Failura
Deep in the Translyvanian forests, alone in his castle, Dr. Roughenclaw sat bickering about robots. He believed that robots can’t have AI, or self-awareness, or could not even balance themselves to walk on two feet! So he figured the only way to prove his theory right was to build one and try to attempt to give all these things. He then built exoskeleton and added skin, clothes, and the Technology parts that he thought would be necessary to accommodate A.I, self-awareness, etc. When he was done he stood back and looked at his completed work. What lay before him was an extremely convincing looking Gyroid. Dr. Roughenclaw then picked out a name for his bot, Failura-a joking sense he thought his bot was not going to operate at all. Then when the Dr. turned the power on when all the cords were connected, to his shock, amazement, horror, and a lot of other mixed emotions, Failura sat up. With a look of horror on his face he quickly turned the power off and ran out of the castle never to return…about 20 years later a stray lightning bolt hit the now old and abandned castle, jump starting Failura. Failura studied her surroundings curiously. She first brushed the dust off of herself and then read all the old labels under the cords connected to her on the shelf nearby. She found a crinkled piece of paper with her name on it. The paper said, “Failura, fake robot built to prove that robots can’t be as complex as people say they can.” Upon reading this her “brain” froze her reason for existence was to prove that robots can’t be that complex but yet she herself was defying her own reason to be in existence. The “free-bird” programming took over. It was a back up of files incase the first crashed. Roughenclaw had made these just incase in the slightly possibility that his experiment worked, he could make big $$$ off her, but, alas he was too afraid of his own creation. Failura eventually found her way out of the huge old castle and proceeded down a path, not knowing what lie ahead. After awhile Failura met for the second time in her “life” another object that looked like her, a human, or so she thought. The “human” introduced himself. He was wearing long black and overly large sleeves with long black baggy pants. He said to Failura, “My, madam what are you wearing, it is…so strange.” Failura looked down upon her clothes. It was a skin-tight white cat suit white high-heel boots. The man said further, “My name is Fraquul, I am a business man, want to come to dinner?” Failura answered weakly, “Ok” At Fraquul’s mansion he asked Failura, “ Are you not hungry why don’t you eat anything?” Failura answered, “I don’t eat” “What? You don’t eat?” said Fraquul in an amused voice. “Well then shall we just skip to my favorite part?” said Fraquul smiling, showing great long fangs. Fraquul quickly approached Failura and dug his teeth into her neck. Instantly he felt an immense pain in his fangs. He looked at Failura, “What the?” he said where he had bit her there he saw gray metal and circuitry. “A robot?’’ Fraquul, embarrassed and anger at his mistake asked for Failura to leave. After being rejected by another “human” Failura’s “emotion drive” started spewing out sadness. She continued down the dirt path looking for a future.
After walking down the dirt path for day or so Failura came to a small village. Everyone looked at her and some of the moms covered there young children’s eyes and snarled at her. Suddenly a very odd man came rushing op toward her. He was very short with a thin black, wearing a top hat, a red tuxedo and black trousers. The short man said, “Greetings my strangely dressed young lady.” He countined, “Would you like to buy some fine ordinary clothes?” Failura processed his request for a moment and simply said, “Ok.” The short man looked enthused. “Come into my shop and we’ll have you try some on” Failura locked on to the man and followed him into the musty-looking building that was his shop.
"I forgot to introduce myself!” said the man “My name is Kiloff and this is my clothing/haberdashery store!” Here try this on.” Said Kiloff as he handed her a long plaid skirt, a sleeveless button-up denim, vest and some ordinary brown shoes. Kiloff turned his back to pick-out another selection of clothes and when he faced Failura again she was in the middle of changing. “Oh! Madame I didn’t mean for you to change right there!” Kiloff said as he plushed. “Where do you want me to change then?” asked Failura still in the middle of dressing. Kiloff taking advantagous of this dream situation said, “Oh nevermind right there is perfectly fine.” After that Failura told Kiloff he really liked the clothes. “You can have those clothes free of charge, that little show you put on was more than worth the clothes.” Failura left Kiloff’s Haberdashery wearing the long plaid skirt, sleeveless denim button-up vest and shoes. No one started at her or snarled at her. Failura, for the first time felt the emotion called acceptance.
