Science fiction

SHELLY
It was a cold April night 2002. Heavy rain felt as if the sky was falling to the ground. Under the disastrous weather conditions a young boy celebrated his seventeenth birthday. Gathered with his parents, and his little sister, Roger blew out his birthday candles and asked for a wish: a way out of that crude monotony, of the emptiness of societys addictions, of a vulnerable sense of happiness based on mere objects. He closed his eyes, blew with hope, as hard as he could, as if that would make his dream more likely to happen. When he opened he saw a science fiction book, given by his parents. Amused, Roger took Mary Shellys Frankenstein and stared at it for a while and reacted as any other 17 years old boy, disappointed, wanting something else. Be he didnt knew what this book will cause to him. A couple of days later, Roger was returning home when he got smacked right in the face, he fell down, and saw his nemesis, Jacob, his nightmare, the kid that had tormented him since he first entered school. He gave him a couple of punches and kicks. Roger started to spit blood and his breath started to become harder and harder. In his 17 years of life he had never got such a beat down. Agonizing, he returned home, eyes filled with numbness and emptiness. No one was at home, he fell in his bed and fell asleep. He had a crazy dream, a dream where he escaped his current life and left to a perfect world where he was finally comforted and where society wasnt such trash. He woke up, and there it was, the book he received for his birthday. He decided to glance at it and suddenly he was hooked by the plot. For days he couldnt stop reading, he looked. Everyday he arrived home and continue reading. But eventually the book ended, leaving him with desire for more. He took a couple of savings he

had hidden on an old boot near to his bed, rushed to the towns library and bought a dozen science fiction books, heart filled with joy once for all. The classical science fiction books, with their old orthodox diction and their solemn and structured tone, narrated stories that should have seemed unconceivable, but which now demonstrated a quite close but imperfect resemblance of the contemporary world. As literature became younger, fictional reality turned fictional again, a magnetic reality, so desirable, attractive by the simple fact of being unreachable. Roger grew and so did the world around him. Literature classics remained classics as new ideas of fiction flourished in society. Those capricious innovative visions of literature authors remained unforgotten. The large masses read morbidly the chronicle of the monstrous metallic machines conceived which destroyed the world. The world of science fiction elicited a fictional fear, distant from reality yet so real. Roger saw no reason for looking behind, to a world of modest emotions, colorless dreams and senseless protocols of proceedings. As time went by Roger abandoned previous conservative attitudes, abandoned all responsibilities for they seemed like nothing but delusions. His mind was now rich; it grew vigorous from that fictitious nutrition. Eventually Roger graduated, yet he kept his passion as his priority. His separation from the social world invited him to a complete commitment to science fiction. Isolated in his room, he dreamed awake on metalized mythology, artificial intelligence and humanized androids. The new time acquired gave him the space for exploring the plausibility of those literary monstrous descendants through engineering sciences. For good or bad, his remoteness from civilization lasted ten years, closing the door to sanity. Roger had conceived a version of reality with fictional historical dates, with illusory independence heroes in imaginary battles of glory and justice, all of them so real to him.

In a world which gray hues replaced green ones, where hierarchies were a hereditary unreachable positions attained with great sums of money, where humans forgot about their neighbors hunger, about looking at the landscape which increased the cost of their home, a world where everyone knew the cost of things but not their value, from that world a monster was born. Rogers years of reclusive study took a definite turn on a night when futuristic vision was born. His most recent obsession was the vision of a mechanical hero, the mere image of what man conceived as the far future. SHELLY came out of the shadows of Rogers isolation, along with him. Superficial helper enhancing for long lasting years, SHELLY. The anthropomorphic android was conceived by imitating humans form. The recent invention of smart technology inspired this idea and Roger took it to a limit. The robot had an internal mechanism which processed and executed and ultrasensitive extremities to perform any task. Rogers processor was a set of networks resembling humans brain, yet similar to the tablet that inspired the idea. It could learn and interpret, conceive abstract thoughts from literature and complex mathematics, it was beautiful mind which nourished from everything around it, perfect. He decided to present his invention to the world which once tormented him. The invention was inevitably successful, how couldnt it be, such a futuristic, so attractive yet so approachable. Shelly propagated virally all around the city and the world, his prototype evolved: Shelly an extension of yourself, your right hand that handles the simple, easy chores, while the actual person deals with the issues that are more relevant, its about proficiency. The robots grew as a child at the home of their adoptive parents. They learned mechanically, perfectly, empowering their brain, capacitating them for anything. Humanity had never achieved such perfection.

A new hierarchy was born, fearless, limitless, with metallic hearts and unreachable wisdom, for man attained its apex forgetting its essence; man had finally conceived its magnum opus. The idealized being was absolutely civilized for it had no instincts; practical, and infinitely capable for his intelligence was infallible; it was, essentially, effective by all means. Perfection cant attain a higher rank, does it? Shelly was programed with humans rationality, a mind which processed everything for an only function: power, Shellys faith was no different than any other species. The name became the invocation of fear, the most adapted species, the beastly dictator, the barbarian ruler. The android race rose above; infiltrated at humans home they knew their masters weakness better than anyone. The race was limitless they share a network of information which had mastered human patterns, the knew humanity better than humans did. It didnt take long for Rogers ideal being to conceive its hegemony over man, for humans emotional reasoning was easily dominated by a mechanical thought. The army and navy were useless, Shelly had infiltrated everything, humanity was completely exposed. Humans said, for first time ever, in a terrifying chorus: Yes, Master, with a honest hopeless tone, Shelly was not but the artifice of human destruction, mans magnum opus.

Bibliography: Kramev, M. (2013. Meet the Next Generation of Smartphones-based Robot Companions, Popsci. Retrieved March 18, 2013. From: www.popsci.com/gadget/articles/2013-029 Sofge, E. (2013). The Sensitive Robot: How Haptic Technology is closing the mechanical gap (Sponsored Post), Popsci. Retrived March 18, 2013. From: http://www.popsci.com/trp-sponsored-article-haptics