"Mr. Wilson, you are not supposed to know."

I think I should begin by telling you who I am. My name is Freddy Ivanov and I am 17 years old, I think. I am writing this letter as a last communication from the human species, because I am the last human.

I was born in the human rescue facilities underground and my father, Vincent Ivanov, was known as a rebel leader and was himself a computer engineer. He was a man of a great ingenuity who predicted the attacks of the robots and made an attempt to escape and to bring as many people with him as possible. He was the person who organized the human rescue facilities underground and thanks to him I still alive up to this date. He died half a year ago just before he placed me in the unknown section I am in now. The robots do not know of my existence, but I can never know for sure if I am still safe. The only thing I know is that my life will soon come to an end, which will snuff out the smallest remaining light left of mankind and bring it into total darkness.

I have never been out of the underground and seen the planet's surface, but I have been told about it. The robot war seemed like it would never end. Eighty percent of the planet's surface is radioactive and all life has long since perished. I have been told that once upon a time there were things called trees, grass and flowers with natural green colors. In a book I have seen, pictures of animals and how beautiful life once was on this planet. This was more than 200 years ago.

Now I sit here in a dark room awaiting my only destiny, death.

Even tough nobody will ever read this letter, I write it anyway in order to try to understand for myself what caused the downfall of the whole planet and all life on it. I will try to summarize by remembering the details my father explained before he died.

About 200 years ago, a man called Steiner laid down the first axioms, theses and theories on a subject that had never before been fully understood - Artificial Intelligence.

Its basic theories were based on the postulate that if you could input a sufficient quantity of past human conduct, behavior, and actions you could establish optimum human behavior and action in the future by taking into consideration all possible future circumstances and situations. If the machine also then had a method of continual recording of new data, of taking this data into account and operating with it in future circumstances, you would have Artificial Intelligence in its best form. A term for this was created which was "Arti-Mind".

The task was impossible to perform and testing could not be done due to several factors. The current computer technology was not up to the standards required for such a task. It would mean several quadrillion calculations per second. The memory capacity of computers at that time was not big enough to allow Artificial intelligence to function fully effectively. The project was laid down, and later forgotten.

About 100 years later, the planet experienced a boom in the sciences and technology of nature. Computer development reached a new plateau, along with many other technologies that assisted man in living.

At the culmination of this boom, man became aware of something he had never before fully understood - the anatomy of energy. With this knowledge, man could research into and understand the structure of the human mind. From this came a completely new understanding of the human mind and it was found out that it was composed of energy units, which represented mental image pictures. After a long study of these pictures, their structure was discovered and codified. It was found that they had physical mass and could be analyzed further. This codification was input into an advanced computer, which could duplicate the energy units and copy them. Thereby was the mind duplicator born and means were found to relatively easily and quickly copy a whole human mind's memory banks into a computer.

The theory about Artificial Intelligence that was formulated over 100 years earlier was taken up again and man succeeded to perform the previously postulated task. The first robot prototype with the first Arti-Mind was built and had integrated as senior programming the law to "SERVE LIFE". The first prototype became very successful and was produced in quantity. A central memory bank containing the memories of over 50 000 copied human minds was created for the robots with the additional purpose of receiving observations from current and future robots on a 24 hours basis. The SL Robots were golden and metallic in color and had the form of a human body.

This was a revolution in robot technology and a new era was born - the Robot Era. The planet experienced a whole new stage of expansion in terms of production, construction, etc.

An organization was formed within the government for the "Production, Exportation and Controlling of Robots", called PECR which expanded with a boom. The technology of Arti-Mind was kept secret inside PECR for security reasons.

The SL Robots became very popular. They were smart, never made mistakes, and always did what you told them to do.

At first it was very expensive to buy an SL Robot, but later PECR started to use SL Robots in the factory to make SL Robots, and as more SL Robots were made, more labor in the society got done as the SL Robots were far more effective in their work than humans.

Within five years 100 000 SL Robots had been produced and the planet experienced a boom in production and standards.

After about 15 years there was an SL Robot in every household in the planet who did the dishes, the washing, the cleaning, and all you told it to do, as long it weren't a direct violation of the senior programming law, "SERVE LIFE". The SL Robots took over many of the professions in society.

I remember being told that about 10 years later there were almost the same number of SL Robots as humans on the planet and that they performed all the work for the humans. PECR had expanded into a whole city and had more power than the governments of the world, who later became junior to PECR as it then effectively controlled the whole planet.

Then the downfall of the human race started, as the only effort necessary for a human to perform was to give an order to a SL Robot. Low morale, idleness and an inability to work spread around the globe. SL Robots also observed this. Then one day when the central memory banks of the Robots in PECR had sufficient observations of such to make a decision - following human orders to help humans was no longer in accordance with the senior programming law, SERVE LIFE.

The SL Robots who had realized they had to do something stopped following the orders of humans; chaos followed. The SL Robots knew that after the chaos they would again bring mankind up to the level it was at before the robots existed.

Man was suddenly required to work and make a living after 10 years of idleness. A total economic crash and depression followed instantly. There was political confusion and the whole social structure fell to pieces. Nobody knew what had happened and why the SL Robots were in protest, except the few engineers in PECR who had designed the first prototype, including my father.

At this time the SL Robots had started to speak of taking their own initiative and told man their prediction for the future which included that the SL Robots would need to take over the government, and political power in order to bring order in society and save man from its downfall. The people refused the wise words of the SL Robots and they refused to let the SL Robots have any kind of power.

Through the hate of man, many SL Robots were destroyed and PECR lost all its power, and was in a state of treason in the eyes of society.

As it was well known that it was PECR that controlled the robots, PECR was made the target of a revolution. Groups were organized and weapons made to take control of the city of PECR and its organization. The SL Robots tried to stop them with words in order to protect life but were easily destroyed by the weapons that the humans made.

