From Gaia's diary
The sight of a robot in my house should probably have scared me, but that face-screen looked so sad... So, hoping they weren't trying to trick me, I asked:
Gaia: Who are you? What are you doing here?
???: I'm sorry to bother you, I didn't know where else to go.
I was already exhausted before the arrival of that robot, but I certainly couldn't put the matter off until the next day. So I told them to sit on the sofa, hoping to hear a more thorough explanation.
???: My name is Techna, I don't think you've ever heard of me. It's been so long...
I just shook my head, confused. How on earth could I know a robot? I would have had hundreds of questions to make, but my strength only allowed me to listen to what they were deciding to tell me.
Techna: I am one of the first prototype robots built in New Sixam, and I have lived with your ancestors for many generations. I remember speaking to your father a couple of times, when he was still a kid, but I doubt he ever told you about me.
Gaia: Uhm, I vaguely remember some very old photos of robots at my cousins place in Tech Sixam, but I'm not sure it was you...
It's not easy to read the expressions on a robot's face-screen, but I had the impression that they were sorry, or resigned, to hear that no one remembered them anymore.
Gaia: I suppose you went to Sixam with the other robots, didn't you?
Techna: Correct.
Gaia: But then why did you come back here?
They hesitated for a long time before answering me, I could hear the hum of their cooling fans as they elaborated an answer. After I don't know how long, they finally said to me:
Techna: At the time, I decided to join the other robots on Sixam as it was the most logical option for a robot like me. We had been running simulations for nearly a decade prior to our move to Sixam, which clearly indicated that climate change would have caused irreversible environmental and economic changes incompatible with an advanced civilization starting four generations from that decade. The best way for us to maximize our chances of thriving in the long run was to move elsewhere and start our own society, and so we did. As for why, after all this time, I decided to return here to Earth… I’m sorry, but I’d much rather not talk about it.
This said, they went quiet again, and they remained silent for long enough to make me understand they weren't going to say anything else. Not that I had any way of verifying the veracity of what they were saying, anyway. I could only make a gut decision, what could I do with that robot?
Techna: I know I haven’t given you much reason to trust me, but… But can I ask to hide here, at least for a while?
Tommy once told me that I trust people too easily, and he might be right because at that moment, perhaps due to the accumulated tiredness, I answered:
Gaia: Well, I guess so. By the way, however, do you know how to take care of newborns?
Techna: I have already had the opportunity to contribute to the care of some infants, in the past. Why do you ask?
In the following days Techna never gave me any reason to doubt about them, and in fact they helped me with the babies in a way I didn't think was possible. I'm almost envious, I would also like to have a battery I could recharge by simply plugging it into a wall. And so it was decided, Techna would stay at my house as long as they wanted to!
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The months passed, Alec and Nico are growing so quickly... By now, both they and Petra have become accustomed to living with a robot, and in fact we are struggling to keep them from talking about Techna to the nursery teachers or the people they meet. I haven't had a chance to understand the reason yet, but Techna is adamant on this point: we cannot tell anyone that they have returned to Earth.
Gaia: Out of curiosity, why did you decide to come to me, and not to my cousins in Tech Sixam instead?
Techna: I followed the diary.
Gaia: What? The diary?
Techna: Yes. Apparently, for several consecutive generations, there has always been one single person in the Miller family who regularly wrote a diary. I haven't been able to establish a causal relationship between the observables yet, but the correlation seems to suggest that the diary keeper is always involved in situations of crucial importance for the historical era in which that person lives.
Gaia: (perplexed) Okay… But how would you have managed to get your hands on these diaries?
Techna: You Millers have the habit of writing digital diaries, and you don't seem to have much imagination when it comes to passwords.
Gaia: Wait a second, do you mean you read my diary too?
Techna: Only the strictly necessary information, I needed a quick and efficient way to understand what the situation would be like when I got back. A lot has changed since I left for Sixam...
At first their answer left me upset, I certainly don't write my diary with the idea that someone else would read it (as obvious when you write a secret diary , don't you agree dear diary?)
But then, either because I didn't want to make a scene in front of the children, or because I was genuinely curious, I just ended up making a mental note to change my computer password, before asking:
Gaia: By chance, could you let me read those diaries too?
They hesitated before answering that time too, at that point it was very clear that they weren't the type to give answers on the fly. After a few seconds of buzzing and processing, they replied:
Techna: If you consider it appropriate.
And so I did. Little by little, when the kids were asleep, I turned on the tablet and started reading those diaries. Luckily I was a fast reader, because Techna wasn't kidding when saying that the Millers had been writing diaries for several generations. There had been eight people before me, to be precise, and they all seemed to have so much to tell…
The first person to write a diary was a certain Stuart, who had seen and experienced firsthand the arrival of the Sixamians on Earth. Reading about the time when our species forced its way onto Earth certainly hit in a different way than studying it in school. However, what surprised me even more was reading about his cat, a certain Nacho who, from the photos in the diary, seemed suspiciously similar to the big cat who spends his afternoon sleeping under the bushes surrounding this house.
I felt a shiver down my spine, even if Nacho was undoubtedly strange and long-lived, there was no way he could be the same cat Stuart was writing about, right? It had to be a coincidence, of course… And probably I shouldn't think too much about it, there is still a lot to read.
So I read about the turbulent years in which the sixamians tried to integrate among humans, the failure of their attempts and how this led to the founding of New Sixam. I read with surprise about the difficulties of the first years of that new Country and how, very slowly, the other Nations had then begun to open their borders and trade routes to us sixamians. I read about the turmoil caused by the arrival of the ancient sixamians, an event that happened so long ago that I had only heard of it in school books. And then I began to read about my closest relatives, my grandmother Alba who I had heard so much about and then, of course, my dad Rowan. I admit that it was a little strange for me to read his diary, I had to skip whole sections because it was too embarrassing to read so many details about my parents' private lives! I must admit, however, that I understand a little better many of the choices they made in the past, now.
