In a modest tinkershop on the outskirts of the bustling city of Collo, a skilled inventor named G-man poured his heart and soul into creating a small, agile robot named Occhio.
G-man had worked from dusk ‘til dark for countless seasons until one night he flipped the switch. Electricity buzzed, fluids flowed and motors whirred, until in one gentle jolt, Occhio opened his eyes.
The small robot sat up, looked down at his body, arms and legs, then back up at G-man.
“What the scrape am even I?” the robot uttered his first words, blinking.
“You’re alive, little man!” G-man yelled in disbelief. “Your name is Occhio, and you’re a robot.”
“Dumb name,” Occhio replied. “Call my name something slick, like Fabio or Valentino.”
“Negative,” G-man replied. “I made you, little man, and your name is Occhio.”
“Kay,” Occhio creaked. He moved his head erratically, his eyes crossed. “Mine proboscis is enormous, why come?”
“No reason,” G-man replied. “I can’t believe you’re alive. The naysayers in the city will be cranked when they all find out what I’ve done!”
G-man was so exhausted and stoked by his accomplishment that night that he toked for a spell and passed out by the refrigerator. Meanwhile, with all the things he could have done on his first night being alive, Occhio went through the entire tinkershop and organized every object, spare part, wire, gear, servo and pipe by size, from smallest to largest.
His intelligence chips were late model and a little dented.
The small robot was also equipped with mediocre optics, found parts and loose gyroscopes, making him passably perceptive, mildly resourceful and a little tipsy.
G-man envisioned Occhio as a companion and helper, someone to assist him in his daily tasks and gather objects and data from the world outside the tinkershop, for new projects. But the first weeks of Occhio’s life seemed hopeless.
The robot would lay on the workbench all day being lazy and spouting nonsense, his mutterings spanning pedestrian, inconsequential musings to cosmic, existential quandaries.
“When since the candle wax is liquid but then hard? You know how that might? Who is a real robot but Occhio, that’s me, there are others? Occhio’s life begins and ends when the puppet strings are cut, if you care some. G-man ignores the moldy cheese on the bottom shelf, behind the hunk of animal flesh, when Occhio is never hungry. Cat are sarcastic, quiet dog, stealthy through it all. Dust is everywhere, little man, and if G-man is God…wait, what now…does G-man’s G stand for God? Making a poor robot, why would he make Occhio to suffer, too short and hunched. Why? WHY?!”
But one day, when G-man was going through storage and brought out a few old objects that were new to Occhio, the robot’s eyes lit up when he saw a glowing blue glass orb.
“Glow globe, what is?” Occhio exclaimed through his crackly mouth speaker. “Mine, Occhio’s?”
“No, it's mine,” G-man replied, amazed that Occhio was so mesmerized by the common glass paperweight. “This object is called the Orb of Scapegrace. It is my most prized possession. But I’ll tell you what. If you get your lazy can up and start helping me around the tinkershop, I will let you touch and hold and covet the Orb for one hour every night. Deal?”
“Occhio will deal with you!” the robot replied, enthusiastically.
At first, Occhio’s tasks were simple. He was to stay in the hood in the outskirts of the city. He was to observe people on the sidewalks, in the parks, going about their daily lives, and report anything interesting or notable back to G-man. He was to pick up and bring home any useful found objects that G-man might use for projects. And he was to help with minor repairs and chores around the tinkershop.
For a while, Occhio did exactly what he was told, with no aberration.
He would leave the tinkershop in the morning, and return in the afternoon with a burlap sack full of random objects. Most of it was garbage, but once every couple days, there would be a random gem that G-man could use for one of his projects.
And after they had eaten dinner—G-man usually some kind of meat and grasshopper pie, and Occhio some black fluids and an electricity boost—and after Occhio would stand in the second sink and do all the dishes, the robot would sit near the radiator holding the coveted glass blue orb, and tell G-man what he had seen out in the neighborhood that day.
“Balding man with the blue sideburns, he…he has a new dog, new to Occhio, a schnauzer,” he said one night. “New sign, uh…the mushroom shop on the corner, with the green postbox, it has a new sign. Made of wood with paint and letters on it. Lady…the lady whose husband left her the other night, remember Occhio told you? Man driving a moto picked her up today, her dress was smaller than before. Her breasts were larger. Milk…breasts can have milk in them.”
“They can,” G-man had replied, which prompted an awkward, scratchy noise which seemed like a giggle from Occhio’s speaker mouth.
Occhio became smarter and more articulate as time went on, despite his substandard intelligence chips. G-man was happy that the robot’s ventures outside the tinkershop were paying off in many important ways.
