[rush666]

world run by robots


Telepath 101

The clock struck 12:00 P.M and over the P.A system the lunch announcement was made. All the prisoners walked to the cafe to receive their healthy dose of vitamins. Each meal offered different vitamins and no one ever really questioned what was in the vitamins. For Kerry Johnson it did not matter what vitamins he took, after forty years locked up they all tasted the same, and looked the same to him. It was not worth his time to talk to any of the other prisoners because they did not understand his views. Unlike many of the prisoners he remembered life before Telepath 101 took over. Although young, he could still remember times when people would stay up as late as they wanted, spoke to whom they wanted, and lived without any form of government telling them what to do with their lives.

The times were about freedom, he must have been eleven or twelve but he could not quite remember. Government officials saw the music industry as a major block in society, Sounds, and lyrics that corrupted peoples minds. Allowing the people to have imaginations was setting the society back. Advancements in technology became very useful to the people. It solved problems and made people stop thinking for themselves. Robots became mechanical people, people that never made mistakes, so perfect that no one could find anything wrong with a robot.

It was one robot in particular that was created in the late nineteen seventies. It was called Robbie the Robot, about three feet tall, with a built in computerized programming system. The first robot, with such an advancement, other robots had to be told how to think, by installing programming systems into them. Robbie thought for himself, created an army of robots called SR's. the SR's were cloned with Robbie's visions of how the society should run. Robbie's laws were soon created and preached to the people. Robbie's laws took away from the principle of freedom, although not conveyed to the people in a negative way. The SR's allowed people to believe they were free, when in reality they were not. Promised a better life, with no more taxes, "Let us think for you." was the slogan for the SR's.

Kerry fell into the category of "Running rebel." the people who refused to believe that machines could make peoples lives better by making choices for them. Who you dated, or talked to was determined by "Social Robots." Robots for every field were created, financial, sexual, entertainment, music, books, movies, making freedom of thoughts no longer existent. Law robots were assigned to perform the duties of keeping the people away, from people who preached freedom of expression. Many people revolted, but people with a lot of wealth found it better to live under the control of robots. They kept their money, without having to work anymore. The robots took care of everything, common working people loved it even more, no more nine to five job, no more bills to pay, financial robots took care of it all.

For Kerry it was a daily struggle, the running rebels were the people of the arts. Music, literature, creativity, and the freedom to express all of those to one's choice. Running rebels when caught were put in cells, only given water and vitamins to live on. Robbie's vision being interfered with, by people who refused to conform, refused to cut their hair, and refused to join his vision, were left to suffer in a cell. Their they let them create their music, their books, their poems, and their letters. The law robots made the prisoners create these thing's everyday, and then they were shown to the public, as an example of how stupid imaginations were. All the people laughed at Kerry's love song about his high school girlfriend Emily. The opening lyrics to the song went "Emily my love, for your love is like a flower that will continue to grow on me." The song put to music, and laughed at by the people. Robbie's speech outlined why creativity was bad for the society. "Good people of Telepath 101, I come forth today, to let you hear a prisoners form of creativity." The song played through the loud speakers the chorus of the song "Emily how I will always love you." Closing out the three minute love long. "Now my good people, we can not allow people to become attached to people, clearly like this subject is, in this case to someone named Emily. Are love robots supply everyone with a partner of the opposite sex, someone that will do whatever you want them to do. In the times that this main lived, men and women fought back and forth sometimes everyday. Fighting over such things as money, and why enough of it was not being brought home. This kind of nonsense destroys are society as a whole my good people of Telepath 101. We must catch all these individuals who want to express themselves freely, and lock them away into are prisons to keep them away from are youths." The people cheered Robbie's speech, and left with, as always the outlook on society that freedom of expression can not be tolerated.

Back in prison Kerry sat alone at the same table he sat at everyday. An old man of about fifty five, everyone else much younger inside the prison. He was the only prisoner their who felt as if he was their for no reason. All the other prisoners would recite Robbie's laws in their sleep, and beg for forgiveness. They would attempt to write one thousand word essays on how they would change themselves in the society, and conform to the rules. One man by the name of Alex, who entered the prison with long dark brown hair, to his shoulders was caught playing in a music group. He shaved his head bald, and cried to the law robots that he was a changed man, and broke his fingers so he could no longer play his guitar. The robots still showed him no mercy, as they made him pick up his pen, and write lyrics, or stupid things like why he wanted to be apart of a music group. Kerry never budged since he had been put in prison over thirty years ago. Wrote what he saw, wrote what he felt, and really did not give a damn. He was the only one they could never break, his picture on billboards, as the worst possible example to society. Everyone else in the prison accepted what they did wrong, and knew that they would suffer forever.

