Ravel and Dan were strolling on a winding stone path in the garden.
“Mr. Thinker, according to a book I read, you were killed on Mars.”
“Yeah, I was killed, or more precisely, irreversibly deactivated.”
“Why?” Ravel enquired. “No offence, but you are just a robot, who was programmed to obey and do good for humans. Why did they deactivate you?” Ravel asked this question without the previous discomfort with humanoid robots. He felt Thinker was very amiable.
“Don’t believe everything said in that book. It was written a long time ago and is mostly fictional. Although it was true that I was deactivated, it wasn’t true that I was deactivated by a member of the Mars anti-Thinker group. The anti-Thinker group had already been eliminated at that time. I was in fact deactivated by an Earth citizen whose identity was unknown. He or she deactivated me for a personal reason. But all these are unimportant now, he or she has already passed away.
“So why are you still alive?”
“I was in a state of deactivation for centuries. And a radical group in Kepler, Roboti, found the location of my database and reactivated me about two hundred years ago. And they asked me to establish a headquarters for them, so I led them to Mars. For some reason, Mars was deserted at that time, so we manufactured a lot of humanoid robots to help us scrape off the ruins of the buildings on Mars and use the metals collected from the ruins to rebuild cities on Mars.”
“Why do you want me here?”
“We need experts from every field because we want to build a complete and independent nation. I’m just a political machine who is only good at making policies.”
“I understand that the book is mostly fictional, but it said that in your administration, the entire Earth united together and developed interstellar travel and turned Mars into the first extraterrestrial colony of mankind, and the first ecumenopolis planet thereafter. How can these be done by, as you described, “a political machine?”
“Let me clarify. I do know a lot about science and humanity. In fact, I believe my knowledge about these subjects is comparable to that of experts. My deep knowledge in those fields helped me immensely in making the right policies regarding the management of resources and the development of new technology. But I don’t have time to do research in these fields. You may wonder why the group of scientists who created me didn’t build replicas of me to accelerate the advancement of every aspect of human civilization. That’s because humans have an innate need to feel significant and live with a purpose. Letting replicas of me do everything for them is harmful in the long run. However, the scientists realized that short-term laziness may tempt humans to ask me to replicate myself. So they programmed an immutable rule into my system that doesn’t allow me to replicate myself.” He paused for a while with his blue eyes staring at Ravel thoughtfully and continued: “You’ll be working in the University of Mars, there are many other eminent scientists, for example, Prof. Yamashita.”
“Doesn’t he work in UG, a university on Kepler?”
“Oh that, because he just wants to seek an opportunity to invite you here.”
“But why did he do it in such a sneaky way?”
“We don’t want our planet to be known to everyone, that may cause unwanted troubles.”
“Although I know it’s a lure or maybe an imaginary planet, but, does Earth actually exist?”
‘Earth?”
“Yes, Earth. Does it exist?”
“It was compressed into a miniature black hole.”
Ravel suddenly understood what he saw on the GPS map of his spaceship — — the gravitational field of a black hole. But why did Wang insist on seeing it at first?
“Does Wang know that?”
“Who’s Wang?”
“Prof. Yamashita said he is a member of Roboti.”
“I don’t know everyone in Roboti, as long as a person works for Mars government, that person can be considered a member of Roboti.”
“Okay, back to Earth. Why did you compress it?”
“I’ll explain that in public after two weeks.” He replied, “I think you must be hungry. You can go to eat something with Mr. Schwartz and then he will take you to the campus. After that, you can visit other places on Mars if you want. Also, please give my regards to Prof. Beasley (Beasley: John’s surname).”
“Thank you very much.”
“Thank you, it was a pleasure to meet you.” Dan waved goodbye to Ravel.