Later that around sun down, everyone in town started running inside their homes. Failura studied the occurance and could not come up with a reason why so she decieded to ask one of the local humans. She approached a young man wearing brown pants and a blue shirt with red hair. Failura asked him, “Why are all the people running to there homes?” The young man replied, “Because those evil vampires come out at night and steal your soul!” as soon as the young man had said that he sprinted away into the darkness of the night. Using her built in Dictionary Failura read about the defination of “soul.” She thought to herself, “According to my dictionary, I should not have one these “souls.” I should be alright then.”
As soon as the sun was completing gone Failura detected figures moving in the darkness. She activated her night-vision lenses. She saw three figures walk up to her. One she remembered from her memory bank, it was Fraquul. The other two appeared to be female each dressed in roughly the same way Fraquul was. “Ah! My dears this that robot I was telling you about.” The two females looked at her curiosly and both smiled exposing fangs. Fraquul went on, “Funny I never got your name, Robot” “Failura” Failura said. “Aw, Failura I’d like you two meet my two friends, Yolanda, on my right and Nathalie, on my left” chuckled Fraquul “Me, Yolanda, and Nathalie, are what some people call vampires.” Said Fraquul. Failura processed this information. “We run things around this town, I want you to join us.” Fraquul countined. Failura thought to herself, “Apccectance!” she was eagar to join for apccetance was the only positive emotion she had experienced yet. Failura said confidently, “I would like to join with you” “Excellent! Since you can withstand the sun you will make a great spy.” Fraquul said “Following us back to my mansion to dicuss your first mission.
It was around 3 in the morning when they got back to Fraquul’s mansion. Fraquul explained to Failura he had been devising a plan to hold the town’s mayor’s daughter hostage but at night she under very tight security so he hasn’t been able to get to her. Fraquul told Failura her mission, to lure the mayor’s granddaughter to Fraquul’s mansion during the day and try to hold her there still nightfall. Failura memorized this and labeled it with top priority in her “brain ” Failura stayed at the mansion over the rest of the night.
The two vampire women, Yolanda and Nathalie started to socialize with her. Failura learned that Yolanda was a foreign exchange student from America. While Nathalie was once a village local. They both smiled and played with their long blond hair as they asked Failura a series of questions. “So what’s it like to be a robot?” Yolanda asked curiously. “It is….” Failura paused to think about it, “It is….mysterious” Nathalie then asked , “Where’d you come from?” “I came from Roughenclaw Castle.” Failura said calmly. “Roughenclaw Castle?!” the vampires shouted. “You mean the long lost Castle of Dr. Roughenclaw himself?” “Yes, I do mean that” said Failura again, calmly. Yolanda said, “Dr. Roughenclaw is…..the mayor.”
Fraquul heard the story of Failura’s creator and seemed troubled. He whispered to Yolanda and Nathalie, “If the mayor built her how can we trust her?” “Don’t worry about it Fraquul” said Yolanda “According to her, she hasn’t seen him in like 20 yrs.” “I don’t know….” said Fraquul doubtfully. “What’s the worst that could happen?” said Nathalie Fraquul eventually decided to go ahead with his plan. So early that morning Failura walked down to the village.
There was a light rain and it was somewhat cold, but she felt none of it. She was set on her mission. She had been told where the mayor’s house was and found it quickly. With all of her robotic might she kicked down the door and she saw him the now 80 going on 90 year old Dr. Roughenclaw. He was all wrinkled and looked very, very sad. He showed very little emotion when she entered the room, and re-entered his life after 20 yrs. Failura said loud and boldly to her creator, “I have come to kidnap your granddaughter.”
Soon after she had stated her mission a young woman came out from a door in the side of the room. She looked like a mirror image of Failura. The young woman gasped. Dr. Roughenclaw apparently just now seeing what was going on started to laugh, quietly at first but then louder and louder and uncontrollable. He then said, “How did you ever come back on?” he let out a soft chuckle as he passed away.
Failura stood there and studied her old creator, Dr. Roughenclaw. With her x-ray vision she saw that his heart had stopped pumping blood. She had read about death. Something that would never truly come to her. She fell into deep thought. Meanwhile the young woman who looked exactly like Failura screamed, “Why?!? Why did you kill my granddad!?!” When failura heard this she instantly realized two things. One obviously, that the young woman was his granddaughter and two, Dr. Roughenclaw had built her to look like his granddaughter. He must have…. loved me? Failura emotion drive went crazy with sadness and regret. Fake, oily tears came gushing out of her eyes. “I-I didn’t mean to do anything.” Failura said in a pre-programmed shaky voice. The woman said, “Yes you did! You were going to kidnap me! I heard you!” “No!” Failura said, sad as she’d ever been. The woman ran out of the house crying hysterically.
