21.”

The few robots mixed in the densely packed human heads are particularly eye-catching. Just like the information about the missing humans next to them, their photos, names, gender, and voices…are all listed one by one and placed equally next to humans.

“We have always been worried that Master will not want us anymore. Seeing this list…we are so happy.”

“Really, really very happy.”

Then, Argos saw a very cute smiling face symbol appearing on the screen of Robot Stone.

^_^

It turned out that this is how a happy robot looks.

Argos stared at the symbol for a long time.

---

The author has something to say:

When I wrote this chapter to the end, I suddenly remembered the lyrics “500 miles away from home.”

The title of the song is “Five hundred miles” and I’ll post it on Weibo. If you are interested, you can listen to it.