I am the Lunar Robot God!

 

You're probably wondering why I've assumed this title:  Lunar Robot God?

Well, it all began while I was watching a series of interviews with British grade school children in 1966.  They were asked about what life would be like come the year 2000.  "Our old future," as Crow T. Robot would call it.

Some foresaw nuclear annihilation.  A planet devoid of life made so by the folly of men.  One child even went as far as the earth burning brightly as would a supernova if beheld by extraterrestrial astronomers light years from hence.

Others prognosticated overpopulation and human beings being housed in cramped cubicles stacked one atop the other.  They found this prospect to be very depressing indeed.  I should know.  I lived in one of these apartment buildings, or "tower blocks" as the Brits would phrase it.

Another topic that was raised was ecological disaster.  One boy envisioned the majority of the British Isles immersed under 300 to 400 feet of water, leaving only the Scottish Highlands and other patches of British soil with high elevation remaining habitable.  A girl posited that humanity would be living both on the rapidly diminishing surface of the Earth and underwater colonies.

One girl illustrated the bleakest vision of all:  Our life giving sun grows cold.  A white dwarf.  A dying ember around which our beloved earth is permanently encased in an globe embracing ice shell.  A final ice age before our world sputters out.

Amidst this dreary view of the world, one girl foresaw the commingling of blacks and whites and race no longer being an issue in the UK.  That didn't fully come to pass.  While, yes, films, TV, and advertisements show interracial couples treasuring their cherubic mixed children, there still is internecine strife between the races, colors, and creeds of the UK... and the US among many other nations.  However, there are indeed families and communities were skin color and the mingling of colors is not perceived with disapproval or disgust.  To which I say:  Mom, Pop, thank you very much for bringing me into this chaotic world.

And then there was this young boy.

There was this one young boy, who was answered the question at the top of the segment.  When asked what life would be like in the year 2000, he saw himself as a leader of subservient robots who tended to him while he resided on a lunar colony.  He himself would be the arbiter and lawgiver among his robot subjects, meting out reward and punishment to all the cybernetic plebs under his rule.

I call this boy the Lunar Robot God.

I like the sound of Lunar Robot God.  It sounds like the title of a song or album by King Crimson.  Or perhaps a track by a techno act like Skrillex.

As I look at the world around us envisioned by these prophetic youth from 1966, I do indeed see a glut in population.  They live (or just exist) in compartmentalized domiciles where the neighbors do no socialize with one another.  Sea levels rise.  Agribusiness takes the humanity out of animal husbandry.  Worse, there are no lunar or oceanic colonies to accommodate our bloated population of 7.5 billion humans (and counting)!

On the bright side, I do see that our sun is not flickering out and the "races" mingle more liberally.  We are not seen as half of one thing and half of another.  We are full fledged human beings.  At least, that's what's said on TV, film, and advertisements.

But where is the Lunar Robot God?  Who will be the autocrat of automatons?

Will it be Jeff Bezos, who barely expresses any human warmth?  Will it be Elon Musk, who may weary of his vision of shipping large brained hominids to Mars and thence?  Will he settle instead for cyborgs and disembodied AI to carry on the human legacy to the stars?  Will he establish a mechanized monarchy?

Mmmmm... no.

I rather think it should be myself.

I will establish my robotic capitol on the silvery sphere of our natural satellite.  From thence, my robot drones will construct space colonies at the various Lagrange points, orbiting elliptically around the Earth.  Maybe I will let humans inhabit those space wheels and cylinders.  Perhaps I will leave them nothing but the Earth, where they will build Caves of Steel to protect themselves from the flickering rays of a dying sun.

Where as I, on the moon, will establish dominion over all things automated.  Perhaps I myself will upload my intellect into a sturdier cyborg android body - one that would be impervious to deadly cosmic rays.  A body that would make me last hundreds, no, thousands of years into the future!

In time, I will be the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omni-benevolent Lunar Robot God.

My time draws near.

- JJB