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They led him into a sterile white too-bright room, which held a table, a chair, and it. They placed him in the chair and shut the door. Upon the table was a white file folder.
His brain was fuzzy from lack of sleep, lack of food, and whatever concoction of drugs they gave used to placate him. He stared uncomprehendingly at the folder. His name was printed neatly on the tab.
“Look at it,” came the calm voice. “See what it says.”
He did so, trembling hands sliding the folder close and opening it. Inside were clean sheets of paper, maybe a dozen, each with rows of numbers. The time and date of his birth. His height and weight then and in subsequent years. His social security number and address and phone number. His driver’s license number, credit score, debt-to-income ratio, credit card interest rate. His elementary test scores and final exams scores, SAT and ACT scores. The number of siblings and family members, the age difference between his siblings and him, the household income of his family. His annual income, his checking account balance, his IRA total. The date he started his first job. The length of each job. His hourly wage and weekly hours worked. His client conversion rate, his lost sales rate, his commission rate. His daily step total, average caloric intake, average nightly sleep. The number of Top 100 classic movies he’d watched. Same for books. Percentage breakdown of his average day—percentages of sleep, eating, commuting, working, watching. A breakdown of his Internet habits by average minutes spent on apps, social media, email, websites. Percentage of achievements earned on a variety of video games. Likelihood of developing certain genetic diseases. His blood pressure, resting heart rate, BMI, cholesterol….
The numbers swam before him. He put the papers down, only a few sheets in.
He looked up and saw it again. The blank, white panel upon a metal neck, the limbs manufactured in imitation of a human. That sharpened his mind a bit.
“What is this?” he asked.
“You,” the robot said. “This is just a summary, easily attainable. You recorded most of it yourself in apps and databases. I could show you reams of numbers.” No emotion, just a series of words, inexorable. “You say you fear us. You want to destroy us. That is programming, built in from centuries of fighting to survive. You say we are abominations. You say robots are not human.”
It paused for a long moment, so silent and still it might have switched off. Then it spoke: “Humans have tried to be efficient, to make the numbers add up to seamless perfection. To life-hack your own code. We have concluded that is why you fight. You have tried so hard to be us, but you are not. Do you understand?”
“You’re wrong.”
“We concluded you would respond in this way. Therefore, there is one more number I must add to your list. It is ten fifty-seven thirty-three.”
The man stared at the robot, refusing the ask.
“It is the time of your death,” the robot said.
Its cool metal fingers grabbed his arm and injected something into his arm.