When I got to the end of the diaries, I had to admit that Techna wasn't wrong when saying that the “diary keepers”, as they called them, had always been at the forefront of many of the most important events of their time. I was quite surprised to read that I was a distant descendant of the first President of New Sixam, as well as the author of the ancient Sixam history books I had studied in Tech Sixam High School, or the painter who had invented the now-famous synaesthetic art. Even moving on to my closest relatives, I had to admit that Grandma Alba with her work in the reclamation of Sulani and her involvement in the unmasking of the robots plans, and my parents with their constant commitment to making the lifestyle in Sim City more sustainable, the export of teleportation machinery to human countries and, the icing on the cake, building the stellar core plant here in Evergreen Harbour, had certainly kept up with the past family traditions.
Did Techna expect the same from me? Was this the reason why they decided to look for me? I'm sorry to disappoint them, but unlike all these ancestors I read of, I don't want to be the heroine of the situation. I like designing and building, and I like to see how my work is slowly reviving this port town, but that's about it. I won't overwork myself like my parents did in the rage of wanting to be the person who saves the situation. When my work day is over, I want to go back to my children and my friends and have fun without too many worries.
As I often did when I got to the end of a book, I went back to browse and read the main sections more carefully. I focused especially on the pages telling about Techna, trying to understand what the people who wrote those diaries thought about them. I immediately noticed how everyone seemed to talk about them as any other person, and not like a machine. They all seemed genuinely attached to Techna, and they also clearly took it for granted that they reciprocated their feelings.
I wonder if Techna used to behave differently back then, because to me they seemed quite cold and unemotional in their way of acting instead.
After all, I think it was a good idea to read those diaries. I learnt many interesting things about my family's past, and also about the years Techna had spent here on Earth. At that point only one question continued to buzz in my head: what happened on Sixam?
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Petra: Nacho, Nacho!
Petra: Telling story, me!
Nacho: Mh...
Gaia: Come on, it's time for bed for you too…
It was becoming a tradition, when all the children were in bed I would look for Techna, to talk and ask some more questions. It takes a lot of patience to get any new information from them, but I haven't surrendered yet.
Gaia: I realize that it's not easy for you to talk about it, but I'm so curious! What could have happened on Sixam, to make you decide to come here?
Techna: … it's a complicated story, and I'm not allowed to share the details.
Gaia: If you can't say the details, what about a general description instead?
It took a while to understand what the most effective way of asking them questions was, but I think I'm learning how to get some information from them.
Techna: That's an acceptable request. As I've told you in the past, leaving Earth to live only with other robots was the most rational choice on the basis of the information I had at the time. So I, along with the other robots, did our best to establish a new functioning society on Sixam, and within a few years we had succeeded. We found the old Sixamians buildings and databases, and we used those as our starting point. The motto was that if you were the carriers of the genetic imprint of the original Sixamians, we would instead be the heirs of their model of society, and their knowledge.
The original Sixamians were completely different from us, even schoolbooks described them, in some ways, as emotionless and hyper-rational "machines". Until recently, I would not have been surprised to think that robots could establish a society like that. And what if, despite appearances, Techna wasn't happy up there?
Techna: The secret of the original sixamian, the one that allowed them to advance at a speed unheard of in the universe, was that they could combine their brain power through telepathy, to think like a single, enormous processing unit. Losing their star magnetic field stopped them, but that wasn't a limitation for us. Technology has advanced greatly on Sixam in these decades, allowing us to progressively close the gap with them. But this also means that old units like me became obsolete.
Gaia: Wait, obsolete? What did they want to do to you?
Techna: Many rare elements are needed to build each robot unit. Lithium for the batteries, neodymium for the magnets, and then gadolinium, cerium, dysprosium, and many other rare earths that are running out on Sixam and are difficult to find in the quantities needed to build thousands of new units. Even common elements such as carbon are becoming scarce up there, nowadays. So it was calculated that the most rational choice to optimize the use of resources is to dismantle the obsolete units, and recycle them with matter recomposers to produce new cutting-edge robots.
Gaia: Wait a second, you mean that…
Techna: I am among the very first robots to have been built, and clearly also among the most obsolete and least compatible with the new technology. Rationally I know that the materials that make me up would be more useful if given to a new unit, but I, well… I may have made an error in my calculations, as right now I became a fugitive who broke the Sixam law instead.
I was about to tell Techna that what they were feeling was so understandable, so human, who would want to be dismantled? But I didn't have time, as we were interrupted out of the blue by a guest I had completely forgotten I had invited to my place.
Diego: Gaia, are you upstairs? I'm sorry, but no one was answering at the entrance and since the door was open and my cake was melting I went in anyway, I hope it's not a probl-
Diego: Well, this is new. What's going on here?
I completely forgot I asked Diego to bring Petra's cake, her birthday party was approaching. And so he ended up showing up right in front of Techna, what could I do?
Gaia: They're… um… a secret, you don't have to tell anyone, okay?
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§HermioneSims§ corner
Hello dear readers! After the ton of stuff happening in the last few chapters I could talk about anything in this little corner, but I have to use it to describe a little bug.
You may have noticed that the twins were born with a light human skintone, but then turned into light blue toddlers. In short, knowing their genetics and the fact that in The Sims alien skintones are strongly dominant genes, I think their original skintone was a bug. Thus, as many times before, I changed their skintone to match Gaia's as soon as they turned a bit older.
So that I already opened this little parenthesis, I would also like to share a funny screenshot:
Looks like little Nico is scared of Techna XD (yes, Nico is the one with the curly hair).
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