After lunch Kerry laying in his bunk thinking of the past. Always thinking about the past, never the present, because the present to him was pointless. Their surely must be a way to reach the running rebels out in society who have not yet been caught. The ones who stood for freedom, he must find a way to reach those people. How was the only question, he knew thousands out their existed. But many whom only grew up in Telepath 101 society. Their visions of freedom of expression distorted, with no way of knowing how to bring them together. The society could not fall, because the rebels had no leader. They could not organize anything, because they were never allowed to, they only broke away from the system on luck.

Kerry needed a way to break from this prison, and lead the rebels into an overthrow of Telepath 101. He knew their was still time, but how much was left. Once every rebel was put into prison, their ambition was stripped away from them. Kerry used to be a happy person, but the robots took everything from him, old enough to remember when a person could go to the record store, and buy any genre of music they enjoyed. He knew music spoke, so he needed to find a way to create music, for the rebels, who could carry the message. Music that had a unique sound, that everyone would like so much that even the people who supported Telepath 101 society would enjoy it. He knew the Alex the bald man, who broke his fingers, was his only hope, he would need to reach out to him, and try to convince him that he did nothing wrong by creating music. Kerry use to play drums, although it was a long time since he had played, he was sure he could still play rather good. It was his only hope, he would have to convince Alex to break out of the prison with him, and start a music group.

Breaking out of the prison was surprisingly not hard to do. Anyone could do it, in fact the robots allowed it during lunch. Everyone would always come back to the prison, because they had no idea how to live in Telepath 101 society. People would yell at them, and call them stupid. "Hey dumb fuck I heard you wrote a book about teenagers having sex." The public would say to the prisoners who tried to live in the society. Prison was the only place at all that accepted them. Alex tried to break free before, convincing himself that he could show society he was changed, and gave up his passion for creating music.

The next day at lunch Kerry approached Alex. "May I sit here?" Kerry asked. "Sure I guess, you never sit with anyone though, why do you want to sit with me today?" "I wanted to ask you something." "Ask me what?" Alex said with a look of suspicion. "I understand that you use to be apart of a music group. I back in my day enjoyed a lot of music, I was wondering if you would be interested in letting me show you some of the music of my time?" "You're a crazy mother fucker music ruined my life man. Fuck I can't even begin to tell you, I was utterly wrong about it all man. I'm stuck here forever, I have no friends, no one wants me I'm nothing but a big failure, and it's all because I picked up a guitar." "That's only what Telepath 101 wants you to think." Kerry said. "But how can you argue with them, they control everything?" "It never used to be like that though. You have to understand we use to have humans that ran the society. Yes their were faults, but everything has faults, even the robots. They just convince everyone that mistakes do not exist, but mistakes are made everyday. All the SR's do is blame the people when there are mistakes, they make them think everything you or me do is wrong. "What do you mean people use to run the society?" Alex asked with a look of amazement on his face.

"We use to have something called a president. The last one I remember having was a women by the name of Mary Lee Stevens. She was the first women to ever become president. She could not handle the pressure, her party, which were the people who supported her and helped her make her decisions steered her towards technology. Millions of dollars were spent on technology. Day and night people worked on robots. Humans created robots, they made it all possible. When the robots became far to advanced, they took over, it was mayhem in the streets everywhere, millions of robots killing people daily. I survived but my family did not, the few people that did survive and created what we live in today." "Well old man your views do not make a lot of sense to me, but you're the only one to ever approach me about music in this prison. I have a passion for it, I really do, when I was in school they always tried to convince me other wise. They tried to tell me I would never go anywhere as long as I studied guitar tabs, and wrote lyrics. I could not help myself though, it was my passion, I struggled in school, but the few people that heard my music, like it, said it was very good." "I can help you rediscover your passion, but you have to trust me. DO you know of anyone else that has the same passion for music as you do?" "Yes but they live underground, running everyday from the law robots. They are very good at avoiding them, we always envisioned making money by making music. We knew it was a dream that could never come true, but it was a nice dream. How do you plan to make are vision come true?" "By showing you different genres of music, today all music is to people is a person singing with an instrument. When your group created music, I bet you that you never used all the instruments at once. Everyone would just take their turn playing drums, bass, guitar, and singing. Am I correct." Alex looked puzzled he was amazed that everything the old man said was right. "Yea your one hundred percent correct, that was the only way we knew how to make music it never sounded good with all four of us playing are instruments together." I know I can show you how to make a unique sound, something that will force the people to listen weather they like it or not, a sound so different that robots will not be able to convince the people they do not like it." The two men agreed to leave the prison. They would leave the next day after lunch, as they walked through the door the law robot turning its head and looking said "Good day gentlemen, we will see you back before night I assume, enjoy seeing how much better the great society of Telepath 101 is without either of you living in it." Kerry and Alex ignored the robot, and walked out of the prison with a fresh attitude, and a sense of freedom, although they might be the only two people in the society that stood for freedom of expression, and the morals that preached the freedom of choice, they both knew that two of them feeling this way, was a better step in the right direction then just one of them feeling this way.