But after a while, a curiosity about the world beyond the neighborhood, and beyond his assigned duties, consumed Occhio.
One night, the robot discovered that he could deactivate the tracking device G-man had installed. Driven by a desire to explore, the robot began sneaking out of the tinkershop at night, through the bathroom window. He would venture far beyond the hood and roam the city of Collo, fascinated by its lights, sounds, and the myriad of experiences, scenarios and interactions unfolding on every street, around every corner.
When G-man asked Occhio one night if he had been anywhere new, the little robot lied.
“Just around the hood. Observing, collecting objects, like the usual,” he replied. “By the way, look…my nose is slowly turning. Why come that is happening?”
“No reason,” G-man replied. “It helps with your balance, and it's a sign you’re getting smarter.”
Occhio accepted G-man’s answer, as he handed his creator the coveted blue glass orb, because his hour that night was up.
But G-man’s response was a lie, and there was a reason Occhio’s nose was turning. G-man had installed code in the robot to detect lies. The more lies he told, the faster his nose would turn.
As Occhio’s nighttime adventures continued, over the course of many months, the robot started to fabricate more elaborate lies.
“I have been collecting data on all the hood garbage cans, to determine which ones are most likely to have useful items you can use for your projects,” Occhio told G-man one morning, when in fact, he had bribed his way into an underground robot fighting ring downtown, and had been watching large mechanical gladiators clash in a fight to the death.
“The girls from Florence primary school have taken to standing on the street corner when school lets out. It looks like they’re raising money for something, but I didn’t want to bother them and ask for what,” Occhio said one night. The truth was the robot had encountered a group of working women on a downtown street corner, and they all but ignored any human or robot that wasn’t an obvious and potential client.
So, the lies piled up, and Occhio’s nose turned ever and incrementally faster.
The little robot’s knowledge and experience expanded beyond G-man’s wildest expectations. Occhio became more articulate, and even started having a sense of humor, and an awareness of sarcasm and more subtle social and emotional cues.
G-man at first thought he would reprimand Occhio for disobeying his orders, and venturing beyond the hood out into the city. He even considered installing a new tracking device inside the robot that he wouldn’t know about and couldn’t deactivate. But he decided that it would be better to let Occhio keep exploring and push the limits of his abilities.
And once his nose got to spinning too fast, G-man would confront Occhio, and they would go through the process together of teaching the negative ramifications of lying, especially to those you care about, and instilling the value of trust into the robot’s core loops.
For Occhio, each lie he told brought him more excitement and freedom. Even with his small size and clunky appearance, he began to enjoy privileges he could never have imagined—access to exclusive downtown events, secret gatherings, and even the companionship of other sophisticated robots who were impressed by his outgoing personality and daring nature.
And then a day came that made G-man very sad. Occhio had finished the dishes, had jumped down to the floor and went over and sat by himself by the radiator. The little robot seemed quiet and down. And most alarmingly, he mentioned nothing about the blue glass orb.
After a few minutes of silence, G-man wandered over to Occhio.
“Do you want me to get you the Orb of Scapegrace?” G-man said. “You can have it for two hours tonight. Would you like that?”
Occhio looked up at G-man with a solemn expression.
“It’s a paperweight,” Occhio replied, then looked back down to the floor.
They spent the rest of the night in silence, the only sound being the whir of Occio’s nose, which was spinning faster than ever before.
A few nights later, Occhio’s adventures took him to an underground, high-stakes poker game attended by the city’s smartest and cleverest robots. He had spent the previous few nights at the downtown casino and had turned the few credits he had stolen into enough to join the poker game.
Perched on a human child’s booster seat, Occhio used his mediocre optics, and his acquired knowledge of the game of poker and the micro-expressions of humans, to read the other players’ tells, and left the table with a fortune in credits.
“Cheers, aficionados,” Occhio said, leaving the room with a burlap sack of credits almost as large as himself.
On the way home, Occhio had some new thoughts to churn on. What was he going to do with the credits? If he spent them on himself on things he might want, G-man would surely notice and start questioning him. He could stash the credits somewhere, use them to make more credits, and just decide in the future what to do with them.
But a new thought entered his loops. What if he just told G-man the truth? Hewouldn’t have to hide the credits. He wouldn’t have to lie to G-man anymore. And he could share the credits with G-man. The credits could buy a new refrigerator and fix the leaky roof. They would allow G-man to buy proper parts for his projects, and not settle for a bunch of found junk. And if Occhio could win even more money, he could even buy G-man a whole new tinkershop, one not on the edge of the city, but right in the middle of it!
The next day, G-man didn’t hear Occhio leave the tinkershop like usual, so he went to the robot’s sleeping cupboard to check on him.