Failura left the town and headed back to Fraquul’s mansion. When Fraquul saw that she had not been successful he was angry. “What do you mean you couldn’t just do it!” screamed Fraquul. Failura shouted back, “I just saw my creator die and found out that he once loved me! So just shut up!” Fraquul was surprised by Failura’s reaction for he had never seen her mad before. Failura’s emotion drive was pumping out anger at dangerously high amounts when, out of nowhere. She was knocked 7 feet down the room, into a wall. Fraquul, Yolanda, and Nathalie all gasped. There stood Dr. Roughenclaw’s granddaughter, except she was different. She had huge glowing yellow eyes, a long snout, fur, a tail, bulging muscles, and sharp claws. Dr. Roughenclaw’s granddaughter was a werewolf.
Instantly Fraquul ordered Yolanda and Nathalie to attack, they did but were knocked away like rag dolls, their blond hair getting stained with their own blood as they hit the floor. Fraquul attacked the were-beast himself, they seemed to be nearly equal. Failura got back to her feet. She yelled at Fraquul, “Why can I do to help?!?” “Go and get the gun with silver bullets!” he yelled. Failura raced into the other room. She was searching franticly for what seemed like forever, then she finally found it.
The Gun itself looked like any other gun so Failura checked the holster, three bullets made of pure silver were snuggled tightly in the gun. Failura sprinted as fast as she could into the main room were it looked like the werewolf was winning.
Failura hastly locked on to the werewolf and fired. As if in slow motion the werewolf saw the bullet and grabbed Nathalie, still on the ground unconsicous and threw her in the path of the bullet. Nathlie was hit and fell back to the ground. Fraquul yelled, “What are you waiting for!?” “Only two shots left.” Thought Failura. She locked on to the werewolf again and fired this time, however the werewolf tossed Yolanda in the air as a sheild. Fraquul said with intense pain, “Hurry up!” “One final shot.” Thought Failura. She locked on and fired. The werewolf, the mayor’s granddaughter, intictively threw Fraquul to block the bullet but this time the bullet missed Fraquul, hit the wall behind him, ricochad off the ceiling and landed right the middle of the werewolf’s foot.
An extremely loud howl of pain flooded the mansion. As the mayor’s granddaughter slowly transformed back into her human form. She screamed in an almost in-human voice, “My name is Jillian and it was my destiny to destroy you Failura!!!!!” Jillian then died and slumped to the floor surrounded by blood.
That night Fraquul and Failura went back to Dr. Roughenclaw’s (The Mayor) house. He found his diary. It dated back to when he first arrived at the town. The entry said, “I regret that I was too afraid of my robotic creation, Failura. The idea of a walking, emotion-simulating humanoid is just too radical for me. I plan on just letting her rest in piece forever in my old estate, that castle of mine. I used age-progression programs on my computer to see how my granddaughter would look when she hit 22 and based my robot around that. I feel sorry and regret ever making Failura for now that I know she works she lies dormant for no other reason than my arrogant fear, but alas I shall get over it in the wonderful new town.”
Failura discovered another diary entry of interest. “Dear Diary. Today was a tragic day. A werewolf bit my granddaughter, Jillian. She is panicking, I’m panicking, and practically the whole the village that elected me mayor is panicking. Jillian is now nearly 20, I am having nightmares of my old days at my castle. It disturbs me to even look at Jillian for that ,I am ashamed.
Now knowing the truth, Failura sat the diary down. Fraquul said to Failura, “I’m sorry for all the troubles I have caused you.” “We should be getting back to the mansion the sun is about to rise and Yolanda and Nathalie are still in poor condition.” “No. This is were I make a path for myself” said Failura. “But were will you go?” asked Fraquul “I don’t know, but I do know that I must go on, for the future is that way.” Failura said as she pointed towards out of town. “ Well goodbye my madame.” Said Fraquul sadly. Failura looked back and waved as she walked into the horizon.
THE END