The room was silent as Robbie sat enjoying all he had accomplished through the years. All of his laws followed to a tee, he still became puzzled with how to steer the human mind away from creative thinking. Black market music was the biggest threat to his society. People who smuggled tools to make music, into the society could not all be caught, because of how they moved around so frequently. Robbie's growing fear that one day a group of rebels would be supplied with the tools to create music that someday could change peoples views feared the SR's the most. Robbie held meetings daily to warn his army of robots that everyday was a struggle and that they must never let their guards down. Law robots patrolled the streets night and day watching e people very closely. Youths were the biggest concern, youths who did not attend school daily, were punished by having to spend one day in prison. Most of the time this was enough to show the youths that to go to school was much better then to waste their time engaging in illegal activities. As powerful as the SR army was Robbie knew deep down inside that the human mind was capable of taking over robots. Robots were only capable of fighting so many people, if enough people formed alliances he knew that Telepath 101 would fail. This was something he could never let happen, a robot lead a miserable life. A machine controlled by a computer processing machine. No feelings no thoughts, just the capability to make everything run smoothly without either feeling or thought.

Kerry and Alex kept low avoiding the law robots. A law robot could not do anything to them as long as they did not suspect anything suspicious. At night when less robots patrolled the streets was when both would meet with other artists. Creating music was a long and stressful project. The tapes they used to record off of, were smuggled to them by the black market music outlets. By the end of six months the group had complied a set of ten songs, each with a unique sound. Sound no one had ever heard before, sound that was loud, with bass, and heavy guitar riffs, even using two guitars to make the sound more real. Kerry knew they had accomplished something special, they recorded as many tapes as they could working endless hours each day. They would have to spread their music to the people.

At first not many people gave the music much thought, but as time went on more people started to love the sound of the group. People with pent up anger, relaxed while listening to the groups music. Robbie citing this as a threat, calmly explained to his SR's what they would do. "Although this music is something people enjoy, there is not much we can continue to do about people listening to it. If we continue to hold people back from expressing themselves it will result in the people over throwing us. I have devised a new tax plan, to allow for the development of music robots. These robots will allow are people access to any kind of music they want. They will have a sense of freedom, but we still hold all the power because it is just another thing we can tax the people for."

All the SR's agreed with Robbie's plan. The prison shut down days later and all the prisoners were released and allowed to create music freely. Kerry was considered the inventor of music by the people, the one who restored freedom to music. With many different sounds of music, and with access so easy because of music robots Telepath 101 become a much more free society, at least that's what the people thought. For the SR's it was just another pawn in their plan to keep the society running, as long as the people thought they were free, they could tax and control them for as long as they wanted.

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[Bunny_Boy]

Wow, that was really cool! I liked the story very much, but when people were talking it was a little hard to follow... Maybe you could space that out a little more? *shrugs*

none the less, it was very well written and very creative ^.~

[WingcommanderIV]

I liked the concept, about robots controlling society, and how immoral it is. What really touched me wasnt about getting back their "groove" but when you touched on the topic of love...it reminded me of Moulin Rouge, as many things do. The thing about arguing about money...I personally would like to believe that love goes beyond money. But does this solve the problem? Having love robots tell you who to love? I think Love is about choice. It's about choosing to care for someone more than anyone else. You can't be forced to love someone, it's a choice you have to make yourself, or else it is not love. That would be an awesome story fighting for love. Get on it

What i didn't liek about this story was the format. Paragraphs should be MUCH smaller, and everytime someone says something, that's a new paragraph. The way it is done now...daunting. Other than that, the idea behind it was very good, the characters were okay, the dialogue was somewhat bland, but ya, good idea...

[Tongo]

I gave up trying to read this as the format is so painful. It needs to be broken up more. What I read seemed OK, but who can be bothered?