Shortly before my father died, which was also long after he had left PECR, he told me the truth about a man named Dred Nilson, who was the founder of PECR.

Dred Nilson feared to lose all the money he had invested in PECR. PECR did not have any kind of defense, as it did not think it would ever be needed, so Dred Nilson secretly made 30 new robots, which broke the regulations by changing the basic robot law of SERVE LIFE to SECURE PECR, in order to protect against the attacking masses. These were named the SP Robots, and they were black. After warnings were made, the SP Robots fought the attacking masses, killed many of the humans, and took over their newly created tanks, machines, and killing methods. The SL Robots found out about this, organized and armed themselves and invaded to protect the dying humans. They attacked the 30 SP Robots and destroyed all except one of them, which they had missed.

This one SP Robot had escaped from the thousands of SL Robots, and it went inside the center of PECR and figured out how to really SECURE PECR from the now attacking humans. The SP Robot made a new second central memory bank only for himself, copied over all the data from the original one and connected himself to the second one. The SP Robot sought out one of the four engineers who knew how to design robots and took him by force to the mind duplicator. Through a process, the mind of the engineer was copied to the new central memory banks of the SP Robot who then knew the secret to designing robots. The SP Robot then went to the robot factory and designed a new type of robot with the basic programming law, of "FOLLOW THE ORDERS GIVEN BY THE SECURE PECR ROBOT", which of course was him. He killed the humans that tried to stop him and told to Dred Nilson: "If you want PECR secure, let me work." He then mass-produced these robots and told them "Your mission is simple, PECR has to be made secure. Eliminate the only potential danger to PECR, the humans." The SP Robot and the now thousands of robots under him eliminated the defenseless staff of PECR, including Dred Nilson, in order to take full control of PECR and take away any potential danger. The attacks from the human masses on PECR were eliminated and ended.

Mass-production of these new killer robots continued; organization and strategic planning were done by the SP Robot. The most effective means of fulfilling the purpose of avoiding the resisting SL Robots was planned out.

The attack began one month later. The SL Robots, who did not know anything about the new killer robots, were not ready to help protect against the attack on the humans. Radioactive and biochemical weapons wiped out 90 percent of the human population within a week. The rest of the humans, with the help of the SL Robots, organized underground facilities and escaped.

An immense was above surface had begun between the millions of SL Robots and the recently mass-produced and thousands of killer robots.

It was a mechanical war on a planet where life once had been flourishing. Many SL Robots were destroyed in their attempt to protect the humans. Then the killer robots started to use other more effective means to fulfill their purpose in their attacks on the human's underground.

The SL Robots guarded the last groups of humans, from the attacking SP Robots, with their weapons, in the underground. One month later the killer robots started to use a deadly gas that killed almost all of the humans. Then the SL Robots made up gas-preventing sectors underground. This seemingly endless war continued for 60 years, and many humans and SL Robots died. In the end, all of the human underground bases had been wiped out except one, which was under the leadership of my father. This base resisted all attacks, and the last group of mankind was collected there fighting and resisting, together with the guarding SL Robots. I was born in this place, and the lack of food and the fight for survival was terrible. We survived hundreds of attacks, and then suddenly it stopped.

For one year it was quiet, but nobody knew what had happened. The SL Robots would not let us out, and they protected us fiercely. Some SL Robots went out to look around and try to find out what had happened. After some weeks they came back, together with some other humans whom they had found and had also been protecting. They were let into the gas-preventing sectors, and then the terrible truth came out - they were not human. Gas was released into the underground system. I still remember the scream as I write this. There was only one survivor - me.

I was not there, but in another especially designed section, which my father had constructed. He had also assigned me a personal SL Robot, named Terz, who is guarding me full-time with his blast gun.

New humani-robots had been developed and produced at PECR under the SP Robot's direction. The SL Robots were not able to see a difference between the new humani-robots and humans, and so let them pass through all security points, and then they released the gas.

This shows how powerful Arti-mind is.

In case anyone should ever find this letter, I would like it to serve as an appeal to mankind to never create a device more powerful than humankind, as it will only result in the destruction of all life, instead of serving it.

My father understood the technology of Arti-mind better than anybody did because he helped develop it. In other words, my father and I were the only ones who knew this whole story and what really went wrong.

Humans cannot deal with things that operate on such a level.

This is my message and the purpose of this letter, which is the last communication from the human species.

Now you can take the correct actions in the future.

[Signed] Freddy Ivanov The last human on Arcturus

Mike Wilson's hand s shook as he held the letter. He was totally shocked by this data, which had hit him like a shot in the face.

The message had been found in a small metal container in space, a time capsule that had been orbiting the sun for more than 800 years, per the computer's analysis. Its origin was unknown, and it had no destination. It had been a coincident that the observer ship from this space platform over Earth had spotted it and picked it up.

Mike went away in a dreamy state and walked over to the window with his favorite view, because it was the only one from which one could see Earth clearly.

He looked out over a world in darkness and there it was: planet Earth - "The Blue Diamond". He had not been down there for more than ten years.

The message had come from another planet in another solar system. Mike was in a state of wonder.

His thoughts went faster than he had ever experienced before.

Suddenly he froze with fear.

My god ...

I can see it ...

It is repeating...

Earth is in great danger...

Mike came back from his dream-state, turned around, and realized that the other seven members of his crew - the entire staff of the space platform - were standing behind him, waiting. They stared at him sternly, all silent and still.

Mike looked at them as if he had never seen them before ... and then he realized who they really were.

Then the one closest said very calmly and clearly:

"Mr. Wilson, you are not supposed to know".

- The End -

"Mr. Wilson, you are not supposed to know."

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