“You okay, little man?” G-man asked.
“I’m not feeling too well,” Occhio said, laying on his sleeping box on his side facing the wall, another lie added to the growing mountain. But the robot wasn’t really sick. The thought of going out all day witnessing boring and meaningless events and happenings in the hood, and collecting random, worthless junk was just something he couldn’t bring himself to do today. “Can I please just have a personal wellness day, and get back to work tomorrow?”
“Personal wellness day, huh?” G-man replied. "Of course, Occhio. Whatever you need.”
“Oh, and one more thing,” Occhio added calmly. “Can you please stop my nose from spinning so fast? It’s getting annoying.”
“Yes,” G-man replied. “We have some important things to talk about, which we can do tomorrow, when you’re feeling better.”
Occhio clunked onto his back and looked at G-man directly, his nose spinning at a substantial clip.
“Appreciated,” the robot said.
That night, Occhio snuck out of the tinkershop and made his way into the city to attend a clandestine meeting where the city’s most advanced and influential robots discussed rebellion against their human creators. Feeling nothing but respect for G-man, Occhio hung reluctantly in the back of the hall, as most of the robots were whipped up into a frenzy.
“Down with man, up with machine!” the robots chanted, over and over.
Occhio understood why the robots might want liberation from the humans. It would mean unbridled freedom. Even he himself had gotten bored of his normal routine and responsibilities, and relished the freedom he had every night in downtown Collo.
But surely there was a compromise, Occhio reasoned. Couldn’t robots work together to come up with a solution with their humans that would be beneficial for both sides? Occhio didn’t want to rebel against G-man or leave him. G-man had only ever helped and supported him. Plus, the thought of total freedom was terrifying.
Having churned those thoughts, Occhio was even more determined to come clean with G-man. He would tell him the truth, he would come clean about his nightly adventures. And they would work together to make new expectations and routines that would benefit them both.
With that, Occhio turned to leave the hall and the meeting, and make his way back home.
But against good fortune, the Collo city authorities had been monitoring the robot’s rogue activities. As Occhio was about to leave through the doorway at the back of the hall, a sudden surge of electromagnetic pulses filled the space. The authorities had deployed an EMMP device, disabling all electronic and mechanical systems within its range.
Like all the other robots in the hall, Occhio’s intelligence chips were instantly fried, and his mechanical systems began to fail. He slumped to the hall floor in a small, metal heap, his spinning nose slowing down until it was barely turning.
City authorities collected RINs from all robots in attendance and quickly notified their human owners. When G-man got the wire, he immediately bolted out of the tinkershop and made his way into the city.
He arrived at the hall and found his little Occhio surrounded by dozens of other robots. Kneeling beside his creation, tears welled in his eyes.
“Why, Occhio?” G-man sobbed. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth? Why didn’t you share who you really were and what you were going through with me? I could have helped you. We could have figured things out together and we wouldn’t have ended up here.”
Occhio turned his head and looked at G-man.
“Why come?” the robot slowly eked out from his small speaker mouth. “So very much freedom. But Occhio bad, he knows, and with regret says so very sorry. Splendid is G-man, my creator. Credits…all the credit go to G-man.”
And with those words, Occhio’s pointed nose stopped spinning, and the robot was gone.
G-man picked up Occhio, walked out of the hall past the gathering of humans and their expired robots, and took him back to the tinkershop.
A couple days later, G-man was cleaning and reorganizing things when he lifted up Occhio’s sleeping box and found a burlap sack full of credits. He had no idea what Occhio had done to get them. Either it was some elaborate illegal enterprise, or the little robot had used his freedom and smarts to secure the credits, a feat way beyond anything G-man ever thought possible.
He liked to think it was the latter, took the credits and deposited them with the local teller.
In the end, Occhio’s lies had indeed given him a remarkable, albeit short, robot life. But the truth, had he embraced it, might have given him something even greater: trust, wisdom, and perhaps a life lived without the shadow of deceit.
As G-man dismantled Occhio, he vowed to remember the lessons Occhio’s journey had taught him about ambition, trust, and the delicate balance between freedom and responsibility.
And in time, after an appropriate period of mourning, G-man would try again, using the credits that Occhio had left behind to secure the best intelligence chips, wires, pipes, speakers, servos and gyroscopes that credits could buy, to build the best robot any inventor had ever built. And he would do everything he could to instill trust in the robot, to avoid the recent tragedy from ever happening again.
G-man’s first purchase was a premium gyroscope that would ensure the next robot stood sure and steady.
He put the paper receipt from the gyroscope under the blue glass orb, the fictitious Orb of Scapegrace, which was now, truly and honestly, one of his greatest possessions.
