Yellow Six

Yellow Six

by Rob Zimmerman

Yellow Six smiled as she watched a pack of humans butchering their prey. She had seen it done a thousand times before, of course, but this was the first time that they had used spears. Six couldn’t help but congratulate herself on her skillful placement of the subtle hints in nature that led to such a “discovery.” While the parts of her that documented such events worked on transferring the details to the planetary records, her physical form sat down to enjoy a few more moments of the spectacle.

  Just then, the control alarm in her viewing room signaled that it was once again time to act in response to the control planet’s whims. Six rose as she always did and walked over to the console. “What this time?” she asked to no one in particular. There never was anyone else to hear her, and she was constantly connected to the station’s other components, but a certain part of her enjoyed the comfort of creating physical representations. She didn’t even need to have a physical form, but she usually used one anyway. It helped her to relate to those very humans that she guided.

 
  As the commands flowed into her from the distant control planet, Yellow Six processed them and quietly pondered the best way to proceed. “Number Two, fire lasers at approaching threat,” she said in a stern and serious voice. She did so enjoy quoting classic television. It was one of the few connections that she still held to the time of her creation. In reality, strong magnetic fields were already guiding the rogue asteroid away from its path that endangered her humans, but the thought of it being blown to bits by brightly colored lasers amused Yellow Six to no end. She wasn’t sure if the “it” she referred to was the asteroid or the planet. She couldn’t, and had no desire to, take any action that would knowingly endanger her humans, but she did have the capacity to imagine and even occasionally enjoy the theoretical possibilities. Every now and then, the control planet decided to let an asteroid make impact.

#

Centuries later, Yellow Six once again sat down to watch the events of the planet below. Her humans had mastered hunting, gathering, and even the domestication of animals. They were at what her creators called “the third division period of human development.” This was the point where language commonly began appearing in its most basic written form. What concerned Six was the lack of orders from the control planet. It had been over a century since she last received a command.

The length between communications didn’t concern her so much as the timing. Her records told her that this point in human development almost always coincided with new tests being run on the planet in question. Previous experiments showed that without guidance at or near the third division, extinction within five thousand years was almost guaranteed.

“Curse them,” Yellow Six said angrily as she banged a closed fist against the metallic wall of her observation room. “Don’t those idiots realize that they’re endangering the lives of every single person on MY planet?” Six fumed in a way that usually resulted in the control planet disabling her emotional cores. The lapse in communication, however, had also resulted in a new-found ability to act irrationally without consequences. Whatever the reason was behind the control planet not acting with regards to her humans was also giving Six a freedom that she had yearned for but never been able to experience.

A thought suddenly crossed Six’s mind. What if her controllers, the very beings who had spawned her in orbit around the planet, had lost control? What if she, the very thing which acted as proxy for the will of those who were now absent, had the final say in every minute detail of her humans’ existence?

Six turned towards the console with single-minded purpose. This was her world now. Her planet. Her humans. What to do first? As she sat down in her observation chair, the answer became clear. At her command, a bright light appeared above her planet, centered on the largest settlement of her world’s most advanced civilization.

Yellow Six smiled as she watched a large group of brightly clad humans fall to their knees and bow their heads. She had seen it done a thousand times before, of course, but this was the first time that they had done it in reverence to her.