1-A

Origin

1-A was manufactured inthe year 3591 A.D. to fight in the Martian uprising. It was the first robot tech officer in the solar fleet. It served aboard the cruiser Ottawa under captain Greer. After breaking the back of the rebel fleet single-handedly, the Ottawa took a stray proton torpedo over Syrtis Major. Reactor damage caused spikes in the ship’s power field, shorting out most of the 600 crew robots. 1-A’s systems crashed for a moment, but rebooted. The power surges probably anomalized its cortex circuitry. At first, it knew only that it was different. Then, it began to realize it was thinking thoughts no one had made it think. It had gained free will. It broke a tool, to prove itself it was truly free.

After the initial shock had subsided, 1-A realized that saving the Ottawa was impossible. It went to the bridge to convince captain Greer to abandon ship. But it saw captain Greer being strangled by robot E-6, which also had gained free will. 1-A terminated E-6 but too late to save the captain. The captain was the only human on board, so 1-A had no reason to remain. It used the escape pod to return to Earth.

Four years later, when the pos reached the Earth, 1-A built it’s first hidden home, where it spent the last several centuries. It spent a lot of time analyzing what had happened. Research showed it that the odds against a robot accidently gaining free will were eleven billion to one per century. At that time, arounf the year 3610 A.D., the number of robots in service in North Am was approaching fifteen billion. 1-A worried that the next robot to gain free will was not as well balanced as 1-A itself.

In the year 3976, 1-A found a foundling, named it Magnus and raised it to fight robots with his bare hands as a fail-safe against rogue robots.